Which political parties do the Big 4 accountants support? It's a question that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has tackled in a great article here.
The short form response is here:
Clear bias here by E&Y and especially Deloitte. But of bigger concern as the TBIJ say is:
There is wide concern that these secondments provide leading accountancy firms with access and influence under the radar.
Quite so.
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One of a whole clutch of excellent articles on the same site, including on the cosy relationship between the FSA and the banks and on the access of the City to the corridors of power. All rivetting stuff!
All links are here: http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/financial-lobby/
Early Day Motion tabled by John McDonnell MP, 10 July 2012:
CITY OF LONDON CORPORATION
“That this House congratulates the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for its thorough research in exposing the abuse of power by the City of London Corporation in using its public resources in a multi-million pound lobbying exercise to distort Government policies, in particular its tax regime, in the interests of the banks and finance houses that control the City Corporation through its undemocratic electoral system based on the business vote; and calls on the Government to instigate an urgent independent inquiry into the role and influence of the City Corporation with the aim of bringing forward proposals for its abolition.”
Now that would be something! Not holding my breath, but will be interesting to see which MPs sign up to it: 13 signatures to date, with – is anyone surprised – no Conservative.
s1(2) Bribery Act 2010?
Nice to see that PWC and KPMG hedge their bets by supporting all 3 parties. Does that mean they are more commercial than Deloittes and E & Y?
Obviously a good investment as no auditor has been successfully brought to book over their failings in 2008. Bribery sounds about right to me but no different to the banksters and lawyers.
Hugely depressing, but not entirely surprising I suppose. According to Craig Murray, who was commenting on the recent amusingly-poor media performances of Chloe Smith (he stood against her as an independent in 2009) ,
“…the only job she ever had at Deloitte was not, as variously reported in the mainstream media, in PR or human resources, but in fact to be seconded to the Conservative Party. Chloe never had any job except as Conservative Party staff. She was then taken on by Deloitte and instantly seconded back to the Conservative Party; her working for Deloitte at all was a fiction. Whether this was to evade political donation rules or just to burnish her CV as a parliamentary candidate, I have no idea.”
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/07/the-impossibility-of-rest/
Fascinating
Tweeted…
More interesting if you divide the amount spent per party by the number of MPs they have in the commons, which is surely the people you actually want to lobby.
It is a bit hard to read the chart and guess the proper figures, but it looks like:
Over £3,000 per Tory MP
About £2,000 per Labour MP
A whopping £6,000 per Lib Dem MP
Clearly the Lib Dem’s are punching above their weight again and the Labour Party is in the wings waiting for power so not quite so important as the Tories …
It seems to me like the ministers who get the chop in the next cabinet reshuffle will end up on the board of the big 4. Its like the privatisations of the 1980s only this time more blatant.