Elevator pitch

16 February 2010

There is a view held in some quarters that lobbying does not work. For me, the jury is still out on the matter but events of the last week have shown that there are many ways to lobby and many ways in which Parliament can exercise its powers to deal with putting matters right where it is clearly in the wrong.

Adviser Alliance director Alan Lakey and myself had a meeting arranged as a result of correspondence between Panacea IFAs and the Speaker of the House of Commons, MP for Buckingham John Bercow.

Alan and I, together with many others, have spent considerable time exploring the legality and unfairness of the long-stop removal by the Financial Ombudsman Service, and to have a meeting with such an important MP to illuminate issues surrounding the plain bad legislation that has led to the problem was quite a coup.

John gave us an hour and a half of his time, listened to and understood the issues and, more importantly, he has given us some excellent advice and an access route to some very influential MPs who may be able to find a “cunning plan” to speed up any Parliamentary process that may be needed to put things right.

John Bercow’s view on lobbying was most illuminating. He recalled the view by many that if John Major, with his reasoned arguments, could sit and have a chat in everyone’s living room the Tories would have got re-elected as one example of what may be considered as reverse lobbying.
An example of effective lobbying across all parties was the recent Thalidomide campaign.

Using this campaign as a benchmark, John went on to express the view that to be effective for minority groups, lobbying should be done in such a way as to be short, sharp and effective in summarising the problem, the effects and the proposed remedy - an elevator pitch in fact - to get the attention of the MP.

In addition, there should be an organised campaign on a united front to include, in our case, the Association of Independent Financial Advisers, IFAs nationally and local MPs.

Simon Mansell and Neil Liversidge’s recent campaigning is a fine example of this.

John felt that lobbying by way of specialist firms did not work as well as a passionate, reasoned and co-ordinated campaign by and on behalf of the parties affected by the issue.

In order to keep our powder dry, Alan and I will keep the suggested cunning plan under wraps for the time being while we test the likelihood of its success.

However, should anyone wish to know more, feel free to email us at PanaceaIFA with your contact details and we can expand a little.
In any event, we will update you all again soon.

Derek Bradley is chief executive officer of Panacea IFA