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UK advisory body warns of all-party parliamentary groups becoming ‘the next great parliamentary scandal’ – JURIST

An advisory body to the UK Parliament Wednesday warned of the risk of “hostile foreign actors” gaining “improper access and influence” to Members of Parliament. The Commons Standard Committee’s latest report warned that if All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) are left unchecked, it could represent “the next great parliamentary scandal.”APPGs are vital to the function of Parliament as informal cross-party groups to allow parliamentarians a forum to develop policy and foster debates on matters of public interest.The report notes concern about lobbying and improper influence. APPGs can currently draw on a variety of funding sources, in effect enabling outside interests “to buy the logo of Parliament.” Currently, the system of registering an APPG is “relatively informal,” leading to minimal scrutiny. As they receive no staff or financial support, there is the “danger” of the need for additional resources, “creat[ing] a risk of improper influence or access being brought to bear on Parliament.”An investigation by OpenDemocracy, an independent media platform, found that APPGs have received around £25 million worth of benefits since 2018, of which more than half were provided by private sector organisations. The Committee warned that APPGs “must not be a vehicle by which paid external interests can achieve a level of access and influence not available to others;” the risk is that external bodies could use APPGs to amplify their own messages to target policy proposals. The Committee recommended the need for transparency over the external funding sources of APPGs and regulatory enforcement.The recent case of Christine Lee “has brought these issues to the fore,” the Committee illustrates. Lee was a cover actor who promoted the interests of the Chinese Communist Party to an APPG. “Indiscriminate engagement with state actors who were hostile to UK interests d[oes] not take adequate account of the potential security risks to Parliament.” Transparency International, a global civil society that aims to promote accountability and end corruption, found 36 APPGs are currently funded by country groups, with two being sponsored by a foreign government. As a result, there is a “real” danger of improper influence by “hostile foreign actors,” the Committee warned.