Priorities for the new UK Government: Accountability in British Politics

12/07/24 • 81 min

Meet the speakers

Sir Rob Behrens was the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman between 2017 and 2024. Prior to this, he held roles including Complaints Commissioner at the Bar Standards Board, Secretary to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, and Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (Office of the Independent Adjudicator) in England and Wales.

Greg Clark is the Executive Chair of Warwick University’s Warwick Innovation District and a former politician. During his time as an MP, he held various ministerial portfolios, most notably having been the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy under Theresa May’s premiership. After returning to the backbenches, he served as the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee between 2020 and 2024.

Kitty Donaldson is the Chief Political Commentator at the i newspaper. Prior to this, she covered politics and the House of Commons for Bloomberg nearly two decades, first as a Political Correspondent, then as UK Political Editor.

Chair: Prof. Robert Hazell is Professor of Government and the Constitution in the UCL Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy.

Meet the speakers

Chair: Prof. Robert Hazell is Professor of Government and the Constitution in the UCL Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy.

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Decoding the 2024 US Election: What it means for America and the World

Meet the speakers -

Dr. James D. Boys is a Boston-based analyst focused on US political history. He was most recently a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Strategic Studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School. An expert on US politics and grand strategy, he frequently shares his insights as an on-air commentator on CNN, BBC News, Sky News, Al Jazeera, CNBC, etc. Dr. Boys has appeared before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and was quoted extensively in its 2013 report on US-UK relations. He has also authored several books, mainly centred around the Clinton administration.

Alexandra Cirone is an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy (SPP) at the London School of Economics, and has a joint appointment in the Department of Government. She also holds a research appointment at the BI Norwegian Business School, and she is a non-resident fellow in the Democratic Innovations Program at Yale University ISPS. She is one of the editors and co-founders of Broadstreet.blog, a blog on historical political economy. Her research interests center on political selection and institutional design in democracies, lottocratic governance and policy, and historical political economy.

Dr. Julie Norman is an Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations and the Foreign Policy Lead of the Centre on US Politics (CUSP) at UCL. She has published widely on security, conflict, and foreign policy, including five books on nonviolent resistance and multiple articles on political violence, divided societies, and polarization. Norman also works as a policy consultant, providing research-based recommendations to the UN, US State Department, FCDO, US Institute of Peace (USIP), British Council, and other governmental bodies and NGOs. She is also a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI and a frequent political analyst on the BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, and other media outlets.

Chair: Dr Thomas Gift is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre on US Politics (CUSP) in the UCL Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy.

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Lobbying: participatory democracy or crony capitalism?

This seminar demystifies the secret world of consultancy and lobbying. It is an industry which has grown hugely in recent decades, and become an inevitable part of modern policy making. But lobbyists and lobbying are frequently misunderstood. To explain what lobbyists do we have four very senior practitioners, with a wide range of experience between them. Two are consultants, and two in-house lobbyists; two work primarily in the UK, and two engage in consultancy and lobbying worldwide.

They will explain the different roles of lobbyists, from communications and reputation management to strategy and policy work. They will also discuss the growing demands for lobbying in the UK to be more tightly regulated: on one estimate, the Lobbying Act 2014 captures only 4 per cent of lobbying activity. Lobbying necessarily informs policy; but by operating largely behind the scenes, does it also undermine democracy?

Meet the speakers

Charles Lewington OBE is the Chairman of Hanover Communications, which he founded in 1998 after a high-profile career in Downing Street and political journalism. It has grown to more than 200 consultants. He is also President elect of the Public Relations Consultancy Association, representing more than 1,000 agencies in the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.

Yasmin Diamond CB, Executive Vice President of Global Corporate Affairs at IHG Hotels & Resorts. Yasmin is responsible for all external and internal communications; global government affairs work; and leading IHG’s corporate responsibility strategy. Before joining IHG in 2012, Yasmin was Director of Communications in the Home Office, and before that at DEFRA.

Tamasin Cave is the Head of Strategic Communications at Uplift UK. Prior to her current position, she worked with Spinwatch, a non-profit that investigates corporate PR and lobbying, and led the campaign for transparency regulations for lobbyists in the UK. She also co-authored A Quiet Word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain (2015).

Chair: Prof David Coen, UCL Pro Vice Provost Global Engagement and Professor of Public Policy