Mallen Baker's Blog

Dealing in responsibility

19 Mar 2008

I attended the launch of the UK main opposition party's policy proposals on CSR yesterday, a press conference with party leader David Cameron as the star turn. It had at least one interesting idea that bears further consideration (so ahead of most party policy documents), and provided further insight into the wretched state of the political process generally.

The idea is that of Responsibility Deals, where over problems that are complex and require cooperation from a number of actors, the government would pull businesses together to agree what should be done by whom. Those that then play their part would find a lighter touch on regulation being used in relation to them over that issue. At the launch, the example of obesity was given. Companies can do certain things, change ingredients and advertising, for instance, but other factors are down to government and other agencies.

I thought it was an interesting idea because, whilst the devil lies in the detail, it wold be the first time the government explicitly acknowledged that companies could be part of the solution to complex problems that had a variety of causes, rather than believing that companies are the whole of the problem. Government response to the growing tide of obesity so far has been to demonise the companies, banning advertising of certain product to children - a move which nobody actually expects to make the slightest different to actual rates of obesity.

But the example gives a hint of the practical problems. On obesity, many companies have already altered their ingredients in foods, and taken other measures to seek to encourage more activity in children. On the current description, they have already fulfilled their part without the invention of the Responsibility Deal. Unwisely, David Cameron dropped into a recent speech his recent criticisms of companies that promote cut price chocolate bars at retail outlets. That gave it the feel of a personal bug-bear rather than a strategic policy tool.

The journalists present were all the usually hard-bitten political journos from the major news sources. As soon as Cameron had finished talking about business and social responsibility and opened the floor to questions, they were straight in there - and none of them were interested in asking questions about CSR. Mostly, it was about whether or not the Tories would reduce taxes if they were in government. Cameron answered the question, but then was asked the same question five or six different ways. When an invited guest from Amnesty International asked a question about the actual launch paper, the journos next to me were rolling their eyes to the ceiling at the intrusion - presumably there were still a couple more ways to ask the same question that hadn't yet been exercised.

Having shown no interest in the subject at the launch didn't stop some critical stories appearing in the press the next day, however. Jean Eaglesham in the FT went for it big time (and the FT even ran an editorial telling politicians they should let businesses just get on with running business). The CBI and the Chambers of Commerce were both quoted against - generally on the grounds that what starts as voluntary would soon become legislated, and that the danger is that these things become talking shops that achieve little agreement. It might have been useful had the esteemed press tried out those potential objections to Mr Cameron when they had the chance. Of course, that would have meant they would have had to read the report and pass over the chance to ask the tax question quite as many times as they wanted to. Hard choices.

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