26th Feb 2008
Irish News column
It’s Irish News column day on O’Conall Street. I have taken a look at public affairs focussing on the ICAI’s campiagn for lower coporation tax.
PLAN YOUR LOBBY SO IT SURVIVES FIRST CONTACT WITH THE ENEMY
I am often asked what I do for a living. ‘I’m a public relations consultant’ I tell them, ‘a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and specialist in corporate communications and public affairs’. Like most professions ours is a broad church. From Fast Moving Consumer Goods consumer marketing to technical policy lobbies, chances are there is a PR professional in their somewhere advising and designing campaigns that effect change and get results.
Tomorrow in Westminster an important campaign on behalf of business in Northern Ireland takes a big step forward. Over the past year the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland under the leadership of their Northern Tax Committee Chairperson Eamonn Donaghy with support from Director of Tax Brian Keegan has been lobbying intelligently and to great effect to ensure the opportunity for a considerably lower rate of corporation tax for this region remains on the political agenda.
When the Prime Minister invited Sir David Varney to conduct a review of taxation in Northern Ireland after the reestablishment of the power sharing executive last spring the ICAI rightly calculated the report would be negative. Of particular concern was the fact that the main reasons being offered by the British government such as EU law, impact on the UK exchequer, the ‘Azores’ judgement and technical arguments about transfer pricing, held no water and needed urgent and detailed rebuttal.
The ICAI was at the starting point of a classic lobby. Armed also with research which the Ulster Society of Chartered Accountants had showing overwhelming support amongst its members for a lower rate, the institute’s communications team sat down to map out the issues, key influencers and decision makers, other stakeholders and messages before getting started. The issue was clear; to tackle the spurious assumptions being made by the Varney team and the arguments they were articulating against a differential rate here.
With a political consensus in favour of a differential rate across the island of Ireland and the active support of both the Northern Ireland Executive and the Irish Government there was little point mounting a campaign that focussed on people with whom there was no disagreement. The accountants rightly identified GB as the key battleground as it was ultimately the British Government’s decision and a matter for Parliament. To have simply targeted ministers and those inside government would not have achieved wider exposure for the campaign nor brought additional pressure on them. One group stood out as potential allies and highly influential. The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in Westminster as well as scrutinising the work of the NIO has a duty to represent the interests of this region on non devolved matters such as tax. All through the summer the ICAI quietly met and briefed all the Northern Ireland members and the senior GB members of the committee to secure a commitment that if Sir David reported negatively and failed to give good reasons for not granting a differential rate they would put the issue on their committee agenda.
This was not simply a political lobby, the accountants were well armed with a detailed policy rebuttal of Sir David’s so called reasons for not granting a differential rate. This dissection and detailed argument on technical grounds is critically important when lobbying. All too often interest groups focus solely on recruiting political support only to find their campaign and political support shot down by an argument from the other side for which they are not ready and have no proper answer. In lobbying your plan must be able to survive first contact with the enemy.
During the early days there was little public comment on the issue and only minimal media exposure for the campaign. This was deliberate and often the case when lobbying. The first objective must be to establish a case, recruit advocates and ensure all the key stakeholders are on board before telling the world what you are about.
When Sir David’s report finally emerged on the eve of Christmas the ICAI were able to go public and claim a victory whilst continuing the pressure. The messages which they had worked so hard to communicate had clearly got through. All the obstacles to reduction which the review team had so confidently enunciated in the summer were gone. No significant arguments against, no EU law stood in the way, no serious fiscal impediments. All the report could achieve was a pretty poor analysis of the Republic’s success over the past decade and concerns that a reduction would cost the exchequer. In other words there was no sound policy reason for not granting NI a differential rate, just a political one – the British government don’t want to. Result!
Now that the technical obstacles were disappearing many commentators, economists, business leaders and all the political parties here saw the opportunity to keep the issue on the agenda. No surprise this week then when the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee decided to call the ICAI to give evidence. The Assembly is also looking again at the detail and as Sir David awaits local submissions to his second review, the Economy Minister Nigel Dodds, is still pressuring the Secretary of State publicly in Parliament. Locally all the main papers, including this one, are happy to continue to lend support to the campaign. This issue in the words of the First Minister, Ian Paisley hasn’t gone away you know.
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