Tory donors and lobbyists offered lunch with May (if they pay £3k)
ACCESS to Theresa May at the Conservative Party conference is being sold for nearly £3,000.
The party is touting a corporate ‘ business day’ package involving lunch with the new prime minister and access to ministers for £2,750.
For another £400 they can also have a dinner hosted by Chancellor Philip Hammond with a guest speaker and further networking opportunities.
The meetings will take place at the conference in Birmingham in the first week of October.
It will be Mrs May’s first conference as Tory leader and PM, and access to her will be prized by businesses keen to lobby for their interests in the earliest phase of her premiership.
The price was revealed in a corporate brochure for the conference. It comes despite Mrs May’s pledge to tackle the ‘ vested interests’ of the wealthy elite and corporate bosses.
The PM will host a question and answer session over lunch. The website advertising the event features a picture of Mrs May along with the claim that the day ‘offers representatives from the business community the opportunity to engage in discussion with senior Conservative politicians’.
In previous years access to David Cameron could be secured at around £1,000 per head. This year the event organisers are charging lobbyists and executives £2,750 for the ‘business day’ event. Adding £400 for the dinner brings the package to £3,150 which includes a two-day conference pass, VIP lounge access, breakfast, lunch and reserved seating for the Chancellor’s speech.
Tamasin Cave, of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Spinwatch, told the Guardian it was worrying that Mrs May appeared to ‘continue with politics as normal under David Cameron’.
She predicted a ‘bonanza of Brexit lobbying’ adding: ‘People do not trust establishment politicians on this issue of lobbying. She has a big problem on her hands which she does not seem to understand.’
A Conservative spokesman said: ‘This is an important opportunity to engage directly with businesses and to highlight how, as part of our plan to create an economy that works for everyone, we will continue to back business and enterprise.’
Labour has a business forum charging nearly £900 a ticket for access to politicians. The LibDems are charging £240 to attend a corporate event at their conference in Brighton.
Controversy over corporate lobbying will resurface next week when Labour peer Lord Brooke puts forward a private member’s bill calling for the lobbying register to be beefedup to include more details of who lobbyists are meeting.