Comment in the Guardian: 11 July 2012

'Angela, the country owes you a debt of gratitude," said Treasury minister Lord Sassoon, referring to the outgoing head of the British Bankers' Association, Angela Knight. He was speaking at the inaugural BBA summer lecture last month, just as the RBS computer balls-up was freezing customers' money, and only days before the scandal broke over Libor, a system overseen by the BBA.

Gratitude for what, exactly? As the Guardian and Bureau of Investigative Journalism exposed today, the BBA has used a multimillion-pound fighting fund to successfully lobby for policies that benefit the big banks. It's only logical that it should, after all. But, as business secretary Vince Cable says, the interests of the financial sector, particularly the banks, "are often not the same as those of the real economy".

The £92m lobbying budget available to the financial sector as a whole means that it can afford to lobby for the drafting of amendments to new rules; it can pile on the pressure for lower taxes like the 50p rate (producing report after report in the runup to the budget); it can fund thinktanks to push the line on its behalf; it can fill policymakers' lives with conferences and seminars to discuss and shape reforms; and it can pay for the private dinners, banquets, champagne receptions and country estate awaydays that all allow its representatives to casually bond with our legislators.

 
Take TheCityUK's courting of officials in the Bank of England, including Andrew Bailey, who is also director of the FSA's Prudential Business Unit. TCUK held a "private roundtable dinner" for Bailey on 6 March this year to discuss "regulating the financial sector in a post-crisis world". In attendance were bankers, lawyers, lobbyists and the City of London Corporation. Bailey accepted another CityUK invitation, just weeks later, to "an informal gathering" of bankers and policymakers on what they hoped would be a "sun-drenched rooftop terrace at [City law firm] SJ Berwin's offices".

And sometimes our legislators are already in the fold. A sixth of the House of Lords have direct financial links with financial services firms, as do most of the peers who scrutinise financial services legislation. This is the flipside to the well-rehearsed argument that the Lords must not become an elected chamber because of its unique expertise.

And with its resources, the finance lobby has the clout to make sure it is the dominant voice in Brussels, too, where it has been aggressively campaigning for City interests. Knight is, according to Sassoon, "the master at how to lobby effectively in Brussels", teaming up with other nations' financial sectors at the EC so they don't appear to be merely serving the interests of London. ("Why can't we be more like Angela?", Sassoon once asked his colleagues at the Treasury).

The numbers also help: there are more corporate employees helping draft Europe's financial policies than civil servants; fewer than 10% of the EC's advisers represent workers and less than 5% the interests of consumers.

Despite its lobbying, though, the City has failed to win over the British public. Banks and financial services are the two least trusted industry sectors for the second consecutive year. But money will continue to be pumped into their fighting funds as long as there are people and policies to fight against. The lobbying won't stop. But what we can and must do is make sure that we can see it, understand it, and fight back.

Move your money; write to your MP to support greater transparency; pick your target and lobby. The City invests in lobbying because it wants control over the rules and regulations that govern the way it operates. But how it operates has a bearing on our lives, too.