As the 2026 party conference season ramps up and puts businesses, lobbyists and policymakers in the same rooms, greater transparency over lobbying is crucial to ensure laws are shaped openly and in the public interest.
Momentum is building behind a UK mandatory Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (mHREDD) law, with the introduction of a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Lords, and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, various parliamentary committees, backbenchers and other broad coalitions all calling for its introduction. Given that these laws would place a duty on businesses to prevent human rights and environmental harm, we can expect strong interest from businesses as the debate develops.
This makes transparency around corporate lobbying particularly important. Lobbying is a legitimate part of policymaking, as it can shape not only whether legislation is introduced, but what that legislation ultimately looks like. The EU’s experience with the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) shows both the possibilities and risks of developing this kind of regulation, offering useful lessons for the UK as it considers its own approach.
The development of EU-wide mandatory human rights due diligence rules demonstrates the urgent need for comparable, and ideally stronger, legislation in the UK. Yet, the uneven access to policymakers, closed-door policy influence and watering down of legislation seen through the EU Sustainability Omnibus, which weakened the adopted Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the CSDDD, underscores the need to avoid a similar outcome in the UK.
When lobbying is conducted transparently and with consideration for the views and expertise of diverse interest groups, it can help shape an economic and social environment in which both businesses and societies prosper. However, where business influence on policy development and decision-making is disproportionate, opaque or done in a way that lacks integrity, society may suffer from distorted and fragmented policymaking, uneven policy outcomes and diminished trust in democratic institutions. This also creates legal and reputational risk for companies.
Left unchecked, there’s a risk of corporate policy capture, where policymakers repeatedly prioritise private over public interests, typically at the expense of the rights and protections of workers, communities and the environment.
How do companies seek to influence policy?
The term lobbying refers to any activity carried out to influence public policies and decisions in favour of a specific cause or outcome. As such, lobbying is not an inherently negative or harmful activity. There are different ways, with varying degrees of openness, that companies and their representatives seek to shape laws and policy. These include direct lobbying through in-house or consultant lobbyists, submitting to government consultations, and publishing position papers. Companies can also engage in indirect lobbying through trade associations, corporate political donations or gifts for policymakers, sponsoring think tank research to shape legislation, and ‘revolving door’ hiring practices, all of which are much harder to trace and assign to individual companies.
What is the impact of corporate influence on policy outcomes?
It can be difficult to evidence the full nature and impact of corporate influence on policy development, though some well-documented instances give a flavour. Transparency International UK’s research has explored patterns of corporate lobbying in the UK, spanning housing, climate, energy and food policy. Recent analysis of energy policy found that one in 10 UK ministerial engagements are with just 10 companies, all of whom are either fossil fuel majors, or involved in energy generation or transmission. These majors and their trade associations frequently cite the UK’s need for an ‘energy mix’ and the industry’s role in providing ‘energy security’ to make the case for delaying progressive climate policy.
In relation to business and human rights legislation, research by Social LobbyMap showed the influence of companies and trade associations on negotiations around the CSDDD. This included analysing the dynamics that led to the exclusion of the financial sector from the scope of the directive, in particular those between national governments pushing for the exclusion and lobbying positions of financial sector entities headquartered in those countries.
Following the developments of the EU Sustainability Omnibus, further research highlighted the intense lobbying efforts by cross-sectoral trade associations that were focusing their resources on the watering down of CSDDD provisions that were already adopted through a democratic process.
How is the policy development process exposed?
Weak lobbying rules
In the UK, lobbying rules lack clarity and reporting often has significant gaps, with incomplete disclosures and a system that only requires official ministerial meetings and those with Permanent Secretaries to be recorded[1]. Under current law, only paid consultant lobbyists are required to register, accounting for just 4% of all lobbyists. This excludes most lobbyists, including trade associations, meaning that their activities effectively take place behind closed doors. A new Lobbying Transparency Bill, which is a Lords’ private members’ bill, aims to close this gap by extending the rules to include in-house lobbyists in the register. The wider gaps in the lobbying rules in the UK, including the limitations of ministerial meetings data, were highlighted in the Ethics and Integrity Commission’s recently published recommendations, which set out good practice. There are currently no proposals to extend lobbying transparency to all MPs, unlike the Scottish regime which requires all instances of lobbying with any MSP to be recorded.
Limited transparency from companies
Companies’ voluntary disclosures on their political engagement activities are generally weak. Using lobbying on the CSDDD as an example, analysis of the metals and mining sector by Social LobbyMap found that the majority of companies analysed disclosed limited information regarding their lobbying activities, political contributions, trade association memberships, and the positions taken by their associations. When looking at these same entities’ EU Transparency Register profiles, several listed the CSDDD as a targeted proposal and/or held closed-door meetings with the European Commission on the topic, indicating that they were engaging on the Directive despite not making any public statements or consultation submissions.
Companies are also lobbying outside of registered or documented meetings. As examined in a recent Social LobbyMap briefing and through reporting by POLITICO, an annual Franco-German corporate meeting in Evian, France (timed around CSDDD Sustainability Omnibus negotiations) was attended by 45 CEOs, along with President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The attendee list and subsequent letter, which called for the “full abolishment” of the CSDDD along with other deregulation priorities, were leaked to POLITICO and not intended to be public.
The limited reporting, along with closed-door meetings held by companies, makes it challenging to draw direct connections between corporates and policymakers, the positions they present, and the outcome of such engagements.
Trade association opacity
Many companies rely on trade associations to lobby on their behalf. However, this can create misalignment and governance risks where lobbying does not align with companies’ stated social commitments.
Social LobbyMap’s research on the CSDDD and Sustainability Omnibus highlights the tension between more progressive corporate voices and conservative trade associations. The findings show that the more supportive an individual company was of the regulation, the wider the gap between its own score and that of the trade associations it belongs to. This finding suggests that trade associations, in lobbying “on behalf of” their members and presenting an industry consensus, tend to overlook more supportive voices. This supports the widely held assumption that trade associations take a “lowest common denominator” approach and represent their most conservative members’ opinions more strongly. This erases the diversity of views held, while offering little transparency on governance oversight and how lobbying stances were determined.
This matter becomes an even greater concern when looking at the intensity of trade associations’ lobbying. Research across the full CSDDD and Omnibus process found that trade associations were consistently the loudest and most oppositional voices, having the highest engagement intensity scores. For example, trade associations averaged an overall organisational score of 37 (not supportive), paired with an average engagement intensity of 10 [2]. Meanwhile, individual companies were significantly more supportive, with an average organisational score of 76 (supportive), but demonstrated lower levels of lobbying activity, with an average engagement intensity score of four. This shows that from the entities assessed, companies were more than twice as supportive as trade associations but lobbied with less than half of the intensity.
Asymmetries in access and capacity
Corporate entities often have greater capacity for their political engagement activities, particularly companies with large lobbying budgets and trade associations with a mandate to engage in lobbying. This capacity is based on some entities having dedicated public affairs teams, hiring policy experts or lobbying firms, or commissioning research—with the aim of increasing access and influence over policymakers. This enables them to do so, for example, by hosting or attending events for policymaker audiences and arranging one-on-one meetings.
This is relevant because access to policymakers is not distributed evenly across stakeholder groups, as charities and certain public sector organisations often have limited staff and finances to mobilise the same activities. This puts those with less capacity for political engagement at a significant disadvantage in terms of access and influence.
The Franco-German meeting in Evian is an example of how access to high-level policymakers is uneven in practice. Corporate actors were able to secure direct access to national leaders at a critical stage of the CSDDD debate. This allowed the CEOs in attendance to present their policy positions and shape discussions at the highest level.
Over time, this imbalance means corporate positions can dominate policymakers’ perceptions of overall stakeholder priorities.
Why does this matter for companies and investors?
Companies and investors face legal, reputational and governance risks when political engagement lacks transparency, integrity or alignment with their stated commitments.
- Corruption and legal risk — Gifts, hospitality and political contributions provided to policymakers as part of their lobbying activities create bribery risks.
- Reputational risk — Companies may face ‘greenwashing’ claims and diminished public credibility where their social or climate commitments conflict with their lobbying stance or with positions advanced by trade associations on their behalf. This in turn may create financial risk for investors as reputational damage can negatively impact a company’s share price or value.
- Governance and information risk —Corporate political engagement is increasingly recognised as a material issue for investors, who expect clearer disclosure of lobbying activities, expenditure, trade association membership and risk controls to ensure effective due diligence and stewardship.
What is needed to promote fair and transparent lobbying?
As Parliament returns and party conference season gets underway, discussion around a UK mHREDD framework is likely to move forward. The question is not simply whether legislation is introduced, but how openly and fairly the process itself is conducted.
Ensuring that corporate influence is visible and accountable will be an important part of ensuring that the resulting legislation delivers meaningful protections for workers, communities and the environment.
Transparency International UK and the Social LobbyMap recommend that:
Companies
> Ensure board oversight of political engagement activities and commit to transparency, including developing and implementing political engagement policies and controls;
> Publicly disclose all policy positions and lobbying activities—including meetings, consultation submissions, expenditure—in a clear and accessible format;
> Monitor the activities of consultant lobbyists and trade associations and take action where approaches do not align with the company’s own position and commitments;
> Publicly disclose all trade association memberships, and efforts to audit trade association positions, including annual alignment assessments against the company’s social commitments;
> Implement a policy stating that the organisation does not make political donations.
Trade associations
> Publicly disclose all policy positions and lobbying activities, including meetings and consultation submissions, in a clear and accessible format;
> Consult and engage members on policy positions before adopting a lobbying stance, ensuring that all views are taken into account and represented;
> Disclose how lobbying positions are determined and the extent to which they do or do not reflect the positions of members.
Investors
> Require transparency on portfolio companies’ approaches to political engagement, the activities undertaken, and expenditure;
> Require transparency on how companies manage corruption and political engagement risk and implement relevant commitments and policies;
> Require transparency on how companies assess and present misalignment on policy positions with trade associations they are part of.
Policymakers
> Ensure decisions are well informed by engaging with a wide variety of stakeholders including NGOs, SMEs, and affected rightsholders, and engage these stakeholders early in the policy development process;
> Prevent political finance providing a route to undue influence by introducing a cap on political donations and reducing the national campaign spending limit;
> Implement recommendations from the Ethics and Integrity Commission to expand the scope of the statutory lobbying register, particularly by including in-house lobbyists and special advisers;
> Make all policy consultation responses received public unless there are strong grounds for not doing so.
This blog was co-authored by Tilly Prior (Senior Programme Officer) and Maeve Lane (Senior Research Analyst) from Transparency International UK and Dakota Anton (Research Analyst) from the EIRIS Foundation.
Transparency International UK is the UK’s leading anti-corruption organisation and part of a global coalition sharing one vision: a world in which government, business, civil society and the daily lives of people are free of corruption.
[1] Scotland operates under a separate statutory framework via the Lobbying (Scotland) Act 2016, which mandates a more comprehensive register of controlled communications compared to the current Westminster regime.
[2] For further information on Social LobbyMap scores and how they are calculated, please see the methodology: https://sociallobbymap.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/SLM-Methodology.pdf