David Lammy Shouldn’t Have Given a Spin Doctor for Planetary Death a Plum Foreign Office Job

Last year, when UN Secretary General António Guterres said PR firms were “acting as enablers to planetary destruction” by working for fossil fuel clients, he didn’t name WPP specifically. But they were the main company he was talking about. The advertising behemoth has more clients in the oil industry than any rival.

Guterres, being a diplomat, uses mild language. In my opinion, WPP is the world’s leading spin doctor for planetary death.

And so I was surprised when I checked in on who David Lammy had appointed to the Foreign Office supervisory board, to see WPP’s recent UK President Karen Blackett is now one of the four non-executive directors – as I revealed last week over on Democracy for Sale.

The supervisory board provides “strategic direction,” and “oversight” for the department. Adverts for the roles say they are “significant contributors to both the operational and strategic leadership of the department. Their primary objective is to bring independent advice, support and challenge… helping to shape the department’s work.”

In February, lawyers for campaign group Badvertising and others submitted a complaint about WPP to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, arguing it was breaching its international guidelines on corporate responsibility. Its work for a number of fossil fuel and pollution intensive corporations, the lawyers said, “directly increases demand for carbon intensive products and undermines global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.

Why is that an organisation whose recently departed UK boss you’d want overseeing British foreign policy? Blackett spent 29 years working for WPP – three decades as a spin doctor at an advertising behemoth which represents some of the most destructive corporations on the planet. How can her advice possibly be independent? How can the perspectives and viewpoints of clients not have imprinted on her?

As the Badvertising website says, “for every rights-abusing, climate-wrecking corporation, there’s an advertising agency working hard to clean up their public image. And no one does this better than the world’s biggest ad firm, WPP”.

Last month, climate activists occupied WPP’s London headquarters, demanding it cut ties with clients including Shell, BP, Total, ExxonMobil, Drax and Saudi Aramco.

(In its 2023 annual report, WPP said it does “not to take on any client work, including lobbying, designed to frustrate the objectives of the Paris Agreement” – a claim that experts in the field refute.)

This month, over 100 organisations across the advertising and media sector signed a letter to the government backing a ban on fossil fuel industry advertising and sponsorship – and the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights and climate change also called for such ban.

Last week MPs debated a public petition launched by Chris Packham and signed by 110,000 people demanding such a ban. The argument is simple: fossil fuel adverts and sponsorships exist to persuade us to buy more of the stuff at a time when we have to rapidly switch to buying none. Just as the government has banned tobacco advertising and sponsorship, it should do the same for coal, oil and gas. This seems like sound logic. But just weeks before the debate, the government gave a top fossil fuel advertiser a plumb job overseeing foreign policy.

Non-executive directors “also have an open invitation to attend monthly meetings of the FCDO’s management board and support specific pieces of departmental work,”

Alongside adverts, WPP also lobbies for clients. This means that David Lammy has appointed someone who was, until a year ago, the UK president of a major corporate lobbying firm to have a direct say in the work of the foreign office. Couldn’t he think of someone else to do the job?

There’s an obviously eyebrow raising detail in the story. Blackett gave Lammy’s office £5,000 before the last election. Now he’s given her a role which pays £15-20,000 for 20 days work a year. And which gives influence at the centre of power – a valuable commodity to anyone looking to build up a portfolio of corporate directorships.

Indeed, the two of them have collaborated before – when he was in opposition, Lammy was regularly paid thousands of pounds by big corporations to give lectures on racial equality. Blackett was on the same speaker circuit, and they co-founded the Black Equity Organisation together in 2022.

When I asked the Foreign Office about her appointment, they said that it was “part of a fair and open public recruitment campaign which fully adhered to the governance code on public appointments, including due diligence… The panel, comprised of FCDO officials and independent members, judged her appointable to the role.”

Unusually, they followed up to add that she “has extensive experience in the government sector, as a former non-executive director of the cabinet office,” and various other appointments.

These are roles she held while she was the UK president of a major lobbying firm – only highlighting quite how riddled the British state is with this rot.

Blackett herself didn’t get back to my request for comment.

For me, the whiff of cronyism in this appointment is just one olfactory note within the overwhelming stench of smoke from the planet burning. One of Britain’s major contributions to global climate change is the fact that both Shell and BP – two of the world’s six oil supermajors – are based here.

Both companies have historically got hefty support for their international activities from the Foreign Office. If we’re going to tackle climate breakdown, we need to stop that. Is the recently departed president of a company which made a fortune as spin doctor for both firms really an appropriate person to oversee Foreign Office activities? Obviously not.