This year’s party conferences showed where CSR sits in the political spectrum. The answer: depressingly absent. In his regular Briefing column, Roger Cowe examines what drives the political and press agendas, and asks what companies must do to make themselves heard.
Observing the political party conference season this year, it is easy to see why businesses find it so difficult to get coverage of initiatives in corporate responsibility and sustainability. By and large, politicians set the news media agenda. And the party conferences demonstrated with harsh clarity that these issues are barely on the agendas of the major parties.
It was as though Johannesburg had never happened, even though the prime minister and others who were there barely had chance to wash the South African dust out of their hair before heading off to the seaside. The Cabinet member in charge of sustainable development, Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett, devoted her slot at the podium to rural affairs rather than world affairs.
Labour did devote a day to industrial and economic affairs, including a major speech by the secretary of state for trade and industry, Patricia Hewitt. That was rather better than the Lib Dems, whose contribution was to suggest the DTI should be done away with. But Ms Hewitt did not rate a mention in the next day’s papers, even in the Financial Times. Coverage was dominated by the Brown/Blair battle over the euro referendum and Labour’s woes over the Private Finance Initiative. Quite right too, in the light of the trade and industry secretary’s speech. She rattled through the government’s achievements on the minimum wage, maternity pay and flexible working, promised to avoid regulation which stifles new business, and had a swipe at the European Union in the context of agricultural subsidies and fair trade rules. It would be a foolish news editor who devoted much space to all that, although the pay-off line is not a bad slogan for CSR: “Equality. Opportunity. Responsibility. At home and abroad.”
The media, politicians, citizens and businesses are locked in a sterile embrace here, which only politicians can break. Political leaders wait for the focus groups and opinion polls to register sustainability and corporate responsibility higher up voters’ priorities. But these will only be higher priorities if politicians demonstrate leadership and force the issues on to the agenda. The media are driven largely by politicians’ agendas, although editors could also demonstrate some leadership here by devoting more coverage to these issues, challenging politicians to respond as well as helping to raise public awareness.
Business, meanwhile, has little chance of being heard on these matters unless there is a clear focus for coverage – preferably a controversy.
Even then, it remains hard to attract attention. One of the best stories of the past couple of months emerged in a letter to the Guardian from a curious coalition opposed to the government’s relaxed stance on recycling electrical and electronic goods.
It was signed by Sony UK’s managing director Steve Dowdle, on behalf of European, American and Japanese manufacturers – and Friends of the Earth. It criticised the government for backsliding on the “polluter pays” principle, concluding: “We urge the government to accept the will of the European Parliament and the large majority of other member states and accept that individual producer responsibility is the only true policy that represents a sustainable future.”
It got a prominent position on the letters page, but even then this story was not exactly picked up enthusiastically elsewhere. It does show how to get coverage, however. Be controversial, preferably by attacking the government. How about a CBI demand that government takes sustainability and corporate responsibility more seriously? That would get the news editors’ attention.
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