Patricia Hewitt

Patricia Hewitt (born 02 December 1948, Canberra) has been the Member of Parliament for Leicester West since 1997. She was appointed as Minister for Small Business and e-Commerce at the Department of Trade and Industry (1999-2001) before becoming Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in 2001. Most recently, she served as Secretary of State for Health from May 2005 – June 2007.

Patricia’s five ways to meet a Minister

In the Dispatches programme ‘Politicians for Hire’, broadcast on 22 March 2010, Dispatches set up a fictional US public affairs company and contacted Hewitt and several senior politicians asking them if they were interested in a position on the advisory board in their London office. Hewitt attended a bogus interview and outlined to the undercover reporter five ways in which corporations could gain access to a serving Minister of State:

(1) Wining and dining

“You know when I was Business Secretary I would cheerfully accept hospitality initiations, for instance, because it was just a really useful way of getting to know business leaders rather better. Gordon is pretty against all of that.”

(2) The think-tank route

“Now the think tank and the seminar route I think is a very good one and will remain a good one and so identifying the right think-tank. Policy Exchange is a good one at the moment, Demos is another good one. And saying ok, does that think tank already have a relationship with Minister X? Can we invite Minister X to give a seminar on this subject? Your client would then sponsor the seminar and you do it via the think-tank. And that’s very useful, because what you get for your sponsorship is basically you sit next to the Minister.”

(3) Sponsor a Party Conference event

“Is a classic one, increasingly crowded for the Conservatives at the moment. A bit un-crowded for Labour last year, it used to be the reverse.”

(4) Direct invitation

“Sometimes you know just a direct invitation to have you know we want to come and see you about X will sometimes work.”

(5) Establish a presence in the Minister’s constituency

“So depending on the company if they’ve got a presence in some part of the country or there’s some link and then that fits with where roughly speaking where a Minister’s constituency is … that can be a more subtle route in … and doesn’t get trapped by the officials.”

Affiliations

• Special Consultant, Alliance Boots (http://www.allianceboots.com/) - International chemist chain
• Non-executive Director, BT (http://www.bt.com/) - Communications company
• Senior Adviser, Cinven (http://www.cinven.com/) - Private equity firm

Publications, Contact, Resources and Notes

Contact

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Resources

• Costello, Miles, "BT snares former minister Patricia Hewitt," Times, 13 March 2008, accessed 25 November 2008.
• Hewitt, Patricia, About Patricia Hewitt, accessed 25 November 2008.
• Ungoed-Thomas, Jon, et al., "Revealed: how minister cashed in on contacts," The Sunday Times, 23 November 2008, accessed 24 November 2008.