Calling our Brit members

[Abbey Marie]

Hi Drummond, Noir, et al:

I was wondering if you had any insight on where to turn for information on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or Non-Financial, Reporting, in the UK. The EU just passed, I believe, a Directive on this. Our daughter is doing research for a Professor on the topic, and asked for some help.

We know that the UK was against the Directive, but I also heard that before it was passed, it was watered-down, so the UK may have relented?

The specific questions are:
1. Which businesses/interest groups in the UK have the most influence on the government regarding CSR? What are their stances?
2. Since the UK already has reporting requirements that go beyond the Directive's, why are they so opposed it? Is it just an anti-EU stance, or is there more to it?
3. What is David Cameron's stance on the Directive? Who in his government is in charge of responding to the Directive? Rafael Baldassarre?

Thanks so much for anything you can provide.
-Abbey

[Drummond]

Hi Drummond, Noir, et al:

I was wondering if you had any insight on where to turn for information on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or Non-Financial, Reporting, in the UK. The EU just passed, I believe, a Directive on this. Our daughter is doing research for a Professor on the topic, and asked for some help.

We know that the UK was against the Directive, but I also heard that before it was passed, it was watered-down, so the UK may have relented?

The specific questions are:
1. Which businesses/interest groups in the UK have the most influence on the government regarding CSR? What are their stances?
2. Since the UK already has reporting requirements that go beyond the Directive's, why are they so opposed it? Is it just an anti-EU stance, or is there more to it?
3. What is David Cameron's stance on the Directive? Who in his government is in charge of responding to the Directive? Rafael Baldassarre?

Thanks so much for anything you can provide.
-Abbey

Hello Abbey.

The questions you ask fall quite a way beyond my, ahem, 'area of expertise' .. I don't usually consider such questions. Still .. I've had a little dig-around via Google, and I think I can help to a certain extent.

There's one big difference in emphasis in your questioning that I think I need to address, and if anything this is the one area where I think I can guide you. Simply, it's this .. I think you have a notion that it's businesses who offer any level of lead on CSR, and that Government is receptive to what they say ??

I don't know if this marks one big difference in our Societies. But, here, you can expect Government to see its role as being a leadership role, the very body of people who are the driving force behind it. This intertwines, these days, with the 'rival' authoritative positions that the EU would ideally like to assert, and the degree to which this interacts with sovereign Governmental powers (.. as in so much else ..).

The Labour Government, being Socialist in outlook, would naturally be most enthusiastic in exerting and maintaining controls, and a 'moral lead' in all this.

See this ...

http://www.bath.ac.uk/management/cri/pubpdf/Research_Reports/16_Bichta.pdf

... which is a study paper from the University of Bath. It's around a decade old. I think you'll find it's a very comprehensive study.

Check out page 54 of the file (P 46 as 'printed') for the EU position on CSR. To the extent that businesses had an input, it was to push to loosen up the regulatory commitment to CSR .. no doubt thinking to fend off the level of compulsion the EU would prefer to exert.

As the report concludes, this tussle between businesses and EU bureaucracy saw businesses win out.

Also see page 62 (P 54 as printed). It says (bearing in mind the document was drafted during Blair's Premiership ..)


As discussed earlier in Chapter 4, the Labour government sees a role for itself in promoting social responsibility across the corporate sector. This role is a ‘facilitative’ one and comprises:

• to raise awareness of the business case for CSR;
• to lend government support to business own initiated activities;
• to promote consensus of common codes of practice at the international level;
• to support the development of a common framework for reporting and labelling.

In the UK, bear in mind that certain swathes of business here fall under the status of 'regulated industries' ... those providing basic social services/necessities, such as water companies, transportation companies, power providing companies (British Gas, Thames Water, PowerGen, Swalec, etc etc). Being regulated, they must adhere to the standards laid down by the regulatory bodies which oversee them.

Anyway ... all this is a 'two way street', in that each side does speak to the other .. HOWEVER .. the leadership and guidance role, from Government to Companies, is a very strong one.

So to this, concerning David Cameron and his views (consider the context, that of the preceding period of attitude-management, and that Cameron was commenting some time AFTER all this had been engineered) ...

http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/Fundraising/article/1118958/superficial-approach-corporate-social-responsibility-thing-past-says-cameron/


Prime Minister tells audience at a Business in the Community event that companies now have a deeper engagement with charities and causes

Prime Minister David Cameron has said companies’ attitudes to corporate responsibility have "changed utterly" in recent years.

Cameron said the "superficial" approach of the past had been replaced by a deeper engagement with charities and causes.

His comments came yesterday during a speech to the charity Business in the Community, in which he criticised people who attack big businesses.

"We’ve got to take on certain snobbish attitudes," said Cameron. "The snobbery that says business has no inherent moral worth like the state does, that it isn’t really to be trusted, that it should stay out of social concerns."

He said companies no longer regarded corporate responsibility as just a way to win people over.

"When this movement began, some of it was quite superficial," he said. "You did get companies practising a kind of moral off-setting – allowing irresponsible things to happen day after day then once a year making a big pay-out to charity to ease their conscience.

"But over the past decade or two corporate responsibility has changed utterly. Today it’s about integrating your values deeply into the soul of your business.

"So Starbucks doesn’t just give millions to charity; it also helps coffee farmers all over the world to boost their incomes.

"BT doesn’t just support charities like ChildLine; it has a great track record in supporting women back into work after maternity leave."

Cameron said corporate responsibility was now about "doing good and doing well out of it".

Successive Governments, I think, have seen themselves as moral arbiters, and have led Companies by the nose to try and make them adopt attitudes said to be socially responsible ones. Labour (Socialist) were especially keen to force that level of leadership on them. So, over years, Labour created a 'moral climate' and forced Companies to act in such a way that they can't see it as being good for their public images to do other than go along with it.

Cameron inherited all that, and as his speech shows, he's run with it. And how ...

As for the EU position, and 'watering down' of regulation, from what I've found, the UK was one of a number of countries that managed this .. Germany was another taking the same stance.

http://www.business-humanrights.org/Documents/eu-non-financial-reporting


In April 2013, the European Commission adopted a proposal to enhance transparency of company reporting on social and environmental issues.

In February 2014, MEPs and the Council reached a compromise on the proposed regulation. The new regulation would require publicly listed European companies with more than 500 employees to disclose policies and risks on human rights, employee-related issues, diversity, and the environment. Official press release announcing the compromise

This new mandatory requirement was welcomed by the European Coalition on Corporate Justice and its members NGOs as a tool for enhanced transparency and accountability. However, the coalition lamented that the scope of the regulation was weakened by member states, including Germany, Poland and the UK.

The European Parliament adopted a version of the proposal in April 2014. See the announcement here. EU member states in the Council are expected to vote on the proposal in the coming weeks.

Typical EU .. 'lamenting' that some Member States had weakened the intended regulatory powers ...

Hope this has been some help, Abbey. As I say, I'm well out of my 'comfort zone' in studying this, so I'm unsure if I've been the help that you might have hoped I'd be.

[Abbey Marie]

Drummond, wow, you are amazing! I couldn't have hoped for a more thoughtful reply. My daughter Amanda and I thank you so much. She is going to look into the links soon.

As for the topic, you know more about it than most people, I'd say.
It seems pretty Socialist to me as well.

Thank you again!
-Abbey

[Drummond]

Drummond, wow, you are amazing! I couldn't have hoped for a more thoughtful reply. My daughter Amanda and I thank you so much. She is going to look into the links soon.

As for the topic, you know more about it than most people, I'd say.
It seems pretty Socialist to me as well.

Thank you again!
-Abbey

Very appreciated !! (.. as is your 'Reputation' comment). Please also thank your daughter for her own thanks - happy to help.

I wasn't at all sure I'd done the subject justice - to some extent I was learning myself as I was wading through the material. That said, though .. it's typical of Governmental attitudes here in the UK (this started by Labour, of course) to think they can actually set out to govern how businesses MUST think and behave. The direction throughout has always been this ... with a form of feedback loop only comparatively recently emerging, because Companies have to think of their public images .. thanks to the social and political climate created for them.

This is one reason why it's dangerous to have a truly Socialist Government in power for any longer than the most minimal of terms - because, while in power, they work to bend social attitudes to a form of their choosing. Their successors have to combat - IF they choose to - the social climate previously engineered.

Trouble is, with a successful grafting of those attitudes, would any such successor take the risk with future electability ? I'm judging that Cameron is too weak to risk it. Hence his speech, as I quoted it.

We badly need another conviction politician such as Lady Thatcher --

[Abbey Marie]

My own research led me to discover that India is already or is planning to soon charge corporations a 2% social responsibility tax. How quickly these things go from voluntary reporting to mandatory reporting to an outright tax.

[Drummond]

My own research led me to discover that India is already or is planning to soon charge corporations a 2% social responsibility tax. How quickly these things go from voluntary reporting to mandatory reporting to an outright tax.

Why am I not surprised ... :rolleyes:

Many - maybe most - countries will continue to ramp up alarm over supposed 'climate change' in the years ahead. It'll be an excuse authorities will rely heavily on to be ever-more stringently controlling of Companies operating within their borders. I'm sure mandatory taxation efforts will prove to be the tip of the iceberg in future.