ONE of Britain’s leading think tanks is offering firms privileged access to government policy makers as part of paid-for “sponsorship” programmes.

During an undercover investigation a senior executive with the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) claimed the Blairite organisation was able to provide “the inside track on policy development” from key government figures in return for an annual fee of at least £10,000.

The policy makers he cited included Stewart Wood, an adviser to Gordon Brown, the chancellor, and Tony Grayling, an adviser to David Miliband, the environment secretary.

Matthew Taylor, one of Tony Blair’s strategists, would also be able to “talk about what the prime minister is going to be up to over the next year”.

Meeting a special adviser or civil servant at a private breakfast, dinner or seminar had obvious advantages, said the institute executive: “They are the ones involved more or less on a daily basis, people making policy. They then brief their minister; they’ll write the speech for the minister . . .

“The minister only spends a year or two in each department and then moves somewhere else. How can they be experts on the individual issues?” The institute’s links with the “top table” in government sheds light on the growing influence of think tanks in Whitehall. After a series of scandals involving lobbying firms under new Labour, companies are again finding they may be able to buy privileged access to the corridors of power with its help.

Kevin Bowman, the IPPR’s corporate relationship manager, was keen to impress a Sunday Times reporter posing as a consultant to a fictitious Japanese firm. The firm would be in good company alongside BP, Shell, Barclays and BT if it chose to become a “partner” sponsoring the IPPR, he said.

Bowman boasted that the think tank had recently been contacted by Ruth Kelly after she became cabinet minister for communities and local government. “(She) phoned us up a couple of weeks ago and said, ‘Can you organise a seminar for me because I want to get an idea of what’s happening in local government?’ Because she’s just got a new role . . . that was a good opportunity for her to hold discussions, you know, completely off the record.”

Bowman also told an undercover reporter posing as potential sponsors that private seminars could be arranged with ministers to which a hand-picked audience could be invited. “They might get a minister, Douglas Alexander (the transport secretary) or someone like that, to do a speech on a platform with a few other people . . . You’d have the sponsor’s logo on a banner in the background . . . the full sort of branding opportunity . . .

“It would generally be about 100-150 people, usually invite only, experts on the area, government people, the sort of people they would want to interact with really.”

In taped conversations with the reporter, Bowman outlined the institute’s role: “I guess our purpose . . . (is) to sit between government and business and academics. If they (the bogus firm) are looking at energy policy, we’ll have a huge involvement in that . . . Tony Grayling, who was involved with energy policy over the last seven years at IPPR, has now left and is David Miliband’s adviser on these issues.”

Bowman was also keen to emphasise that the IPPR’s network of contacts was not limited to Blairites but was spreading to the Tories and those close to the chancellor. “Stewart Wood, he’s the economic adviser (at the Treasury). He’s not well known — he teaches at Oxford for his day job — but he was asked to join the council of economic advisers, which is within the Treasury. They’re the main economic advisers to Gordon Brown.

“He’s been put in charge of foreign policy for Gordon Brown, so he’s interested in stuff like India and probably Japanese issues. He’d be a good person to involve in any discussions that we have, because we know him well, you know. We could invite him to drinks. So things like that, that’s how it could work.”

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