CIPR Manifesto

The Chartered Institution of Public Relations (CIPR), is the official body for PR practitioners. Though it is not essential to be a CIPR member to practice PR, being a part of it demonstrates that practitioners follow an ethical code and strive to continually raise standards in public relations. The new CIPR Manifesto aims to create an open debate ahead of the General Election in May 2015. By looking at seven different areas, the CIPR’s aim is to pick out the challenges that lie within these areas for the next UK government to address. By encouraging an informative and open debate, the CIPR is looking to have a public discussion that would eventually inform a set of policies.

The main areas of discussion are: lobbying; the future of corporate governance; independent practitioners and future skills needs; gender pay gap; data protection;  Internet governance and broadband. The CIPR sees each of these areas that could be changed for the better. Alongside that, these areas could be benefitted by public opinion in order to come to a well-agreed solution.

  • Focusing on lobbying, the CIPR wants the government to support the development of high professional standards and accountability. By doing so, it hopes to build the public’s confidence in government.
  • The CIPR is also asking the government to help to create a new corporate culture in the UK, based on wider value creation. The CIPR wants to improve understanding of the importance of relationships in business decision-making.
  • Regarding independent practitioners and future skills needs, the CIPR is calling for the government to allow tax deductibility for any kind of training that is undertaken by the self-employed and allow tax deductibility for any kind of training for small businesses.
  • The gender pay gap has been identified as having an average difference in the pay received by men and women doing similar jobs of £8,483 to the disadvantage of women. As a result, the CIPR calls for the government to tackle gender pay and inequality directly by strengthening the Equal Pay act by ensuring it is applied universally.
  • As it stands, data that is generated via social media is traded with owners of the platforms that users opt into as part of the terms of use. Perhaps controversially, the CIPR is asking government to think beyond the current EU Data Protection Law and lead a national debate about how they can then respond to new and emerging technology, as well as the fast-changing technology market for data.
  • For the use of Internet governance and broadband, the CIPR’s main concern is the future security of internet users and the success in fighting against online criminal activities. The manifesto also seeks to ensure that Internet connections can be made more secure, with more reliable coverage.

Whether or not any changes will be implemented, will depend on the public as well as the next UK government. The areas that have been addressed could certainly use some improvement. The gender pay gap is an issue across many sectors and equality for men and women’s pay would be a welcomed solution.

Read the full manifesto here.