CBI: so-called broad church of membership begins to flee

The voice of British industry is turning into a whisper. Members of the CBI are bailing out, following allegations of sexual assaults at the business lobby group. On Friday, household names including car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover, retailer John Lewis and FTSE 100 insurer Aviva joined the exodus.

The loss of members and access to senior government figures has thrown doubt on the CBI’s very survival. That, in turn, raises questions over who would lose out from any curtailment of its lobbying efforts. The CBI says it speaks for more than 190,000 businesses. Yet the vast majority of these are members of associations which are themselves members of the CBI. The largest is the National Farmers Union, with 46,000 members. The CBI declines to say how many direct members it has. An oft-cited number of 1,500 is out of date, it says.

Lex’s efforts only managed to identify 32 associations representing 169,000 individual businesses. The task is complicated further by the fact that some of CBI’s member associations also offer their own association memberships. Building industry representative the Construction Products Association for example has 121 direct members. It has 40 associations that are members as well. These too must be included in the CBI’s headline figure.

A clue to the number of direct members might be found in the companies that form the CBI council, the main governance body. This list comprises some 700 companies. It reads like a Who’s Who of big business, from top FTSE companies to US big tech.

This core is probably responsible for the bulk of the £20mn or so annually that the CBI collects in subscription revenues. One small association member of the CBI revealed it pays just £9,000 annually. That allows them to attend a couple of panels.

Claims that the CBI offers a broad voice for British business do not entirely stack up. Yet reconciling the views of a large, diverse membership is hard. The CBI — or any successor organisation — will continue to face complaints about restricted access to the corridors of power.