The government has called for cuts in public sector PR, in an attempt to curb the amount of money spent on lobbying ministers.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has told his department's quangos to cancel lobbying contracts, arguing that it is wrong that taxpayers’ money is being spent on political lobbying.

"So-called town hall newspapers are already closing down scrutiny from independent local papers,” Pickles said. “Now lobbyists are being used sidestep transparency laws and shadowy figures are peddling more regulation and special favours. Local activism and localism don't need lobbyists. If local politicians want to change the way government operates, their council should send a letter or pick up the phone.”

The Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) said no criticism was being made of the public affairs firms themselves, but that the public bodies who hired them were at fault.

But Francis Ingham, chairman of the Public Relations Consultants Associations described Pickles’ announcement as “ill thought out, ill informed and an unjustified attack on a very important and successful part of the UK Business Services sector”.

He added: “The implication that all these fees are used by public bodies to hire agencies who ‘lobby’ national Government is simply false and shows a blatant lack of understanding of how the public sector uses them.  Agencies provide a wide range of specialist expertise and almost all appointments are made through competitive tendering processes.

“This is an astonishingly authoritarian, centralising act from a party supposedly committed to letting local authorities decide their own priorities.”