My Lords, I was a very junior Minister in Northern Ireland and, of course, was being lobbied all the time. Such activity would, of course, be covered by the Bill, except to say that most of the people doing the lobbying were not consultant lobbyists but from a range of organisations. Perhaps I may make a few brief points.
I very much agree with my noble friend Lord Rooker about shadow Ministers. It is clear that any lobbyist worth their salt will pinpoint those who will be of influence, should there be a change of Government after an election, and make a beeline for them. That is an important issue. I also agree with my noble friend about government agencies. There were a large number of government agencies in Northern Ireland, which were a bit closer to government than the ones in England. Nevertheless, the point my noble friend makes still applies—I am quite sure that a lot of lobbying of those government agencies went on, and goes on, which would not be covered by the definition of a Permanent Secretary.
However, I should like to make another general point about civil servants. As I said earlier, although I had lots of meetings and was being lobbied, that activity would be covered because I was there. But of course civil servants are lobbied to secure access to a Minister, and that is a crucial part of the process. They need not be very senior civil servants but be senior enough to say to whoever is doing the lobbying, “Yes, I will get you a meeting with the Minister”. The Minister has to agree to such a meeting but in the way things are that nearly always happens. Civil servants who are not that senior can therefore be quite influential. Indeed, in all my meetings with civil servants during that time and when people lobbied me, I do not think that the Permanent Secretary of one of the two departments I represented was there on more than a handful of occasions. It was all done at a less senior level. I am bound to say that I cannot work out where the cut-off point should be, although there clearly has to be one. One of the considerations should be to include those civil servants who are senior enough to assist in the process of gaining access to a Minister. That might be a helpful way of looking at this issue. Someone said that Permanent Secretaries are ultimately responsible. I would say, “if they know”, because, in the nature of things, so much is going on I do not believe that a Permanent Secretary could possibly know about all the contacts made by lobbyists with more junior civil servants. There is a bit of a problem there.
Lastly, I should like to comment on advisers. I was not senior enough to have an adviser, although the Secretary of State had one who helped all of us. I very much agree with noble Lords who said that political advisers are crucial in the process. They open doors, can be extremely influential and give advice to their Ministers, having been lobbied in turn. I am therefore puzzled. I understand that the Minister has said—we had meetings on this before Second Reading—that transparency is what he is after, but I am puzzled as to why the Government are taking such a narrow view of the way in which the lobbying process works. We are talking about a process that seeks to influence legislation and public policy, and the scope of the Bill should be a bit wider to cover people who lobby in that manner.