My Lords, I apologise to my noble friend if I misunderstood slightly what he was driving at. But it begs the question as to whether the 350 companies that the Minister referred to at the Dispatch Box include some of those companies that my noble friend was arguing were excluded from the legislation. The Minister might want to provide for us a more detailed analysis of how that list of 350 was drawn up so that we can see whether it includes some organisations that we believe are excluded under the legislation.
Amendment 17, which was in the first group, and Amendment 19, which is in this group, are in my name and deal with essentially the same issue. Amendment 19 stems from an unease I harbour about how some lobbying works in practice. I want to make it clear that I understand the vital role lobbying plays within our system of government. What I worry about is how people interpret the word “lobbying”.
Clause 2(3) defines lobbying as “oral or written communications” but there are oral communications and oral communications. This came out during an interview on the “Andrew Marr Show” on 7 October this year. The Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, was asked by Andrew Marr whether he had been lobbied by Lynton Crosby, the Conservative Party strategist, on the issue of tobacco. He replied, after the question had been repeated, that Lynton Crosby “has not intervened”. It was a curious construction of the language. You got the feeling that some wriggling was going on. I want to make it absolutely clear that I have no idea where the truth lies. I am sure that Mr Crosby is a perfectly excellent gentleman; that is not the point that I am making. I am simply drawing on that as an example of how there can be a wriggle on the use of the term.
The answers given by the Prime Minister during that interview reminded me of the answers given by the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Lympne, during the famous Paxman interview. It also brought memories back of the many conversations we had in the Select Committee on Members’ Interests in the 1980s during the course of our inquiry into lobbying nearly 30 years ago, under the chairmanship of the late Sir Geoffrey Johnson-Smith. There was endless discussion on formal as against informal discussion—formal as against informal lobbying—the word in the back of the cab as against the discussion across the table in the department with civil servants or a Minister present; the word on the golf circuit as against the formal response to a consultation.
The issue is where you draw the line. To this day I do not know, and I have asked Ministers over the years where they draw the line and there has always been much ambiguity as to where that line is to be drawn. When is an intervention not lobbying? When is lobbying not an intervention? This is a probing amendment to tease out some guidelines on where that line is to be drawn.