My Lords, I welcomed the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, goes further and I welcome that even more. In Amendment 81 I go even further. Noble Lords will see that it would introduce a register of lobbying activities. It gives statutory effect to the welcome initiative of the Government in requiring Ministers and Permanent Secretaries to publish on a quarterly basis details of meetings they hold with external organisations. This statutory register would ensure that this practice continues under future Governments. It would also include details of lobbying activity submitted by lobbyists. The public would obtain from this register a clear picture of lobbying activity within any quarter.
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Noble Lords will no doubt recognise the language of my proposed new clause. My approach in framing the clause has been to mirror the provisions in Clause 4 about keeping a register and in Clause 5 about who must make returns and the content of returns. In a later group, Amendment 103 imposes similar criminal sanctions upon failure to make returns to the register. I realise that some noble Lords might think that a trifle draconian but, if we are serious about civil servants and Ministers making accurate returns and they fail to make the return, what is the sanction? Or if they make a false return, what is the sanction? However, there is a sanction against lobbyists.
I also speak to Amendments 82 to 86, 91, 92, 97, 102, 104 and 114, which are all consequential. I mention Amendment 97 in particular because it empowers the registrar to serve an information notice on Ministers, civil servants and political advisers whom he has reason to believe ought to have submitted a return. I can imagine that that might well arise if a lobbyist has submitted a return disclosing a meeting with a Minister or civil servant in which a lobbying activity took place when there is no equivalent return from the civil
servant or Minister. In that situation the registrar would serve an information return upon the offending party and he or she would be obliged within a period specified in the notice to make a return under pain of a criminal sanction.
I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, suggested at Second Reading—that a lobbying register is a more effective approach to the lobbying issue, but such a register should include entries by lobbyists as well as anyone in government. It would provide another form of central database available to the public from which the public could determine the involvement of others in the formulation of policy and in influencing the Government generally. The enforcement powers given to the registrar would make this an effective tool in the search for transparency. Will the Minister tell the House whether the Government considered such a register before introducing the Bill? If not, given that this issue was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lang, has this matter been considered since Second Reading? What has been the outcome of that consideration?