My Lords, I will be very interested to see whether anyone reports the words of the noble Lord, Lord Martin, about the Press Gallery.
I rise to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, because he makes a very important point—I am surprised that it has not come up more in our discussions on the Bill—and that is this point about a kitemark for lobbying firms. Lobbying has always been a contentious activity. When I was writing about lobbying in the 1980s I made the point then that quite often the problem is not in the relationship between the lobbyist and the parliamentarian. Parliamentarians know perfectly well when they are being lobbied and essentially where it is coming from and can assess what is happening; if you like, they know the quality of the lobbying. The real problem, I argued, was between the client and the lobbyist, because clients would not necessarily know the quality of the firms they were employing to make representations. Lobbying firms are very good at making grand claims for their success rates.
Therefore, there is an issue of lobbying firms wanting to portray themselves in a certain way. My concern here is the one made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours: you will get firms on the register using that to promote their interests to potential clients—putting on the notepaper something such as “Registered lobbyist, regulated by the Registrar of Lobbying Companies”, as a way of giving themselves the seal of approval. I fully endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is trying to do in his amendment but I think that it raises that broader issue which he has touched on and which we need to be very much aware of. I am surprised that we have not considered that to a greater extent. It is just one of the problems if you go down this particular route of having a formal register, especially if there is no code attached to it.