My Lords, in moving Amendment 88, I will also speak to Amendment 90. The Bill as it stands sets out a series of offences under Clause 12. The offences include “inaccurate or incomplete” registration and failing,
“to submit an information return under section 5”.
The Bill then goes on to propose penalties in the form of fines. What the Bill does not do at this stage is set out the arrangements for removal from the register, which is what my amendment is intended to deal with. Under the heading “Guidance”, Clause 21 states:
“The Registrar may give guidance about how the Registrar proposes to exercise the functions under this Part”.
Under Clause 21(2)(c), it is proposed that the guidance may indicate,
“the circumstances in which the Registrar would … remove a person’s entry from the register”.
My amendment flags up what I believe these circumstances should be.
The first circumstance is bringing Parliament into disrepute. I recognise that the professional associations have their own codes of conduct, but their codes are not written by Parliament—they are written by their legal advisers and approved, I presume, by their members. Parliament, in conditions of a statutory register, although not included in the Bill, needs to seek protection against being itself brought into disrepute through the actions of lobbyists who are not subject to a code. We will all be aware of the well documented and publicised scandals of recent years and that a small minority of lobbyists can abuse their relationships with Members of Parliament. The same applies with civil servants: if a lobbying operation is found to have compromised the integrity or independence of a civil servant, it is not just the civil servant who is necessarily at fault; a heavy burden of blame inevitably falls on the lobbyist. We need to be sure that the lobbyist concerned loses his or her official seal of approval, which is effectively what registration provides.
As to the wider issue of offences under Clause 12, there can be no circumstances in which a lobbyist who commits an offence under this clause should be allowed to remain on the register. We need more than guidance at this stage. We need to place firmly and clearly in the Bill our view as Parliament on what the circumstances for deregistration are. I beg to move.