My Lords, Amendment 3, in my name and that of my noble friend, is grouped with the amendment just moved by the noble and learned Lord. As has already been made very clear this afternoon, the key issue is not the role, title or job description of the people who take part in the activity of lobbying but the activity itself. That is absolutely critical. I have a lot of sympathy with my noble friend Lord Norton, who, in his usual way, has put his finger right on that point. That is why I thought that it was extremely important to have the statement from my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness a few minutes ago about the nature, character, efficiency and accuracy of the register of meetings with those who are taking decisions, or making proposals to Parliament, on behalf of the Government.
I should say in parentheses, in welcoming back my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that way back at Second Reading, let alone in Committee, he expressed a lot of interest in the proposals that we were making from these Benches about improving the status of the record of meetings that was introduced for the first
time—for which the Government should get credit—in the past few years. As I said in that earlier debate, I am not so worried about who the lobbyists are but am very worried that we know who they lobby, what they lobby about and when. The very full statement made by my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness a few minutes ago goes a very long way to meeting that anxiety. We have made it clear at every stage of the Bill that, for us, that is the core issue. The proactive publication of data on ministerial meetings by the Government makes a potentially huge difference. That is what transparency should be all about.
We also believe it is important that that record should indicate when the meeting with in-house lobbyists takes place. Whether they are the managing director of a whisky firm, or a lowly employee of any other firm, it is the subject matter of the meeting, when it happened and with whom that is of considerable importance. I agree with my noble and learned friend and I am delighted that the House agreed too, a few minutes ago, that simply extending the register into a sort of enormous directory, like a telephone directory, with every lobbyist in the land, whether from a church, charity or voluntary organisation, would not really seem to be anything more than disguising the wood for the trees.
Amendment 3 deals very specifically, and only, with the issue of special advisers. Many in your Lordships’ House have had enormous responsibility in the Civil Service. What is unusual about a special adviser is that he or she of course is not responsible to the head of the department: he or she is not a full-time employed member of the Civil Service, and their first loyalty and responsibility is to the political master for whom they work. The special adviser’s responsibility is to the Secretary of State, or other ministerial politician, and his or her relationship is with them. It is therefore our view that this is the one major exception that should be tackled, either in this Bill or in some other way, because these are special people—special advisers are, by definition, outwith the normal hierarchy of responsibility to the Permanent Secretary in the department.
The principle in the Bill is that if the consultant gains access to or influences a Minister on behalf of a client, the public should know who they and their clients are. However, anyone who has been in this building for any length of time or who has lobbied knows perfectly well that influencing a Minister does not necessarily mean seeing them yourself. There is sometimes an even better way: to meet the Minister’s special adviser. Spads have a rather unfair bad reputation in the press. Many will remember Clare Short’s description of them as living “in the dark”. I think that was about a particularly period in the previous Government, perhaps, and it may not be appropriate for all periods of recent history. That epithet then led to a thought-provoking analysis of the role of special advisers in a book of the same name by the respected academic Dr Andrew Blick. In my limited experience of being on the Government side of the House in the past three years and therefore having spads in my own party, it does not feel as though many now live in the dark. We see them all the time. They are helpful, they are influential; in many cases persuading a spad is the first step to persuading a Minister.
I know that this is also part of their job: to meet outside groups. It is very proper and very effective—a proper role that they should undertake. Perhaps it is a better one than a civil servant in the normal hierarchy. Ministers have only a certain amount of time and sometimes it is the right judgment to ask a senior adviser to see someone first, sound them out and explain the Government’s thinking—there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, these meetings with outside groups are important and details of them, like the ministerial meetings which were so fully referred to earlier, should be transparent.
The first step we could take today to make that point in this House is to say that in this Bill those consultants who lobby spads should have to register, just as if they were meeting Ministers. It would then follow, of course, that although this is outside the immediate scope of the Bill, for this to be meaningful spads would also need to publish all their meetings with all lobbyists, whether they be consultant lobbyists or in-house, just as Ministers do. I very much hope that when we look in detail at the record of meetings in future to see how these can be improved and made even more influential and transparent, my noble friends on the Front Bench will acknowledge that this would be an important step to take.
This is not in any way intended to malign spads or imply that anything they do is wrong. It is the opposite. It says that what they do is useful and, on many occasions, necessary, but keeping any aspect of it hidden feeds a largely unnecessary suspicion that they are up to no good. I referred at earlier stages of the Bill to the fact that two of the big lobbying scandals in this Parliament have involved close advisers to Ministers rather than Ministers themselves, and that resignations resulted.
For example, the Murdoch empire recognised these facts of life very early on. We should too. Both scandals would probably never have got to this stage had encounters between close ministerial advisers and outside groups been a matter of public record. It is therefore as much in the Government’s interests as in the public interest—surely the two should fit hand in glove anyway—for this information to be freely available. I quoted before and I shall quote again. The Prime Minister memorably said:
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant”.
I agree.
4.15 pm