My Lords, I am pleased to see so many noble Lords listed to speak, particularly as they are so experienced and respected—and it is particularly pleasing that they are from all Benches in the House. I look forward to their contributions and keep my fingers crossed that, after all have spoken, although it may not be the totality and there may be some opposition, overall we might have a Lords consensus in support of this Bill, just as we have just heard consensus across the House in support of the Bill proposed by my noble friend Lord Grocott.
Lobbying is an essential feature of good governance. In theory, it leads to better decision-making and ensures that different interests have a voice. In a liberal democracy, everyone has an ability to lobby; it is an important right. The concerns stem from what happens in practice in the context of the UK’s estimated £2 billion commercial lobbying industry, most of which is spent by big business. The UK has the third biggest lobbying industry after Washington and Brussels. As profit-making entities, it is entirely rational for companies to lobby, whether against a threat to business from government—the sugar tax is a very good recent example of that—or because government is providing an opportunity for profits, such as the opening up of the £116 billion NHS budget, which is a big opportunity for businesses if they can get in there. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, and companies should be allowed to seek to be heard by government, but those of us who participate in Parliament and the public at large should be allowed to know who is approached, what is said and what influence is brought to bear. The present legislation of this country does not permit that and, as a consequence, much is happening that we should know about that we do not know about. This is not democratic; there is a public interest in seeing all of it and opening it up to public scrutiny.
I shall come later to why there is now an even more urgent and pressing need for such transparency as the UK negotiates its departure from the European Union. I thank the following for their support in helping to bring this Bill to the House. First, I thank my noble friend Lady Hayter, who has encouraged me greatly. Secondly, I thank Tamasin Cave of the NGO Spinwatch and Alexandra Runswick of Unlock Democracy, who have campaigned on this issue for many years and helped to draft the Bill before us. I thank, too, Jake Vaughan in the Public Bill Office for his great assistance, and the Lords Library for its briefing and research for me. I also thank Alison White, the current Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists, for the time she has given me. As one would expect, as an impeccable civil servant, she expressed no view on the Bill, but she has offered insights as the registrar that have been helpful, and she has endeavoured, wherever she could, to answer my questions. In particular, the House will be grateful to
know that she has procured an IT system that can be customised easily to accommodate the kind of changes that this Bill proposes.
I have also met representatives of the Association of Professional Political Consultants—APPC—who have their concerns about the degree of openness required, particularly the financial aspects, and the record-keeping required. Overall, however, they have indicated they could support 80% of the Bill and would particularly welcome the extension of registration to in-house lobbyists. I invited them to consider submitting draft amendments through other Peers. I made the same offer to the National Council for Voluntary Organisations—NCVO—which has circulated a briefing expressing concerns over definitions, and that this Bill would burden it administratively. Let us be straight about this: there will be some extra work, but it will not be nearly as much as some people are making out.
I come from a background of lobbying and campaigning—first, as a trade unionist, then as an adviser to several commercial businesses, and even for a period as a consultant to a large multinational, Accenture. Also, for many years and to date, I have been a supporter of several charities that campaign for better public health policies, particularly relating to alcohol. I draw my attention to my interests in the register. In all those capacities, I have kept a record of who I was meeting, with what purpose and the expenditure involved—I can go back 40 years and produce a diary showing that—and I knew when I was lobbying and when I was not. Lobbyists in all the organisations covered by the Bill are in no different position from that I have experienced throughout my working life. They keep such records already. This Bill simply requires a digest of that information to be transposed on to an IT system and lodged, on a fairly simple model on which we are doing some work.
If people accept the case and need for more transparency—and a majority do, including many lobbyists—it can be done. Many businesses already do it to this extent. Why can multinationals comply with greater transparency in overseas jurisdictions, such as Brussels, Canada and the USA, but are against it when it comes to the UK? Why do the Government cave in to such opposition when other Governments in other countries can produce acceptable systems?
The last time that this topic, transparency in lobbying, was discussed in this House, it took a back seat to what popularly became known as the “gagging Bill”, which was a surprise and unwelcome attack by the Government on the charity sector. As a consequence, Part 1 of the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014 was given neither the time nor the attention that it deserved. This Bill seeks to remedy that.
I spoke in yesterday’s debate on why public scrutiny of professional lobbying matters, in cols. 1156 to 1158 of Hansard. I shall not repeat those arguments again today. Far from being the,
“next big scandal waiting to happen”,
as David Cameron described lobbying in 2010, it is the scandal that never goes away. No party is immune, and with every lobbying scandal public trust in politics is eroded. We must seek to bring that to an end. The
Government were warned that the incredibly narrow lobbying register that they introduced last year would make no difference to this feeling of exclusion from politics. When it comes to seeing who is influencing decision-makers and for what, we—and I include parliamentarians in this—are still in the dark. The current register has been in operation for 18 months, and it has failed abysmally. Three-quarters of the industry working in-house are exempt; of the consultant lobbyists covered, just 136 firms are signed up, a long way from the 700-plus registrants that the Government anticipated when pushing the Bill through. In the last quarter, one-third of the UK’s registrants are effectively blank submissions, with no clients having met the very high bar that triggers registration. There is no requirement in current law to provide details of whom they have met in government, nor whom they are seeking to influence. It is little wonder that in the past six months the register has been viewed by the public a total of 363 times, which is an average of just two people visiting the website a day. For this, the system has so far cost over half a million pounds, with annual costs just shy of £300,000, only half of which is being recouped from the industry in registration fees, which currently stand at £1,000 per firm per year. There can be no doubt that the current register is a very expensive exercise that serves no one at all.
We need to sweep away this failed model and replace it with a genuine register of lobbyists. This Bill aims to do just that. The register of lobbyists which I am proposing conforms to international principles, as set out by the OECD. It follows the recommendations of two Select Committees of this Parliament. It improves on the Scottish Government’s Lobbying (Scotland) Act, which received Royal Assent just four months ago. It cannot be right that, in the near future, lobbyists in Scotland, which has an active but tiny industry by comparison with here, must disclose more about their dealings at Holyrood than their colleagues here in Westminster.
I turn now to the Bill. Clause 1 does not differ greatly from the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014. The register will be administered and enforced by an independent registrar who will establish and maintain a register of lobbyists. However, I am proposing that the registrar prepares and issues a code of conduct, replacing the confusing array of voluntary codes which lobbyists currently sign up to and which do not guarantee standards of behaviour. The new lobbyists register would also be publicly funded, as is the case around the world. Lobbying is a democratic right and there must be no financial barrier to participation, especially if the register covers all lobbyists, as the Bill proposes.
Clause 2 deals with the definition of lobbyist and ensures that all paid lobbyists—both in-house and consultant lobbyists—sign up, closing the biggest loophole in the existing register. It also takes account of the real targets of most lobbying activity by requiring lobbyists to register after lobbying Members of either House, or individuals working in government departments, agencies and regulators. Clause 3 deals explicitly with exemptions, which include a constituent communicating with their
MP. Small businesses and small charities would also be exempt under Clause 4, on the lines of the Irish register.
There are two key differences with the 2014 Act in Clause 5, which is concerned with the information to be provided on registration. First is that the names of the individuals actually lobbying are declared, as well as any recent public post they have held, to guard against perceptions of privileged access and cronyism. Second is that lobbyists make public whom they are lobbying—the name of any government department or other government institution—and the subject matter of the lobbying activity. Such information on lobbyists’ interaction with Government is vital for the register to be meaningful. It is totally absent from the current one.
Under Clause 6, which concerns quarterly reporting, lobbyists would also be required to disclose a good-faith estimate of how much money had been spent on the lobbying activity, rounded to the nearest £10,000. This would provide an indication of the scale of an organisation’s lobbying activity. I draw noble Lords’ attention to the fact that many lobbyists already routinely disclose their expenditure on both the EU register and the US register. Why should that information not be made public here? Clause 7 covers a code of conduct and Clauses 8 and 9 deal with breaches and sanctions. Finally, Clause 11 calls for the repeal of Part 1 of the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014, the Government’s doomed attempt to shine a light on what happens in lobbying.
The Government had sufficient warning that their register would fail. Noble Lords from both sides of this House repeatedly sounded the alarm in previous debates. “Fundamentally flawed”;
“introduce a new layer of regulation for no obvious public benefit … based on a lack of understanding of how lobbying actually works”;—[Official Report, 22/10/13; col. 929.]
“Just about everyone considers this to be a non-register”.—[Official Report, 22/10/13; col. 897.]
These are just some of the phrases that I picked from the debates at Second Reading and later stages of consideration of the Bill. The best thing we can say about the existing legislation is that it was a false start. It leaves us where we are, but we find ourselves today in a wholly different landscape. The UK’s withdrawal from the EU, however, only adds urgency to the case for genuine transparency in lobbying. We are about to witness a lobbying bonanza, as the Times put it last month, thanks to Brexit. According to what the lobbyists are saying, it presents business with opportunities to be seized. Big-name agencies and law firms, both here and in Washington, have set up dedicated Brexit units to make their corporate clients’ demands known to Government, with promises to put them in touch with the top influencers in the Brexit process. The message from lobbyists is to get in quick and shape discussions as early as possible. I fear they have been quicker off the mark than we parliamentarians. I fear that we will know very little of their interactions with Government before the concrete is set. This week, both Houses have been expressing their frustrations, fear and anger over their seeming exclusion from what is happening
on Brexit, but there are no such cries coming from the lobbying industry: quite the reverse, as I have just stated.
In her very first speech, the new Prime Minister pledged that her Government,
“will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few”,
but by those of the public. I do not doubt her sincerity when she told the country that she will,
“think not of the powerful, but you”,
and that she will,
“listen not to the mighty, but to you”.
If the Government are prepared to embrace this modest Private Member’s Bill, that would be a fair indication that those words are going to be put into reality. I beg to move.
12.26 pm