Lobbying Transparency (In-house Lobbyists) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I should make it clear at the outset that I am pro-lobbying—how could I not be, given how much I have done in my time? It has been particularly helpful in the Lords. We do not have constituents to inform us of what needs doing, or not doing, by a Government, so it is good that those with a particular interest or knowledge make their way to Westminster, bringing their lived experience and the legitimate needs of their sector, company or beneficiaries to us and into the public forum—into our actual or metaphorical Peers’ Lobby.

We have seen laws be changed for the better by effective lobbying. The NSPCC and children’s charities helped achieve the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. The British Lung Foundation’s work on banning smoking in cars carrying children led to the Smoke-free (Private Vehicles) Regulations 2015. Pressure on Ministers by the Samaritans and others helped create the Online Safety Act 2023. The British Heart Foundation and family groups provided the momentum for the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Act 2019.

Meanwhile, the ABI and other bodies wisely used their access to help rewrite the National Security Act 2023 in order to ensure that the foreign influence registration scheme was fit for purpose. The RAC’s meeting with a Minister about headlight glare resulted in a change of approach to this problem. The Royal Osteoporosis Society will continue to meet Ministers to ensure that they keep their promise to make fracture liaison services available nationwide by the end of the decade.

So lobbying is legitimate and beneficial to how we make our laws, and I support it. It is not always successful, of course. My campaign to increase duty on alcohol seems for ever doomed. You win some, you lose some.

In a democracy, good governance depends on decision-makers hearing from a wide range of voices, but businesses, interest groups, think tanks, trade associations and charities should not depend for their access on whom they happen to know or which conduit they can use to get a hearing. More than that, we should all know who has the ear of government. Legitimate representations should be open and above board, not hidden below the waves. This Bill is about transparency, which is crucial for public trust, as we discussed in our debate yesterday.

There are two sides to lobbying, of course: those doing the lobbying and those being lobbied. Neither’s regime is working properly, although the Ethics and Integrity Commission, which has been tasked by the Prime Minister to improve transparency around lobbying, will consider those being lobbied when it reports next week.

My Bill is about those doing the lobbying and seeing Ministers and Permanent Secretaries to put their valid points of view on legislation, policy or procurement. At the moment, the only organisations that have to register and report are consultant lobbyists, which probably covers around 5% of this country’s lobbying activity. The other 95% is done directly by companies, trade associations, professional bodies, think tanks and charities, using their own personnel rather than outside consultants.

Yet these approaches to government from in-house people are excluded from the need to register under the 2014 Act. They fly under the radar. Say a small pressure group, an SME or a consumer representative wants to talk to Ministers about the safety of a fertiliser, alcohol duty, the use of a weapon, online safety or a local planning issue. Should such a small organisation need outside help to make its case to a Minister, it would find its advisers and itself named on the register.

By contrast, any organisation—such as pharmaceutical companies, drinks trade associations, defence companies, big tech or developers—that uses its own people, whether its public affairs department or its chief executive or chair, to speak to government can see a Minister without any requirement to register or report, and with no obligation to sign up to any lobbying code of conduct. That is an inequality of openness between those making their case to government themselves and those using an outside agency to help.

The public—directly or via MPs, journalists or interested parties—have the right to know who is talking to Ministers about decisions that are about to be taken. Therefore, any organisation seeking to influence government policy or practice, legislation or procurement, should have to register and report. A bit of sunlight will do no one any harm.

We have two options. We can wait until we have another scandal and then rush through legislation or we can grasp the nettle now. This is what lobbyist representatives—the CIPR and the PRCA—want, bringing the hidden 95% of lobbying into the open. Passing this Bill would enable the existing register of consultant lobbyists to become a register of lobbying, no longer just catching the tiny minority operating as consultants.

The Bill would extend the existing register from covering only those lobbying firms to put any organisation that puts its view to a Minister, Permanent Secretary or spad on to the register. This goes no further than other comparative democracies do. It requires openness about normal legal behaviour undertaken by in-house executives. Our UK register lists just under 300 entries. Scotland, by contrast, has 1,500 and Canada has 8,000 because both cover in-house lobbyists—as do most other countries’ registers.

Let us do it now. Let us now wait for a scandal. Any organisation that lobbies should register. It is not difficult. It is the right thing to do. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not know what flatters me most. I think it is the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, moving from Madonna to myself—which I think is the biggest vote of confidence I have ever had from anyone.

I am delighted by those who have come today. I do not know whether I would call the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, one of the “guilty men” for having put through a Bill I think we now agree was perhaps a little too modest. In fact, even the Bill today is being called too modest. The noble Lords, Lord Norton and Lord Pack, and my noble friend Lord Brooke, all called it modest, which is a good start from where we go.

I thank the Minister, my noble friend Lady Anderson. She said this is unfinished business. I am going to take that as a very positive statement that she is promising the Government will do a little more—because what we all know is that it is time for change. I am not going to try to answer all the points she has so nicely dealt with, but it is important to note the breadth of support we have had. The noble Baroness, Lady Helic, also pointed not just to transparency but to the responsibility of lobbying: that it should be in the public interest. The noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, also expressed how transparency itself can enhance trust, which my noble friend Lady Carberry also said.

I think we all agree that lobbying is good and we do not want it to be in any way diminished by this. However, there is issue of sunlight, which I mentioned, and my noble friend Lord Stansgate reminded us that it was Justice Brandeis who first used that phrase. As the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said, this is timely, but we also know what needs to be done. My plea to the Minister is not to delay. My noble friend Lord Brooke mentioned the Covid inquiry, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned Greensill. We cannot wait for another scandal; let us get this right and let us do it quickly.

Issues were raised about cost. I have to say that that is a bit of red herring. I am very sympathetic, having run very small charities, but if you go to a consultant lobbyist, it costs you much more than £1,000 to get their advice. If you happen to be based in Manchester—I do not know why I mentioned Manchester—and you bring three of your people down to meet a Minister, that is going to cost you more than £1,000. So, let us not use this as an excuse for not bringing a bit more sunlight into this.

There are some other issues about administration and determining what is a private conversation. I have to say, I think the example of the cabbie was a bit OTT. What is a private conversation? Is it meeting? That is all covered in the Act now, because if a consultant lobbyist has a brush by or happens to meet someone at a school, a pub or anywhere else, the issue of what counts as a Minister is dealt with in the current law. So perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, ought to be asking, “What exactly did it mean by a meeting?”, because that is the current law. All we are saying is that it is relevant whether it is a consultant lobbyist or the chair of a PLC having a formal conversation with a Minister.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, that we do not want this to have a chilling effect, but we need to know who is talking to Ministers about what. The problem at the moment is that the ministerial declarations are nowhere near detailed enough. So, they may meet a publican, but they do not know whether that meeting is about alcohol pricing, the general age at which you can drink, or whether pubs should stay open until 5 am for a football match. Those are general policy issues, but if a publican saying, “I need something for my pub or brewery”, Ministers need to know whether they are being lobbied, in which case they should have a civil servant there, and they know what they should do. Let us not pretend that this is a new issue.

There is a difference between lobbying and general discussion. The Public Bill Office, when it helped me with writing the Bill, talked me through this. A headteacher meets a Minister and talks about general education. Is that an issue? No. They talk about how they find young people today. Is that an issue? No. If they ask for planning permission to extend their playground, that is lobbying. Ministers know it, and lobbyists know it.

I have left the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, until last. I have to say that I was very disappointed. I was disappointed yesterday, when we had a general discussion about the funding of political parties. Her answer seemed to be, “Don’t interfere with the size of donations given to political parties”. This does not seem a very good approach to these issues. One of her big questions was, “Is £1,000 too much for an organisation?”—

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. I find it rather disappointing that she is conflating today’s debate with a debate we had yesterday on political party funding, when I raised some serious concerns about the asymmetry of the Government’s approach. I did not necessarily want to go any further on the size or otherwise of donations, but I do not think it is relevant to the conversation today and why that was a disappointment.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

The issue is whether we want greater trust in democracy. That is what the Bill is about. The idea that we start putting technical and administrative difficulties—

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness again for giving way. If we are talking about trust in democracy, the point I was making yesterday was that if the Government of the day inflict substantial damage on opposition parties in terms of political party funding, that will call into question trust in democracy.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I disagreed with what the noble Baroness was saying yesterday, but we do not need to go into the details of that. The point I am trying to make is that the Bill is about the core issue of enhancing trust in democracy, rather than constantly being concerned with how to get there, the cost or the administration. It may be too modest a Bill and it may not be the right Bill, but we are talking about enhancing trust in democracy. It is a shame that that attitude of the Official Opposition, whom the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, is speaking on behalf of, is all about the problems and not the great steps forward we could make.

I think that most people who spoke today were in favour of the Bill’s direction of travel, which is that we should not just regulate or register 5% of lobbying, as now, but move towards the other 95%. I think that is what we all want to achieve. I hope my noble friend the Minister will move more speedily than perhaps sometimes happens in government, for understandable reasons, and that we will soon move forward on this. For the moment, I beg to move.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.