Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Hardie and Lord Martin of Springburn

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hardie]

I support this amendment, and I hope that the Minister will see his way to coming forward with an amendment on Report to give effect to this. This may well not only meet the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, but also the suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, at Second Reading that an easier and perhaps more effective approach to lobbying issues might be to require the person in government who is lobbied by discernible commercial interests to declare that in a lobbying register. That would perhaps go slightly further than the amendment, but I think the amendment meets the concerns expressed then. The amendment would have the added advantage that it would enshrine in statute this admirable initiative taken by the Government so that it would apply not just to this Government on a voluntary basis, but to all future Governments so that Ministers would be obliged to disclose their activities and they would appear alongside the details in the register.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, I am slightly worried about the speed which is being talked about by the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Tyler. I have no objection to getting up-to-date information but, if I understand correctly, we are talking about the information going out the following day. There have to be security implications. When I held of the office of Speaker, I was warned that there are fixated individuals who watch, stalk, make a pest of themselves and can be even more dangerous than that. The information would not only show up who the Minister was meeting but could well show up the venue, the place where the Minister was meeting. If it showed on a regular basis over a number of weeks that a meeting was taking place at a certain venue—let us say that the Minister by preference wanted to meet in his or her native city and said, “Make it a Friday at my constituency central office”—it could throw up a pattern of where the Minister was every Friday or every Monday for that matter, before they moved down to Westminster. I put that in as a word of caution. If the information says that the Minister met a representative from BT or Centrica, I would not be too unhappy, but if it showed a Minister meeting at a certain venue, I would worry about that.