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

Baroness Finn Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, on her success in the Private Members’ Bill ballot. Although the Official Opposition cannot support the Bill in its current form, it is a very interesting Bill which seeks to address one of the most important issues in any free democratic society—transparency.

In the interests of transparency, eyebrows were raised when Peers received an email from Inflect Partners, a strategic communications and public affairs consultancy. The email said:

“I am writing on behalf of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) to share a short briefing and to ask whether you would consider speaking in support of Baroness Hayter’s Lobbying Transparency (In-house Lobbyists) Bill at the Second Reading debate on Friday 3 July”.


There is some irony in a lobbying email being issued to support a Bill on lobbying. Does the Chartered Institute of Public Relations stand to gain from this Bill? Perhaps the noble Baroness can illuminate us.

Although the Bill is very short, its effect is very broad. The noble Baroness is correct that the current registration rules under the 2014 Act cover just a small number of the activities that could be termed lobbying. There are just 240 registered consultant lobbyists in the country. The Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists employs just three staff members in addition to the registrar. The 2014 Act was never meant to be comprehensive. The Bill before us, though it may be tightly drafted, is not targeted. It expands the registration rules to encompass a whole range of communications.

If the Bill becomes law, almost all persons communicating with Ministers or Permanent Secretaries on behalf of their employer, engager or principal, or with the intent of furthering the interests of their employer, engager or principal, will have to register. Yes, many would like to see greater transparency of engagements between stakeholders and Ministers, but that broad and well-intentioned principle would represent a huge administrative burden on business. We are concerned that such a burden would disincentivise businesses, charities and other stakeholders from engaging freely with Ministers.

I hope that we can have a constructive debate today, in Committee and on Report. The principle of transparency is not contested. It is essential that Ministers and departments are transparent in their contact with lobbyists. The previous Government committed to develop a single database to collate and publish departments’ transparency returns. This appears to have been scrapped. Can the Minister tell us why this might be the case?

Our foremost concern is to avoid unintended and unexpected negative consequences for small businesses, charities and stakeholders. We are also interested in the risks to well-intentioned individuals who are simply unaware of the new, broader rules; the capacity for the Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists to handle the rise in registrations; and the issue of the annual registration fee.

On burdens, the broader application of the lobbying register rules will see many more people subject to the burden of registering with the office of the registrar. In some ways, this is not a cumbersome step. The register is now well established and should not be difficult for individuals to use. However, no matter how easy it is to register, this is a new administrative burden. Furthermore, we must not forget that those registered with the UK Office for the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists pay annual fees of £1,000. Nothing in the noble Baroness’s Bill amends Section 22 of the 2014 Act. This means that the £1,000 annual fee will apply to in-house lobbyists just as it applies to consultant lobbyists. Contrast that with how the average UK small business has a profit margin of £70,000 and we see that two members of staff having to register at a total cost of £2,000 is not an insignificant burden for smaller organisations. As we proceed to Committee and Report, we will seek to establish protections for small and medium-sized businesses and other smaller stakeholders.

We want businesses, especially small ones, and other stakeholders to have open channels of regular communication with Ministers. Has the noble Baroness reflected on the interaction between the £1,000 per annum registration fees and the proposed wider rules on stakeholders’ willingness to make representations to Government?

Further to that, I would be grateful if the noble Baroness could confirm one point. Should a Minister, for example, meet a pub landlord on a visit, and that landlord goes on to tell him or her that the Government must cut alcohol duty, reform business rates or abandon Ed Miliband’s obsessive net-zero policy, would the landlord have to register and pay his £1,000 fee? If yes, does the noble Baroness accept that landlords will feel disinclined to give the Minister a piece of their mind? Is that not an obstruction to good government? I accept that this is an unlikely hypothetical scenario, since the Prime Minister and Chancellor, along with many Ministers and government MPs, are banned from their local pubs in protest against the Government’s appalling anti-business policies, but it illustrates my point.

On unintended harms to individuals, I would like to consider another example. Under the Bill, an in-house lobbyist who fails to register within the three-month registration period, whether by a mistake or not, faces a civil penalty of up to £7,500 or an unlimited fine on conviction. Is it reasonable and proportional for a small business owner who may be unaware of these rules to face that? What thought has the noble Baroness given to protections for well-intentioned, upstanding people who fall foul of the rules through ignorance, as they will if we broaden the scope of the law in this way?

On the possible backlogs in registration, what assessment has the noble Baroness made of the capacity of the four people currently in the office of the registrar to cope with the large increases in registrations? As she pointed out, there are just 240 people currently on the register; the EU has more than 17,500 organisations on its register and the Scottish Parliament has 1,642.

Finally, can the noble Baroness tell the House what her view is of the £1,000 annual registration fee? Does she feel that that is reasonable for a small business or charity, simply for allowing the Prime Minister or any other Minister to visit and discuss business?

I hope we can all have a constructive debate on the principles underpinning the Bill, but there are a number of unanswered questions to consider. I look forward to the response of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, and to our further debates at later stages.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.