Lobbying (Transparency) Bill [HL]

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Friday 9th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Brooke for introducing this Bill. I agree entirely with him that lobbying is part and parcel of politics and a legitimate and necessary part of any democratic process. I frequently try to persuade Governments of the importance of law, civil liberties and human rights and then Governments often do not listen, but try to persuade me that, for example, bringing back grammar schools might be a good thing. Sometimes we are successful in our persuasions, and sometimes we are not.

However, what we are talking about today moves beyond advocacy. In 2006—10 years ago now—I chaired the Power inquiry, which looked at British democracy and why there was so much disillusionment with politics. It was something I did for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. I had a cross-party body of people working with me. The thing that really concerned the general public was access to the powerful and to those in government that somehow seemed to give special privilege to the few in ways that the general public often felt were detrimental to their own interests. Their concern was not about charities or NGOs lobbying. It was about the power of corporates and big business to affect policy or to reduce the effectiveness of policies in order to improve their financial interests and profitability. There was a strong sense among the general public that this had increased enormously with globalisation. This business of the corporates floating above Governments and wielding this invisible power was repeated to us time and again. One has only to look at the ugliness of the corporate opposition to Obamacare in the United States—if we are embarrassed to look at things closer to home—which showed how big business, from pharmaceuticals to insurance companies, undermined a socially vital attempt to alleviate misery among a huge part of the American population. We know this is a direction of travel that we have to be very careful about. We are seeing an increase in lobbying by the minute. The warning about what is going to follow the Brexit referendum is something that we should have at the forefront of our minds.

The purchase that neoliberal economics now has on politics everywhere in the world speaks to the power of business and banking to influence the very ideas that underpin globalisation. It is now a mantra: small state, privatisation, outsourcing, low taxes, flexible work and disempowered trade unions. Those ideas have fed not just into Governments and political parties but into the World Bank and the IMF. Even my own party swallowed that pill—or, if you like, drank the Kool-Aid—back in the 1990s. This has involved an unpicking of the liberal social consensus that was so much a part of the aftermath of World War II, making sure that citizens had protections and rights. We have seen the permeation of those ideas into government, often through think tanks of the left, right and centre, which were penetrated by lobbyists and by the power of money.

The corporates know the power of language. They do not talk about “lobbying”; they do it through their public relations departments or public affairs units. They use political consultancy firms or professional public affairs agencies. They have learned the negative force of the word “lobbying”. When you hear the word “consultancy”, run for cover, because it usually means there is lobbying lurking there in the background. The professional lobbying industry, as my noble friend Lord Brooke has said, is worth billions of pounds. Businesses spend these sums because it is worth it to maximise their profits.

I often wondered back in those days why we even contemplated the business of mega-casinos, which are basically a great cover for crime, as anyone like myself who is a criminal lawyer knows; they are a magnet for criminal activity. Why do Governments get involved in mad computerisation programmes that cost a fortune and then go belly up, if it is not that they have had their ear bent with notions that do not deliver? Why privatise prisons or security in prisons? Why is there a stealthy movement by the Government to privatise so many aspects of health delivery? Why the pushing of the concept of choice as though that is what we as citizens should want, when in fact we know that it is actually also very valuable to corporate interests?

What the public wanted, and they said it very clearly, was transparency. We recommended something that comes closer to what the noble Lord, Lord Norton, is describing. We said that there should be a register of contacts, but not a register of the lobbying organisations done on a voluntary basis; what we were asking for was a proper record by Ministers, their special advisers and their officials, registering the contacts that had been made that were affecting policy, exactly in the way that the noble Lord has described. What one wants to know and see is where the influence has outcomes. That should be made public, as was suggested, by having it online so that people can see what the contacts have been.

The burden should fall on Ministers. I have heard the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, say what a burden it would be on the world of business for people to have to register all their contacts, but the suggestion has been made that it comes very easily to government officials and civil servants to make a note of the contacts that they have. It might have been very helpful during that business of the Murdoch contacts with the special adviser to the Secretary of State for culture and media at the time, Jeremy Hunt, when the Murdoch empire was trying to expand its remit with regard to Sky. We might have known a little more about that, rather than having to learn about it through investigative journalism. When the Power report was published, we were calling for that public statutory register to exist, setting out what contacts had been made and how they might have impacted on policy.

The other concern was about the business of the revolving door, which the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, described very powerfully in his speech. We have seen it recently. I fear that no political party has been untainted by it. In the past 25 to 30 years, we saw it originally with Mr Hamilton and his brown envelopes and Fayed, then with the business of Jonathan Aitken and Saudis. Then it moved on and, unfortunately, we saw it in relation to Labour in government. It is always those who are in government who become most vulnerable to the business of lobbying. They are enticed by the idea of moving out of government and Cabinet into highly paid jobs which allow them to use their little phone book and contacts. One minute you are on one side of a desk dealing with the privatisation of prisons; a few months later you are on the other side of the desk working for a security company. You have only to be in the Ministry of Defence five minutes to be confident that you can be on the board of an arms company as soon as you are out of government. You have only to be Secretary of State for Health for five minutes and you can look forward to a job in pharmaceuticals or private health if that is what you want.

We know how this works. I suggest that having lobbying on an informal basis is not good enough. I fear that we have seen an erosion of ethics and in the consideration of what is right and proper after being in government. There should be a statutory basis for how long should pass before someone takes a job in the private sector after they have been in government.

Only two days ago, there was a very interesting piece in the Guardian about corporate lobbying in relation to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which was a trade treaty but would have meant the grant of new legal rights to corporations. It would have had huge impact on our sovereignty. If Brexiteers are concerned about anything, they should put their minds to some of these big trading agreements, which override national laws and prevent legislation limiting corporate activities. These treaties often involve negating planning laws or laws to reduce the size of overmighty banks, for example. Although TTIP seems to have fallen by the wayside as a result of public outcry, it is now being replaced by a comprehensive economic and trade agreement, in which no doubt we will be invited to take part. Again, it involves overriding national legislation that may protect workers’ rights, for example.

We should be very mindful of how lobbying can be detrimental to the public interest. The public are entitled to know. They are asking for transparency. I am with the noble Lord, Lord Norton, on this: we should know much more from Ministers. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, asks whether we will all have to declare things. Perhaps we would think twice about approaching a Minister on a matter if we knew that the Minister would be publishing a list of everyone who had mentioned matters that could change government policy. That might make for some different conduct. As the noble Lords, Lord Norton and Lord Bew, said, it is about trying to put a bar on any misbehaviour.

I welcome the Bill, although I think it could be strengthened, and I hope that the Government are listening. We have not gone far enough, and this is partly about public confidence in government.