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

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, if a lobbyist meets a Minister or the Permanent Secretary, there will be a scheme of publication—as, indeed, we are committed to publish at the moment, and we do. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, who moved the amendment, will recognise the name if I mention Mr Michael Clancy of the Law Society of Scotland. If I met Mr Clancy, at the moment I would register that, and put on my quarterly return that I had met Mr Clancy of the Law Society of Scotland. In the last term I think there was an issue relating to the banking reform Bill; I cannot remember if I actually met him or had correspondence with him about that—but this is what I would envisage would happen. There would be a reference to “Mr Michael Clancy, Law Society of Scotland: representations on the banking Bill”, or whatever its formal title was. That is how I would envisage the system working. The record would not simply say “catch-up meeting”—a term which has, perhaps, caused frustration to some in the past.

My Lords, these commitments show that the Government have listened—

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Perhaps I may ask my noble and learned friend for further clarification about meetings. When I was in business I sometimes found that a note of a meeting was sent to the company before being made available under freedom of information or other provisions. The problem often was that the report of the meeting was not very accurate. Will there be any system of clearing or showing notes of the formal meetings that he has described to the people who were involved in them, simply for the sake of accuracy?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I am grateful to my noble friend for asking that question. I have not said that we will publish the minutes of meetings; the example I gave showed that we would record the detailed nature of what the meeting was about. I hesitate to use the word “subject matter”, because until now that term has also covered “catch-up meetings” and “introductory meetings”. It is not anticipated that we would publish minutes of such meetings. If a meeting had taken place on fracking, I do not think that any clarification would be needed between the Minister and the company as to whether the meeting was about fracking. It is not proposed that minutes would be made available, but there may be other ways—under, say, freedom of information provisions—in which other information might become available. None the less, what we are committing to today takes our commitment as a Government that much further. Ours has been a listening response, and I believe that it will do far more for transparency than—