Lobbying

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 25th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

Let me explain a little more, then I will give way again.

There are two ways in which we can go about regulating conduct in political life. We can create a comprehensive rules-based system backed up by intrusive enforcement, to try to specify what everyone should and should not do pretty much all the time. That would be immensely bureaucratic and costly, and would involve a constant effort to keep up. It would create not a culture of openness but a “see what you can get away with” approach.

The other way forward is to be clear about the standards expected, based on the Nolan principles, and to ensure that all those who exercise responsibilities—and all those who seek to influence them—are subject to the necessary transparency in their actions and contacts, and held accountable for their actions, so that we can see who is doing what, and why. For those who seek to influence the political system without the necessary transparency, there will be clear sanctions available.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I think the right hon. Gentleman heard the valid point that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) made earlier. This is a complex business. Some of the big legal firms are now half lawyers and half lobbyists, and they say that they will refuse to be involved in the proposed register because of client confidentiality. There are some really big problems, but Members on both sides of the House want to get this right. May we have a pre-legislative inquiry to enable us to do that? This is a really difficult one. We used to think that accountancy firms consisted of auditors and accountants, but look at their track record now that the banks are going to hell in a handcart. Many of those firms do not need lobbyists, because they have been here all the time lobbying as companies. I was quite enthused by the right hon. Gentleman’s opening remarks, but may we have a pre-legislative inquiry to enable us to get this right?

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman will know that I am an advocate of ensuring that the Government legislate after we have consulted and, whenever possible, sought scrutiny of the proposed legislation. I fear, however, that if we were to go further in regard to pre-legislative scrutiny, we would not be able to legislate in the time frame we have set out. We published draft clauses, and the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee produced a report on them that was not wholly supportive. I completely understand that. We have reflected—at length, I freely admit—on what the Committee said, and I believe that we will now be able to proceed with the Bill. It might not meet everyone’s objectives, but it will do what is necessary to create the clarity, transparency and openness that form the basis for us to ensure that public confidence is achieved.

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[Mr Lansley]

I thought I had made it clear on many occasions that what we are setting out to do in the Bill is to create a statutory register of lobbyists in the context of seeking to make absolutely clear where a third-party influence is being exercised in relation to Ministers. I used to be Secretary of State for Health, as Members will recall. We published our diaries of meetings and when the British Medical Association came to see me, nobody was under any illusions about why it did so. That applies, too, to the Royal College of Nurses, other royal colleges, the Patients Association, the NHS Federation—the list is endless. There was no doubt about the nature of the representations from people associated with many of these organisations. Where a lobbying company is seeking to influence Ministers, the permanent secretary or whomever it might be, the issue is knowing who their clients are. That is where the gap lies, and that is what we are focusing on. [Interruption.] I do not know about Fred Michel in that sense.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will the Leader of the House give way?

[Mr Lansley]

For the last time.

[Mr Sheerman]

I can give a straightforward answer in that I believe our shadow Ministers should publish their diaries; I see nothing wrong with that. The right hon. Gentleman has bounced that issue on us, but I imagine that most serious Labour Members—and most of them are serious—would say yes to that. Let me press the right hon. Gentleman on this point. All the groups he mentioned lobbied him, quite legitimately, when he was Secretary of State for Health, but the key issue is whether this lobbying register will go right across the sort of people that lobbied him, including the lawyers, the accountants and the big companies, so that everybody is included in the register—not just a tiny circle of professional lobbying companies representing only about 25% of the lobbying industry.

[Mr Lansley]

With respect, I think the hon. Gentleman has missed the point, which I have already made. The gap lies where Ministers, permanent secretaries and—I hope his hon. Friends will take the matter up—shadow Ministers need to set out whom they meet and for what purpose, and on whose behalf they are being met. When I met members of the BMA and the RCN, we were under no illusions about that. If I were to meet representatives of a lobbying company that had a client in an industry and we did not know who the client was, we would not have the necessary degree of transparency. That is what we are talking about: ensuring that we have the maximum transparency.

[Mr Sheerman]

rose—

[Mr Lansley]

I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman twice. I am grateful to him for agreeing with what I said, but those on his own Opposition Front Bench will not—

[Mr Sheerman]

rose—

[Mr Lansley]

I am sorry, but I will not give way again. [Interruption.]

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[Mr Speaker]

Order. The Leader of the House has made it clear that he will not give way. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) has a beatific smile on his face, but he has been in the House for 34 years, and he knows that a Member cannot make a point by means of an intervention if the Member who is on his or her feet will not give way.

[Mr Sheerman]

I was being helpful.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman chunters from a sedentary position that he was being helpful, but I think that his concept of helpfulness is not necessarily shared.

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[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

I echo earlier comments made about lobbying. I have always supported a lobbying Bill to create a register of lobbyists in a transparent and properly regulated way, but I have no objection to lobbying per se. It is part of everyday life—or it should be if we are doing our jobs properly. We get lobbied on a weekly basis, on all sorts of issues, by church groups, mosques, gurdwaras, temples, community groups and all sorts of individuals. A woman came to see me a couple of weeks ago and said, “You are opposed to the sell-off of the Royal Mail, aren’t you?” When I said that I was, she said, “Well, on that basis you should also be opposed to gay marriage.” I did not quite follow the logic of that argument either, but she had the right to lobby me, and she did so, albeit in a novel way.

What worries me is when large concentrations of unaccountable wealth and power are brought to bear in the lobbying industry. Funnily enough, Jonathan Aitken said something similar when he was an MP and large business consortiums were lobbying for the contract to build the Channel tunnel. At that time lobbying was in full swing, and he—surprisingly in the light of subsequent events—said:

“What worries me most is that usually lobbying is genuine in the sense that it stems from little interest groups and concerned citizens. Here we see the Panzer divisions of big business, their heavy artillery and tanks trampling over all the small people’s interests which I want to see better defended.”

Most of us would probably want to see those interests better defended and certainly the Prime Minister seemed to want to see that three years ago when he said that lobbying would be the “next big scandal” to hit British politics. Lobbying has been the perennial scandal in British politics within living memory and probably before that, too.

The Prime Minister’s reference to lobbying was three years ago and since then we have seen two private Members’ Bills. One was in my name, and I offered it to the Leader of the House as a Government Bill, but he was a bit shy about taking it on. The other was in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty). We also saw a Government consultation followed by countless commitments from various Ministers that a Bill would be produced, as we are always told, “in the near future.” Last year, the then Parliamentary Secretary, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), promised a Bill before he was moved in the reshuffle. His successor, the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), is on the Treasury Bench and has, I believe, promised a Bill twice on the Floor of the House—but there is still no Bill.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly promised a Bill in Prime Minister’s questions over the past three years and after the last lobbying scandal a few weeks ago, the Deputy Prime Minister promised what he called “head to toe” political reform, including a register of lobbyists. That was on 3 June. I have no idea what he meant by that, but I suspect that he did not have much more of an idea what he meant either—he never normally does.

We still have no Bill, yet the scandals come regularly and frequently. Only last year, the treasurer of the Tory party, Peter Cruddas—we will all remember this—had to resign after promising access to the Prime Minister for a fee of £250,000. Months before that, Tim Collins, a not particularly lamented Member of this House, promised access to just about everybody and anybody in the Government.

We can go back before that. I have mentioned lobbying scandals in living memory, but probably the doyenne of political lobbyists from the 1930s and 1940s up until the 1970s was Commander Christopher Powell. His name is probably not familiar now, but years ago he was very well known and for a number of years he had an office in the House of Commons. It sounds extraordinary today that a political lobbyist who represented all sorts of clients should have an office in this place, but he did for quite a long time.

Members might remember the scandals attached to Ian Greer in the 1980s, which eventually made the front pages of just about the entire national press as well as the broadcast media in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Let us be balanced: there was also the cash for access scandal that involved Derek Draper, another person who is not particularly lamented by Opposition Members—at least, I hope he is not. I can say that with some passion, having dealt with him years ago.

As I said earlier, I by no means condemn the political lobbying industry. In fact, I suspect that most lobbyists do a decent job, do it honestly and are perfectly prepared to be transparent about it, but there is always the temptation to cross certain lines unless accountability and transparency are built into the system.

[Mr Sheerman]

Speaker after speaker has talked about the importance of openness, transparency and accountability. I absolutely agree with that, but does my hon. Friend agree that we should also allow the little person, not just the well-heeled and well-suited person, to lobby? Lobbying should be open to everyone; the problem is that too often those who can afford to pay a lot of money can lobby more effectively.

[John Cryer]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, but I think I covered that at the beginning of my speech. Most of us these days hold regular advice surgeries—for me, and, probably, for most right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House such surgeries are a weekly business.

The days when MPs never went near their constituencies and did not regard themselves as constituency Members are long gone. There was once a national MP for Blackpool called Walter de Frece who, despite the fact that he was the Member for Blackpool, never went near the place. In fact, he could not find it on a map. He struggled to find Britain on a map, because he lived in Monte Carlo. He came to Britain twice a year for the Budget debate and for Ascot, yet he was elected for years and years and was regarded as a successful constituency MP. While he was here, he would get a pile of House of Commons notepaper and sign the bottom, and then his secretary would fill in the rest. It sounds extraordinary, but because he managed to reply to a few letters—this shows how things have changed—he was regarded as a particularly brilliant constituency MP. Nowadays, that has changed beyond all recognition—not even in the safest seat could an MP from any party get away with such behaviour.

Let me return to the demands that I think the register should place on lobbyists. The criterion that it should only cover third-party lobbyists is unfair on the third-party lobbying industry. In-house lobbyists—that covers all sorts of organisations and companies—should be forced to provide information, which, as I said when I intervened on the Leader of the House, should include financial information. Big companies, wealthy organisations and even wealthy individuals can spend millions on lobbying, and that sort of information should be available.