Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Russell Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

What I, of course, hope is that as people focus on the reality and substance of the new system rather than the misleading polemic about it, they will come to appreciate that at the moment thousands of students on part-time courses, under the system introduced by the hon. Gentleman’s Government, pay fees as students whereas under the new system no student will pay a penny of fees at all while they are studying at university. The method of repayment, which is in effect a form of time-limited graduate tax, is more progressive, not less, than the more regressive system that it seeks to replace.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

According to The Mail on Sunday, MPs are on day five of our holiday. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that the statutory register of lobbyists ought to include a strict overview of a very shadowy organisation that puts itself forward as the TaxPayers Alliance?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My experience is that one should not believe much that one reads in the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday. The key point is that the consultation on the register of lobbyists will be issued in the new year, and will seek to define what we mean by lobbyists and the rules that will then be applied evenly to all kinds of lobbyists.