Commercial Lobbyists (Registration and Code of Conduct) Bill

Debate between Chloe Smith and Philip Davies

Friday 1st February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Miss Chloe Smith)]

I join those who have contributed to today’s debate in congratulating the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) on securing a debate on this Bill, and, as I understand it, he has another five on the Order Paper today and four last Friday, which is no mean feat. I thank the hon. Gentleman for having brought today’s proposals to the House and for allowing us to have what I think has been a very constructive debate.

Albeit from one of my ministerial colleagues, I have certainly learned a new word today—“dissensus”, which is presumably the opposite of “consensus”. I think it is a fine word and that it has a place in today’s debate—perhaps as a description of some hon. Members’ comments—but I am more interested in the opposite idea of consensus. I know we have all acknowledged how complicated the issue is and how important it is to be careful to get such legislation right.

The Government are committed to introducing a statutory register of lobbyists. Following the election of May 2010, the Government said in the coalition’s programme for government:

“We will regulate lobbying through introducing a statutory register of lobbyists and ensuring greater transparency.”

We said in our consultation document:

“The purpose of the UK register is to increase transparency by making available to the public, to decision-makers and to other interested parties authoritative and easily-accessible information about who is lobbying and for whom. This will help ensure that those seeking to influence decisions do so in a way that is open to scrutiny, improving knowledge about the process and the accountability of those involved in it.”

At this point, I pause to pay tribute to the notion of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that anybody in public office ought to be able to hold a robust conversation with anybody who comes their way. I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife would agree with that.

Another important point in our consultation document is that

“the register is not intended to capture or deter a range of activity that is essential to a vibrant democracy. So, for example, the register is not intended to cover the normal interaction between constituents and their MPs. Nor should the essential flow of communication between business leaders and Government, civil figures, community organisations…and so on, be included.”

I think that helps to provide an answer to some of the many and varied points made today about the appropriate bounds of this debate.

Let me say something about transparency. The Government already release a significant amount of information—which Members and anyone else who is observing our debate can find on the website data.gov. uk.—and we have made a clear commitment to increasing the transparency of what we do and making it easier for the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account. That has resulted in the quarterly publication of details of ministerial meetings and Government procurement, and a number of other items of public interest.

I acknowledge what was said by, for instance, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) about the importance of transparency and the efforts made by many Governments in that regard. In my view, the present Government publish an unprecedented amount of information about those who are met by Ministers and senior officials, but at present it is not always obvious whom those people represent. The Government therefore want a register that will bring more transparency to the lobbying process.

With that in mind, I accept that some elements of the hon. Gentleman’s proposals have merit. I think he grasps the importance of having a relatively simple register that does not impose disproportionate burdens on those who are required to comply with his Bill. The Government are also determined to avoid unnecessary regulatory burdens that would prove detrimental to the United Kingdom economy. I am very mindful of the costs that may be associated with the statutory register, and I want to explore that issue fully as we develop and introduce our own proposals.

The hon. Gentleman recognises the importance of avoiding ambiguity when defining lobbying activity. That, too, is a view that I heard loud and clear in the responses to last year’s consultation. The Government are making it a priority to consider a wide range of definitions, including international definitions. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge), who gave us a tour d’horizon of the systems used elsewhere. The parameters of the chosen definition will be made very clear in the context of the UK lobbying industry: I intend there to be no scope for ambiguity, so that we can ensure the success and effectiveness of the register.

The hon. Gentleman also recognises that there is little appetite for a publicly funded register of lobbyists, and his proposals for a fee-based system are certainly worth considering. A range of responses to the consultation dealt with that point; they can be found in “A Summary of Responses to the Cabinet Office's Consultation Document ‘Introducing a Statutory Register of Lobbyists’”, which has already been brandished by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East.

There are other parts of the Bill which I believe need further exploration. There is, for example, the hon. Gentleman’s proposal for the establishment of a lobbying registration council, for which he was taken to task in some detail by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall). I think that it is an interesting idea, but, like others, I should like to know more about the council’s membership.

The hon. Gentleman proposes that the Secretary of State should be able to decide, through secondary legislation, what level of information disclosure should be required of those who are on the register. I should like to go into the matter in more detail with the hon. Gentleman. I look forward to working with him constructively on that and other issues, including the issue of the code of practice which his Bill empowers the council to draw up. That is clearly a significant role for the council, and I should like to know how the necessary authority and expertise could be channelled in a way that would enable the code to be effective and enforceable.

I think that there is much to applaud in the hon. Gentleman’s Bill, but it raises further questions which, as I know he agrees, need to be explored fully. I look forward to working collaboratively with him on those issues.

[Philip Davies]

Not too collaboratively, I hope.

[Miss Smith]

I can only assure my hon. Friend that on Fridays in the House we all seek to have debates that are to some degree collaborative.

Taxation Freedom Day Bill

Debate between Chloe Smith and Philip Davies

Friday 25th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Miss Smith]

I thank my hon. Friend for that clarification. I was briefly about to exercise my mental arithmetic by suggesting that while it was 22 days in 1900, it was 19 days in 1910, demonstrating that these figures, like all good things in life, can go down as well as up.

I particularly note the birth date of my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering. May I briefly wish him a happy birthday—with, dare I say it, his 50th birthday falling only the year before the next general election? What a miserable time to have one of one’s major birthdays—in 2004 and 2014! We must do our best to give him a happier birthday in this place than he would otherwise look forward to.

My hon. Friend rightly pointed out that the Government have no money of their own. Taxation is not the Government’s money; it is never that. Taxation is people’s money pooled for the common good. That is my view of taxation. I should note that we spent a good deal of time earlier this morning talking about the value of society in debating the previous Bill. Margaret Thatcher spoke about there being “no such thing as society”, but only individuals. The current Prime Minister has moved the point forwards by saying that there is such a thing as society, but it is not the same as the state. I put myself in both those traditions and, I hope, alongside the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering in feeling myself to be on the side of people who work hard, want the Government off their backs and want to be left with as much money as possible in their pockets to spend according to their own choices.

I was interested to hear the debate about whether tax freedom day would be better under a Conservative or a Labour Government. I note that there might be a cricketing correlation here. I suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is a cricketing fan, as am I. He might be interested to think about the successes of the national side in 1981-82, when I regret to have heard tax freedom day might have been at its peak. He is interested in fours and sixes and not singles, so let us see what we can achieve now that England is once again at the top of the cricketing league. Let us hope that Britain is at the top of other leagues.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley wishes, I think, to oblige the Government to make tax freedom day as early as possible. I note briefly that his comparison to the United States could be unfortunate, given that a number of American politicians have recently pledged never to increase taxes, which has led to some gridlock in the US political system. I am not sure that we would want to see that here, given the attendant impact on the credit rating of that great country.

Some interesting points of difference have emerged, which it would no doubt be delightful to iron out in Committee. One is about how we might celebrate tax freedom day: should we have a bank holiday or achieve it in some other way? An additional bank holiday will always impact on the economy. Many business people in my constituency and doubtless elsewhere express concern at the idea of having an extra bank holiday.

[Philip Davies]

Thanks to organisations such as the Adam Smith Institute, we are aware that tax freedom day this year is on 30 May. Does the Minister think she could get the combined brain power of the Treasury on to the case to work out when, if the Government were planning to collect enough in taxes during this year to finance all their spending, tax freedom day would fall?

[Miss Smith]

I am sure that the combined brains of the Treasury could make those calculations, but I regret to say that my brain, combined or otherwise, is not agile enough to engage in such mental arithmetic on the spot for my hon. Friend’s benefit.

I think that learning of the existence of a “tax app” has enhanced all our lives today. I have only recently acquired a more sophisticated phone. I could not possibly reveal the brand name, but Members should note that I am now tweeting. They may wish to begin following my tweets, as no doubt others will.

As I have said, I noted what was said about taxation on items such as cigarettes and fuel.

Regional variation has been mentioned. My hon. Friends clearly do not want centralised uniformity in any shape or form, and I do not imagine that they would want taxpayers in London, by dint of legislation, to have to pay the same as taxpayers in Wales, or vice versa. I am sure that they support the Government’s actions in not only rebalancing the economy in the direction of a thriving private sector everywhere in the United Kingdom, but creating a thoroughly localist agenda to give people as much freedom locally as possible.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley mentioned Belgium and Cyprus. He will be aware that Belgium has had no Government at all for the past 528 days. He might welcome that in principle, but regrettably I am not sure that the average Belgian punter does.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North took us for a canter through many different types of tax. He cited Twain, mention of whom, as a lover of literature myself, I always welcome in any debate. He also succeeded in teaching me about the crystal and glass industry—and perhaps you as well, Mr Deputy Speaker. I do not know whether you knew that the stems of some glasses are hollow, but I had no idea that that was the case. In the words of Abba, if I had a little money in a rich man’s world, I might know more about expensive glass and crystal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss Smith]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I had assumed that my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) would appreciate a Minister’s taking the points made by Back Benchers seriously and dealing with them individually, which is what I am endeavouring to do.

Let me return to the subject of tax freedom day, as it is right for me to do in the remaining minutes that are available. My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering invited me specifically to rebut four points. He felt that an aspersion had been cast on the methodology proposed in the Bill. The aspersion that I would cast is that there is no such thing as the average person. That is what chiefly concerns me about the calculation establishing when tax freedom day should fall: I do not believe that it would represent the average citizen in a meaningful way.

My hon. Friend asked me to deal with the way in which the proposed methodology does or does not regard or disregard public benefits. I am glad that he welcomes the fact that taxation has another side, namely what can be done with the money once it has been collected. I shall say more about that in a moment.

My hon. Friend also asked me to discuss whether tax freedom day had or had not varied very little in the last decade. I think that that has been covered by earlier remarks, and by the clarification offered by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North. The numbers do go up and down by small amounts. Like other Members, I have reservations about whether we should burden the Office for National Statistics with this further task—and, indeed, whether we should burden the Treasury, which, as Members will know, is one of the smaller Departments in terms of the number of people who work there. No doubt Members welcome that, and do not wish it to become any larger.

[Philip Davies]

Given that the Economic Secretary has made such great play of the burden this would impose on Government, will she tell us what estimate the Treasury has made of the increased costs the Government would incur by introducing this measure?

[Miss Smith]

Unfortunately, I do not have that figure to hand, but I will be happy to look into the matter.

As I suspect my hon. Friend has often argued, both small and large businesses find regulation burdensome, as do citizens. The Government have therefore endeavoured to reduce the amount of regulation, and I question the need for this measure as it is an extra piece of regulation. My hon. Friend also noted that as we can spend on Europe, we should be able to spend on this measure. I agree with his point: we all wish to keep firm control on what we spend in respect of the European Union.

In the March Budget, the Chancellor set out the Government’s principles of good taxation. Our taxes should be efficient and support growth. They should also be certain and predictable: they should be simple to understand and easy to comply with. The tax system should be fair, and should reward work, support aspiration and ask for the most from those who can afford it most. Those are the principles to which we are committed, and against which our tax system should be judged.

In trying to meet those principles, our taxes will necessarily become clearer, a goal to which we all aspire. In debating tax in general, its role in our economy and why the burden of taxation may be felt more keenly at certain times, we must bear in mind our current economic situation. Britain had endured the longest and deepest recession in living memory, we were borrowing £1 for every £4 we were spending, and we had the largest budget deficit in our peacetime history—one of the largest in Europe, and the largest in the G20—yet following the 2010 general election no detailed plan to deal with all that had been left in place by the previous Government.

That was not the end of the story. In the preceding decade Britain had slipped down the international league of competitiveness, falling from fourth to 12th. We had seen our share of world exports decline. We were considered to be a worse country in which to start a business than many of our European neighbours. That was this coalition Government’s inheritance.

We have therefore set about restoring confidence and stability to our economy, with a clear strategy for growth. At the heart of that strategy is a credible plan to tackle the enormous budget deficit, which we are already implementing.

One part of that plan is making changes to taxation. We must understand the changes this Government have made in order to see that a tax freedom day does not fully accord with what we want to achieve. For any taxation, we must, of course, make it clear why we are asking for a contribution, what we are doing in terms of public spending to balance changes in taxation, and why it is important to strengthen the public finances.

Growth is a key component of a strong economy; all parties agree on that. In the Budget we set out four economic ambitions: that Britain should have the most competitive tax system in the G20; that Britain should be the best place in Europe in which to start, finance and grow a business; that we should seek to be a more balanced economy by encouraging exports and investment; and that we should have a more educated work force, who should be the most flexible work force in Europe.

For the past decade Britain has been losing ground in the world economy. Other nations have reduced their business taxes further and faster, and some have removed barriers to enterprise, while ours have grown higher still. We cannot afford for that to continue.

Our plan for growth is based on private sector enterprise, not public sector borrowing. It is based on growing businesses, not growing debts, and on securing sustainable long-term investment. An essential aspect of that is creating a competitive tax system that enables our businesses to compete on the global stage and that gives value to businesses in ways that this Bill would struggle to measure.