Lobbying

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Tuesday 25th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett]

My hon. Friend makes an important point and does so more succinctly than I have been doing.

The Government’s strategy has been clear: to kick the whole issue into the long grass for as long as possible and then to try to confuse and obscure the true issues. Only last month, we had the Queen’s Speech in which there was no mention of lobbying reform. It is only now, because of recent unfavourable headlines, that my opposite number finally said that he wanted to see some lobbying reform. We shall have a look later at what sort of lobbying reform that might be.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jon Trickett]

I will, but will the hon. Gentleman tell me whether there will be a lobbying Bill before the summer recess?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

If the hon. Gentleman took the trouble to read Hansard, he would have noticed that a lobbying Bill was introduced yesterday, so there is already a lobbying Bill on the Order Paper from his hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty). However, if this issue was so pressing at the time of the Queen’s Speech, why did the Labour party not raise it then or table an amendment to that effect? Or has it just jumped on a bandwagon?

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

I have given way to the hon. Gentleman once, so I hope that he will forgive me if I continue.

The fairly shabby little proposal before us is a reaction to a particular story, rather than an attempt to get things right. It is important that we have proposals that command cross-party support in the House and that, if possible, they are subjected to pre-legislative scrutiny. In my time in the House, a lot of bad legislation has been passed in a hurry, but a lot of legislation has been made better as a result of pre-legislative scrutiny, so I do not understand why the Government are shying away from that process. We need to get the proposals right for not just this Parliament, but future Parliaments, and we need a clear definition of “professional lobbying”, a clear code of conduct and strong sanctions for breaches of that code. Why on earth are the Government so reluctant to go down that road?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am in almost entire agreement with the hon. Lady that we need to move at a steady and sensible pace so that we reach a proper conclusion. Can she explain why Government and Opposition Front Benchers—as expressed in the motion and the amendment —want to get everything done by the summer recess?

[Helen Jones]

I do not think that Labour Members are arguing for that at all. We want a full and comprehensive proposal, not a half-baked one that covers only part of the industry and that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) said, could damage part of the industry. If a register is to end bad practices, it has to be backed by proper sanctions. We know that transparency is essential, so why on earth are we not going down that road? After all, the Prime Minister kept saying that sunlight was the “best disinfectant”—I wonder what happened to that phrase.

Even those involved in the industry are unenthusiastic, to say the least. The director general of the Public Relations Consultants Association called the proposals “unfit for purpose”. The chair of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations said:

“Basically it’s so weak now there’s no point in us joining it”.

Surely that is not good in the long run for the Government —of any colour—for Parliament and for the reputation of politicians as a whole, so I urge the Government to think again. They need to understand what is at stake, which is no less than the reputation of politicians and the political class as a whole.

If we are to get it right, we must try to come to an agreement. It has been said from the Front Bench that we have no problem with regulating trade union lobbying activities. However, the Government should not confuse the regulation of lobbying with the funding of political parties. By all means let us have a debate on that, but it will have to include the role of commercial companies and their donations, organisations such as the Midlands Industrial Council, and so on. To try to push the two together to attack one lot of political funding but not another is not a sign of serious government; it is a sign of a Government wanting to score cheap political points, rather than to sort out the problem, and I hope they will not do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris). I learned that the Morning Star still exists. I confess that I was unaware of that. I thought that it had gone with the Berlin wall and all that.

As so often in this Chamber, we are not discussing a new problem. The issue of lobbying and undue influence goes back into the mists of time. Delving back not too far, who can forget Sir John Trevor, a former Speaker of the House who was expelled both from the speakership and from Parliament for accepting a 1,000 guinea bribe from the City of London to promote a Bill on orphanages? Interestingly, the Chairman of the Bill Committee, Mr Hungerford, received only 20 guineas for his service. He, too, was expelled from the House. I reflect that the Speaker was worth almost 40 times as much as the Chairman of a Committee. I wonder whether the relativities have changed in this more modern age.

Sir John Trevor and Mr Hungerford were expelled by this House for being unduly lobbied. Interestingly, they were unduly lobbied by another arm of the state: the corporation of London. It is worth bearing it in mind that, contrary to what the hon. Member for Easington said, it is not only wicked businesses that are involved in lobbying; it is something that happens across society. Everyone has an axe to grind regarding the issues that face this House. They therefore come to us to lobby. In and of itself, that is a perfectly legitimate activity.

As my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) so rightly said, it is an historic right of every one of our constituents to come to Central Lobby, demand our presence and tell us their views on whatever subject is important to them. That is a wonderful historic right. It is a pity that people do not know about it and do not use it more. We ought to encourage our constituents to come and lobby us in that way. There is a nobility in lobbying that must not be lost in the midst of the discussion about what is, in effect, corruption. Let us try to use the terms differently and not allow lobbying to become a polite term for criminality, dishonesty and corruption.

Within British politics, there are essentially two types of lobbying. There is the lobbying of Members of Parliament, which is perhaps the triumph of hope over experience, whereby people come to see somebody such as myself, a junior Back-Bench MP, and say that they want me to do this, that and the next thing and to change legislation, thinking that the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House hang on my every word. Sadly, I have to tell such people that that is not quite how it works. MPs have the ability to debate and argue, but not necessarily to change the course of the world. Then there is the lobbying of Ministers, who have a much greater and more direct Executive power—a decision-making power, rather than merely an influencing power. The two types of lobbying need to be regulated differently and separately.

There is a difference between those on the Opposition Front Bench and the Government Front Bench. Opposition Front Benchers have the hope and possibly the expectation of power. Those on the Treasury Bench have the reality of power and lobbying them can have a direct influence on what is happening. They should therefore be subject to a higher standard of openness and transparency than Opposition Front Benchers, who ought to be entitled to their smoke-filled rooms, although as they are socialists, the rooms will have no smoke in them, because they do not approve of that sort of thing. You know what I mean, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Given the difference between Government and Parliament, we need to legislate only for Government. Parliament has all the powers that it needs to regulate its own affairs, if only we had the courage to use them. We have a Committee of Privileges and a Committee on Standards. We are entitled to expel Members who misbehave. We may do so not according to a detailed set of rules, but according to whether we believe, as a House, that they have undermined the reputation of the House and have not behaved like honourable Members. Such a decision is not justiciable in any court in the land because we are the High Court of Parliament. The regulation of our own affairs is not challengeable in the other House, as was established by the Bradlaugh case, when an atheist was refused the right to sit in Parliament.

We have the right as a Chamber to admit and expel Members. When Members abuse the rules, we ought to exercise that power and clear up politics directly ourselves. That does not require legislation to come through before the summer recess; it simply requires us to have the willpower and the backbone to do what we are able to do already.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman’s flow. I compliment him on his speech. Will he clarify what the consequence is in the other place when peers commit a similar offence?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The House of Lords, when considering what it could do about the expenses scandal, discovered that it had the right to imprison a peer for a Session. It decided that it must therefore also have the power to suspend a peer for a Session. However, it may only do that Session by Session. It cannot expel a peer because a peerage comes from the sovereign, whereas our position in this House comes from the people to whom we can be sent back. To get rid of a peerage requires primary legislation. That was done in 1917 to remove a group of peers who were fighting for the Germans and the Austrians during the first world war. It is open to this House to do that with the other place. We may pass an Act of Parliament to remove a category of peers who have committed offences. The House of Lords itself can suspend peers Session by Session. It can repeat such a suspension if it believes that the offence is egregious enough.

This House also has the power to punish individuals outside the House. If people are in contempt of Parliament, we have the ultimate power to imprison them. I am not proposing that we should use that power extensively, but if lobbyists try to bribe or corrupt Members of Parliament, it is not unreasonable that Parliament herself should impose the punishment on those lobbyists. That would be a matter of us regulating ourselves, using the power given to us by the British people, rather than farming it out, through legislation, to the courts to decide whether parliamentary privilege has been breached.

[Damian Collins]

When the Culture, Media and Sport Committee took evidence during the phone-hacking inquiry, we found that many of Parliament’s powers to summon and even imprison people for misleading Parliament or for being in contempt of Parliament are historical. It is not certain what their legal status is and whether they have been superseded by subsequent legislation.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The power of the House to regulate its own affairs is one of the fundamental building blocks of the constitution. That power cannot be given up, except by this House voluntarily surrendering it, which it has not done. No court in this land can question a decision made by this House to regulate its own affairs. It is arguable that the European courts could, but we can take away their right to do so by a simple piece of legislation. If we are to legislate, therefore, it should be to reinforce our self-regulatory powers and to remove the possibility of challenge. That would clarify what we can do, and we should then go ahead and do it.

[John Cryer]

Of course, technically it is not actually an offence for an MP to accept a bribe. A motion was passed—I have not got the information in front of me—in the 17th century that specifically condemned MPs who accept bribes, but it has never been enforced.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. My point about Sir John Trevor is that we should use the power this House has to expel a Member for taking a bribe. That is not the same as a criminal offence. Sir John was entitled, had he wished and had his electorate wanted him back, to stand for Parliament again. As it happened, the King promoted him to become Master of the Rolls, so he did not do too badly out of it in the end.

There is a difference between the penal power of Parliament and statute law and the requirement of an offence for a statutory punishment. There is no need for a specific offence for Parliament to act, which is a benefit because it is easier for us to expel a Member, and it leaves the person expelled with a right of appeal to his constituents. The British people would then be the ones to make the final decision. They would be entitled to decide whether the lobbying the Member had been caught up with was of a kind that they approved or disapproved of. Ultimately, it is right that we should trust the democratic forces of the electorate to judge our behaviour rather than parcelling it out to the judiciary, who I think are in a less strong position to judge whether what has happened is acceptable, right and proper in the political context in which it has taken place.

It is important to remember that we can also punish those who are in contempt of Parliament. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) that we need to use those powers to remind people that they still exist. By allowing them to wither on the vine, we have weakened the ability of Parliament to clean up its own Act. Had we done so over the expenses situation, we would not be in the sorry state we are now in with politicians being held in very low esteem.

I urge the Government, rather than rushing hastily to legislation, to consider whether the powers that already exist can be used to clean up our own act, and can be used in a way that overcomes the difficulties of definition that the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), the shadow spokesman, spoke very clearly of in his speech. That is the centre point of legislating, but it is the hardest point to define.

I will leave hon. Ladies and Gentlemen with this thought: what happens when a constituent comes, accompanied by his accountant, as happened to me last week, to complain that he has been defrauded and wants me to do something to help him? His accountant is paid, is representing his views, and might be the only member of his firm, but he is clearly lobbying me. And then, what do we think of the Whips, who lobby me on an almost daily basis on whether I am to vote Aye or No, and are often successful in their desire to get me going in the right direction? Should we have a register of them to ensure that their behaviour is even more proper, benign and pious than it already is?