Draft Postal Packets (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2023

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and James Duddridge

Monday 17th July 2023 General Committees

[Sir James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Pritchard. I was nominated to this Committee and I was prepared to be part of it. I was asked to absent myself from the Committee, and I refused because I had points and queries to make. When I suggested that I might vote against the legislation, I was subsequently removed from the Committee. That is an outrage to the House. I believe that this legislation does require scrutiny. I will listen to the debate but I do not think that 90 minutes will be sufficient time to hear all the contributions, let alone conclude all the issues.

More importantly, if it is the feeling of the Committee, Mr Pritchard, can you go back to Mr Speaker and review the process? Never in my 18 years of Parliament have I known of a single Member who has been removed from a Committee list without asking to be removed. In this case, it happened four or five times. I suspect that there is an element of incompetence rather than an attack on Members’ rights to debate, but this needs to be looked into. I seek your guidance on whether, if we do not finish the debate here, more time can be allocated on the Floor to discuss the principle and the content of this legislation. I am sure it is something that the Chief Whip would want to know more about, alongside fishing interests.

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

On a point of order, Mr Pritchard. As the papers for this meeting are not ready and not sufficiently supplied for all the Members who are attending, I suggest that the meeting be adjourned until they can be provided.

Commercial Lobbyists (Registration and Code of Conduct) Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and James Duddridge

Friday 1st February 2013 Commons Chamber

[James Duddridge]

I accept that absolutely in relation to pure lobbying firms. However, I have been lobbied by individual constituents, but have been a little suspicious about whether their letters were written by an individual or an organisation because of the level of complexity and technical detail. On some occasions, the same individual has written with a level of detail and complexity on a number of issues. When I have sat down with those constituents, it has turned out that they have been encouraged to write by their employer or their employer’s organisation. We must differentiate between professional lobbyists and such people who represent an organisation and want to lobby us. I would accept the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion if we could do it in a way that did not disadvantage our constituents.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am interested by this line of argument. I wonder whether there should be a general exemption for constituents, because it would be quite hard for a lobbying organisation to find 650 people, one in each constituency, to lobby MPs individually, but nothing should be put in the way of constituents having direct access to their Member of Parliament.

[James Duddridge]

I thank my hon. Friend. I think that that is the first intervention that I have taken from him and I look forward to many more.

There is a great deal of complexity in this matter. The Royal Society of Chemistry has a great way of lobbying Members of Parliament. It does identify an individual who is on its membership for each Member of Parliament. My constituent came and had tea with me in the Pugin Room and said, “I do not want to lobby you on anything in particular, but hopefully you will be here for a few years—maybe four, maybe longer—so this is the beginning of an ongoing relationship.” That is a kind of hybrid example.

We need to consider these matters in a lot more detail. We have talked about considering the Bill in Committee, but there seems to be an increasing list of things that we must consider in Committee. I wonder whether the Bill has more flaws than can be resolved in Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Duddridge]

With the House’s permission, I will accept that comment and move on. This is a broad Bill, and having criticised the House for moving to a general debate, I want to focus specifically on the Bill.

The proposed register does not intend to capture or deter any range of activities essential to a vibrant democracy. I fear, however, that too much bureaucracy will lead people not to come forward to discuss issues with Members of Parliament. In fact, some of the most useful lobbying is very informal. For example, if an issue is raised in the House about the health service, I might be more likely to have a chat to my local GP or those at the local primary health trust, because I know their capabilities and biases and can filter those as appropriate, than to go to a lobby organisation directly. Some of the most effective lobbying will be totally off the register and therefore outside the remit under discussion.

The costs of the consultation have been mentioned and I am deeply concerned about those costs and their impacts. Just because something is of moderate cost to the Cabinet Office, it should not be brushed aside as insignificant. There is a direct cost to the Government that must be funded by the taxpayer, and even more importantly I am concerned about the cost to business. That is not because I am particularly pro-business for the sake of it, but businesses employ people and have consumers. At the end of the day, business cost must be transferred in some way, shape or form, either to shareholders—that is our pension fund and nation’s prosperity—or to consumers. The price of a packet of bourbon biscuits will go up at Asda, however marginally.

We must remember that lobbyists are business people as well. We have said that lobbying is a legitimate activity, but the provisions represent a big barrier to entry. A small business owner who, for argument’s sake, acts in a consultancy in a particular sector, might find that they are increasingly asked for public relations advice by the press. That might not be their core competence, although they might do a bit of it. Where does the barrier between public relations and public affairs end and start? I want people who run small businesses to be able to evolve their business over time. We need some type of de minimis threshold for a business to be allowed to operate within a public affairs arena.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way once again. He is absolutely right on this issue. A compulsory levy for an organisation is a hypothecated tax, but a tax none the less, and we are therefore talking about a tax on business. This House should be very wary about increasing the burden of taxation in this country.

[James Duddridge]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend and I cannot evidence in the Bill any thought or consideration of different sizes of businesses. There is a massive difference between Asda or the might of a FTSE 100 company that might be involved in lobbying, and one or two individual businesses. There is no consideration of whether the fee should be fixed for all businesses, fixed per person, or be a threshold to allow businesses to move into the sector without signing up. There is no consideration of corporate structures. Gone are the days where we have one simple limited company or one simple plc. Many companies have subsidiaries, are wholly owned, separately floated or floated in different jurisdictions. There is a whole level of complexity that will make some details of the Bill difficult to iron out.

There are also difficulties in relation to an organisation that is trying to get round some of the proposed rules. People are not always well meaning and will look for holes in the legislation and see whether they can register offshore, have consultants or separate out the lobbying into a subsidiary area. They will see whether they can disguise what they are doing and define their lobbying activity by way of a consultation or public relations, rather than public affairs.

The consultation said that a number of questions had been raised, such as the definition of lobbying and lobbyists. I am concerned about that and about who will be included and excluded in the register. It strikes me, for example, that trade unions should form part of the provisions. One clear role of a trade union is to lobby organisations and the Government for better working conditions, pay and arrangements, and that is quite proper and a healthy part of democracy. Clearly, trade unions are lobbyists, but they are certainly not commercial and nor, on the other end of the scale, are they charities. They do not belong to those two categories and are neither one thing nor the other. We need to define that, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) that we have not done that.