Greensill Capital

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

Lenders and businesses have had many, many meetings across Government without favour, to make sure that we can get that information to ensure a diversity of lenders and that we could flex. The various loan schemes were added to and amended along the way to make sure that we could take the temperature of exactly how that lending was or was not working.

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

I would like to associate myself first with the comments made earlier about Cheryl Gillan from all sides of the House.

Many Members will remember that seven years ago, when David Cameron was putting his lobbying Bill through this place, he point blank refused to adopt any new clauses or amendments that would bring greater transparency to the corporate lobbying industry. I wonder why he did that. All these years later, is it not time to put that right and introduce greater transparency—not to stop corporate lobbying, which is a perfectly legitimate business to engage in, but to introduce greater accountability—so that we and the public know who is being lobbied and by whom?

[Paul Scully]

I started off by talking about how the market works when there is transparency and openness, and lobbying comes within that. We should always review what is and is not there. The lobbying register should be working, and we need to make sure that that continues to work, but we always should be able to review lobbying activities to make sure that they are, as the hon. Gentleman says, transparent.