Parliamentary Lobbying

John Robertson Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[John Robertson (in the Chair)]

Order. Before we go any further, let me say that a number of people wish to speak in this debate. Those on the Front Bench will have 10 minutes each, so there is 40 minutes between the rest of you. I would be most grateful if you all looked at timing your speeches.

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[John Mann]

No, I would not—[Laughter.]

[John Robertson (in the Chair)]

Order.

[John Mann]

I would not include them, in the same way that I would not include small business owners in the same category. The issue is this—what access is gained to Parliament?

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[Robert Halfon]

On a point of order, Mr Robertson. That seems to be a case of fatism. Is that not inappropriate?

[John Robertson (in the Chair)]

That is not a point of order.

[Chris Bryant]

We need to remember that, in essence, we politicians are all lobbyists. We go through lobbies and try to advocate causes, and nearly every one of us—if not all of us—was in one shape or form a lobbyist before we came into Parliament. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) campaigned for workers’ rights when he was working for a trade union; I, as a vicar, argued that my local authority was not doing the right thing by local youth services; others have campaigned for better policing, and so on. We are by nature lobbyists—advocates—trying to persuade people of a better cause. For a couple of years I was a paid lobbyist for the BBC, doing its lobbying in Brussels. I am proud of that work, because at the time Rupert Murdoch was saying that the BBC licence fee was illegal state aid, and that the BBC should be closed down. I am delighted that we won that battle in Brussels, and I believe that it is perfectly possible to be an entirely honourable lobbyist.

I remember when the Mental Health Bill was going through the House in 2007. As a Back-Bench member of the Bill Committee, I knew remarkably little about mental health and the specifics of legislation. If it had not been for a wide range of people who lobbied me and argued about elements of the Bill, I would not have been able to make as effective a contribution. In the end, I tabled the amendment that became the following provision in the Act:

“In this Act, references to appropriate medical treatment, in relation to a person suffering from mental disorder, are references to medical treatment which is appropriate in his case, taking into account the nature and degree of the mental disorder and all other circumstances of his case.”

To the ordinary eye—and, I suggest, to most MPs, unless they have a background in mental health—that seems a perfectly innocuous statement of what should be the case, but every single word of that provision was fiercely battled over, and rightly so, because of its effect on people who might be sectioned. It was not just mental health charities such as Mind and others that lobbied and provided advice; it was also pharmaceutical companies. If there is a list of evil people in the country, it starts with journalists, then politicians, and then lobbyists, and way at the far end are lobbyists for pharmaceutical companies, but my experience in that situation was that they provided invaluable advice. In the end, it was for me to decide the rights and wrongs and how I could best serve my constituents, but if people had not had such access to me, it would have been impossible for me to do a proper job.

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[Chris Bryant]

That is a good point. Members of Select Committees that publish influential reports are often targeted by lobbying organisations. It would be no bad thing if each Select Committee had an open register of lobbying meetings held.

Passes to this place are a problem. When I worked in Brussels, getting a pass to enter the European Parliament on legitimate business was a simple, straightforward and open process. Here, it is clandestine. Lots of people end up finding an hon. Member who is prepared to give them one of their three passes. We should have a complete review of the system. Of course we must ensure security in this building, but everybody should have equal access. I would prefer to open the doors than keep them closed so that only some people have enhanced access. Nobody should have enhanced access due to big bucks or cronyism. That last element is difficult to control. I look forward to legislation introducing a register soon. I am not naive about the difficulties of determining what a lobbyist is, but it is essential that we clean up the industry.

[John Robertson (in the Chair)]

I said that I would call the Front-Bench spokesmen at 20 minutes to 11, but I will give a few minutes to another speaker, as that is only fair.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

I will be as brief as possible.

I worked in the public affairs industry for a year in 2009, but for a company signed up to the Association of Professional Political Consultants, which adheres strongly to transparency. There is a danger of exaggerating such people’s influence. Hon. Members returning after this debate should look in their recycling bins to see how much power the people that we are fretting about actually have. The truth is that we are inundated with lobbying all the time, and we throw away most of it. At the end of the day, it is down to our judgment whether we believe these people. As MPs, we are approached by companies or pressure groups that often smack of commercial interest and we can spot it a mile off. We might also get people who do not articulate their case very well, but we are the ones who can judge that and give them a voice when they may not have one.

I agree that there is a need to improve transparency, and particularly a need for a register of lobbyists. They should be required to list their clients and disclose whether anyone who works for them has had a previous Government role. However, I am nervous about going down the route of disclosing every meeting with people who are trying to lobby us, because it suggests that we base our opinions on the number of people who have lobbied us about something, rather than exercise judgment, which is what we actually do.

My final concern about publishing the details of such meetings relates to an unintended consequence whereby people say, “You met that group, so why can’t you meet us? You’ve met the People’s Front of Judaea, but what about the Judaean People’s Front?” It is difficult enough for Ministers to balance their work load. Do we really want to create a situation whereby organisations start to feel that they almost have an entitlement to meet Ministers on the basis that they have met somebody else?

[John Robertson (in the Chair)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his brevity.

Public Disorder

John Robertson Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to his constituents and all those who played an important part in bringing some sanity back to London’s streets.

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has exalted CCTV, and rightly so. Does he agree with me that it can deter people from breaking the law? If so, will he look at the Protection of Freedoms Bill, which he obviously has not done yet, and change it so that local councils are allowed to put up CCTV cameras in areas such as those where riots took place?

[The Prime Minister]

Local councils can put up CCTV cameras and they will continue to be able to do so. We can all see how effective CCTV is when we see people walking out of court trying to hide their face because they know that is how they got caught.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Robertson Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can certainly reassure my hon. Friend. Those in the EU who want to see further tax harmonisation usually make one of two arguments: either they want to raise more money for the EU, which I do not agree with, or they are trying to reduce tax competition within the EU, which I also do not agree with. It is important that we keep our competitive tax rates and do not give the EU further coverage over our tax base.

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

Q9. The ministerial code is extensive in its guidelines and rules governing Ministers. What is the policy of the Prime Minister and his Government on Ministers who break the ministerial code?

Oral Answers to Questions

John Robertson Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

The Public Bodies Bill is obviously very important—it is an opportunity to improve radically the accountability of decisions and to make significant savings from the vast number of quangos that proliferated under the previous Administration. My hon. Friend will know that the Bill is passing through the Lords, with Third Reading expected on 9 May. Obviously, it is for the House authorities to determine the programming for debate in the House, but we expect the Bill to enter Committee after the Whitsun recess.

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

T7. A recent survey of charity leaders by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations suggested that charities are not happy, because they feel that the rhetoric that was sold to them before and after the election bears no resemblance to the money that they need to ensure that they deliver the services that are required. Forget about all the waffle, will the Minister tell us exactly how he will fund those charities and how he will ensure that they do things for people?

[Mr Hurd]

There is obviously understandable concern in the sector about the impact of reductions in public expenditure, but in my experience, charities are increasingly alive to the opportunity to deliver more public services—they are delighted by the announcements in the Budget to increase giving and by the progress that the Government have made in setting up the big society bank.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Robertson Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. First, I want to hear the answers. Secondly, the greater the noise, the longer the delay and the fewer Back Benchers will have a chance to be called. That would be a great pity.

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

T9. If the right hon. Gentleman had his time again, would he be for or against tuition fees?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I would be for a system that provided a fair settlement for students. As I said before, unlike the system that we inherited from the hon. Gentleman’s party, ours will remove all up-front fees paid by students and will only ask graduates—[Interruption.] I know that Opposition Members do not want to hear this because they do not want to talk about policy as they have a blank sheet for policy. We have a plan and they have a blank sheet—that speaks volumes.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Robertson Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I certainly hope so. It will be the first nationwide referendum we have had since the early 1970s, and we should be open about the fact that, including in this Government, we do not agree on the best outcome. However, we all agree that it should be for the people to choose. That is why I urge those Members who are dragging their feet somewhat in allowing the proposed legislation to pass its various stages in this House and the other place to realise that we should try not only to subject it to the necessary scrutiny, but above all allow the people outside this House to have their say and so help restore some public trust in what we do.

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

T7. We have heard what the right hon. Gentleman has to say about the local housing allowance and how it affects people, but what has he got to say to the 49,000 people who will be made homeless thanks to what he is about to do? Will he say sorry?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

By allowing rents for new tenants, but not existing tenants, to be set closer to market rates—and by the way, rents for existing—[Interruption.] Rents for existing tenants went up by about 15% under the Labour Government. We are saying that we need to give registered social landlords an incentive to build new affordable homes—the building of which was at lamentably low levels under the previous Government—while all the time, of course, compensating those tenants through the housing benefit system. As I said earlier, we also think it is right for the Government to say that there needs to be some kind of limit for those people who are on housing benefit, and it seems fair for that limit to be set roughly at the level at which people who are going out to work would be looking for rented property in the private sector.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

John Robertson Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner), who made good sense; he made some excellent points, as did the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil). A number of important points have been made about distances and sizes of constituencies.

I come from an inner city. I am the Member for Glasgow North West; it has affluent parts, but it also has very poor areas, and some areas of high deprivation. I have a problem, in that the people in those areas of deprivation do not vote. There are 5,000 houses in my constituency in which nobody is registered, yet I know that people live in them. That is 5,000 votes lost. Members mentioned how out-of-date the electoral rolls are, how that will make a difference, and the fact that by the time that we come to look at the issue again, they will be 10 or 20 years out of date, but the figures are regularly out of date. Even though we top up the rolls annually, there are still those 5,000 houses in which the people are not registered. There are also people who say that they live alone but do not. There are people who share their house, but who register only one person at that address, because that gets them a reduction in their council tax.

It is not beyond the wit of man or woman to work out a roll that does not just use the council’s way of carrying out registration. There are other methods by which we can gather information on who lives in a house, and who receives benefits of various types. We can do that, but not overnight. The Bill is a galloping horse that has taken off, and there is no stopping it, no matter what. The Deputy Prime Minister talks about fairness, but we on the Labour Benches are not kidded. We know fine well what the proposals are all about; they are about trying to put down the Labour party and Labour Members. They are about making sure that the Labour party never comes to government again. Well, we are going to stop that. It has been tried before, and the Labour party has always bounced back.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

Judging from the Library note, the hon. Gentleman’s electorate number 61,000. If one adds on the 5,000 thousand electors that it is claimed are missing—or even if one adds 10,000—it puts the electorate for Glasgow North West at about 70,000. My electorate in Milton Keynes South number nearly 90,000. Is that fair?

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[John Robertson]

That is the problem that I will discuss in my speech. I would hazard a guess that I have a lot more problems in my constituency than the hon. Gentleman does in his, even though it probably has the best MP it could possibly have. The fact is that we are disadvantaging the disadvantaged. The poll tax tried to do the same; Margaret Thatcher introduced it deliberately to get people off the electoral roll, so that people would not vote Labour. That was tried; it was run in Scotland before anywhere else, but—the hon. Gentleman may not know this—the Conservatives have only one Member of Parliament north of the border. After the next election, there will be one Liberal Member of Parliament there. Everybody will complain that all those who come to the House from north of the border are either Labour or from the Scottish National party, but it will be the Conservative and Liberal parties who brought that about. They are the ones who have made sure that their parties are not electable.

The Conservatives and Liberals do not even listen to their parties north of the border. The Liberal party will do its best to try to make sure that it gets seats, but I would not mind betting that the people around Inverness will go back to Labour; they used to have a good Labour Member of Parliament, and will return another Labour Member.

It will come as no surprise to everybody who knows me that I will not be voting for AV. However, I will not be able to campaign on the issue, because I will be too busy campaigning in the Scottish elections. Not only is there a first-past-the-post side to them, but there is a list system, too. There are now two systems that I need to promote and try to explain to the people of Scotland and, in particular, of my constituency, so that they know how they should vote and how they can get the best returns for a Labour candidate. Now, the Government are saying that we have to have a vote on AV as well; we have to have a referendum.

The issue is not that there is confusion in filling in ballot papers, although 100,000-odd people were disfranchised in the last Scottish election because two questions were put on the one ballot paper, as has been mentioned. That does not work; it confuses people when there are two different votes on one ballot paper, to such an extent that we have managed to ensure that there will be two ballot papers.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

rose—

[John Robertson]

I give way to my hon. Friend; he is my hon. Friend on this subject.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there should be one voting system for all elections in the United Kingdom, and that that should be first past the post?

[John Robertson]

The hon. Gentleman is right. If we are to introduce PR, let us have the same voting system for every form of election. Let us have the debate on whether PR or first past the post is the way to go. I am happy to have that argument, but I cannot do that north of the border because the Scottish elections take place at the same time, and I want to ensure that the Labour party is returned in Holyrood. I cannot do that if I am arguing about what sort of system we will have.

The hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter), who is no longer in his place, mentioned how many letters he had received on AV and produced a blank piece of paper. I agree with that. I cannot remember receiving one letter about the voting system. Other than the people in the House, nobody cares. One can tell from the number of people in the Press Gallery how much they care: they are not here. The Deputy Prime Minister is not present. He could not even wait until the first Opposition Back Bencher stood up to speak before he left. What chance is there of a proper debate if the Member proposing it from the Dispatch Box is not here to listen to the arguments? In effect, we are talking to ourselves, and I hope we are all enjoying the speech. Not long to go.

The most important thing to the people of Glasgow North West is to get an elected representative who they know is theirs. We have heard an argument for changing parliamentary boundaries, but that is not possible. How can people get to know their own constituency, the area represented by their Member of Parliament, how do they get to know that Member of Parliament, and how does the Member build a rapport with constituents and know that he is representing them in the way that they want him to?

We have already been through that in Scotland. We lost 13 seats for the 2005 elections, and constituencies changed. I am fortunate to have been a Member of Parliament since 2000. It was very difficult to get used to the new part of my constituency, which was previously represented by George Galloway. It was different then because he sought more publicity than I do. It was important for me to get out and about in that area, but because of the deprivation in my own area, I had to spend as much time as possible there. As has been pointed out, people’s expectations of their Member of Parliament are greater than 10 years ago.

We on the Labour Benches are not fooled. We know what the Bill is all about. I call on all Members to join us in the Lobby and vote against it.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Robertson Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes not only an important local point, but a very important national point, which is that Building Schools for the Future did nothing for primary schools. There is actually a growing problem of a shortage of primary school places, which was not being addressed by the previous Government but which will be addressed by this Government.

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

Q8. The Prime Minister will be aware of members of his own party using parliamentary rules to try to undermine the national minimum wage. Can he, here and now, dedicate himself to maintaining the national minimum wage, not only ensuring its support, but ensuring that it increases in line with inflation in the years to come?