Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Lord Bichard Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bichard (CB)]

My Lords, as a former Permanent Secretary, I rise still bathing in the warmth of the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. Would that some of the current Permanent Secretaries were here to hear them; I think that they might have been moved to tears.

I shall speak only briefly in support of the amendments proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, and the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. It is one thing for Parliament to show that it does not fully understand, or understand very much, the lobbying process; it is a rather more serious thing for Parliament to show that it does not understand how Whitehall and the decision-making process work. That process works increasingly through special advisers and senior civil servants, not through Ministers and Permanent Secretaries. For this not to be recognised in the Bill is very odd and shows serious flaws.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I spoke in Committee on this matter, so I shall be brief today. My concern is that special advisers often have more influence on ministerial decision-taking than do Members of Parliament, because they have daily access.

I want to tell a story of an incident that I experienced in 1999 on a train coming from my former constituency of Workington to London. To my side in the carriage was the Member of Parliament for Blackpool and opposite were two young men who were on their way to London, and we struck up a conversation. They told us that they were going to London to lobby in the department on the need to introduce new gambling legislation. As Labour MPs, we had absolutely no idea that discussions were going on in the department about gambling and gambling legislation. That was in 1999—some 14 years ago. Those two young men were going to meet the special adviser in the department concerned. I was very interested and asked them how they had made contact. They explained that they had done so at a political level, locally to start with, and had then been referred to the special adviser. There was no need as far as they were concerned to see Ministers.

In that particular case, the embryo of the debate had started with access from the industry directly to political advisers in the department. The discussion would then permeate within the department between, as has just been said, civil servants and the special advisers, to the exclusion of Parliament and individual Members of Parliament. I find that deeply troubling. One of the reasons why I want special advisers to be included in the Bill is that I want that process to become more transparent, so that individual Members of Parliament can at least see what is happening within a department, what influences are being brought to bear and the dangers that might arise. If those special advisers then organise meetings between various groups and Ministers without Members of Parliament being aware of the scale of the lobbying going on—I know that I am making a very subtle point—it is at that point that Members of Parliament need to know that such relationships are being forged. That is why I strongly support the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and I hope that we have the opportunity to vote on it.