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

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, unfortunately I was unable to attend the Second Reading of the Bill due to the fact that domestic committees of the House were meeting and I was otherwise engaged. However, I have read the whole of the Second Reading debate.

It is quite clear that the Government have not really put a case for what they are doing in this very limited form. One speech that struck me from reading the debate was that of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who suggested that a very different approach to the Bill could well be taken. I just wondered whether Ministers had considered the contents of his contribution. His is a sort of halfway-house proposal: it would dilute the value of the register but would ensure that the kind of information that we really need was available. Today, he slightly alluded to his case, and I believe that the questions he raised at Second Reading should be answered during the deliberations on the Bill. I cannot understand for the life of me what is driving the Government down this route, apart from some huge PR effort to convince the public that they are doing something about lobbying in line with their coalition agreement. However, their proposal does not meet the terms of what I understand was agreed.

I have a number of questions that I should like to ask, and I have tabled amendments of my own, to which we will come later. What is the Government’s latest estimate of the number of organisations and individuals that will register? Some work on that must have been done. I have seen some figures published but, in the light of the speeches at Second Reading showing up the deficiencies in the Bill, and recognising that many will not be required to register because they will not meet the criteria for registration—information which, prior to Second Reading, the Government may well not have considered—what is now their estimate of the number that will finally register?

I should like to know more about the discussions that took place between departmental officials and Ministers and the professional associations. Since the early 1970s, in one form or another—I shall give more detail later in the debate on the work that was done in the 1970s and 1980s in this area—a system has been in operation which provides far more information than the Government are seeking the lobbyists and lobbying organisations to provide. It has been suggested in this House and in correspondence that we have received that their efforts may no longer be necessary. Some of them may be inclined simply to discard the work that they have been doing over the years and rely on the Government’s far more limited source of information. Surely that would be totally counterproductive. I wonder whether Ministers or civil servants have been told what the intentions are. I think that the House is entitled to know what the professional organisations intend to do in the event that this register is set in place.

Finally, on in-house lobbyists and their exclusion, it is simply not credible to call a Bill the name given to this Bill when it excludes the vast majority of lobbyists in the United Kingdom. It is not credible; it is a joke. Inevitably, there will be some scandal which will draw attention to the deficiencies in the registration system that has been set up by the Government. It may be for a future Government to find themselves defending the indefensible. I hope that the Minister can answer some of my questions prior to my moving my amendments.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

I had to go abroad on the day of Second Reading and I very much regret that I was unable to make a contribution. I do not intend to make a Second Reading speech. However, I should declare a couple of interests. Some years ago I wrote a book on lobbying. It is a very small interest because it is out of print and no one can buy it. It was a do-it-yourself book on how to lobby and was intended specifically for the voluntary sector. The other interest I want to declare is that I spent some years until coming into this House as chief executive of the Refugee Council. Indeed, one of the things that I did most was to lobby. The organisation did quite a lot of lobbying on refugee policy.

I cannot for the life of me understand why that activity should not be incorporated in the register. If we had had the money, we could have hired a firm of lobbyists, which might have had to be on the register. The fact is that we did not have the money and I simply carried out that activity myself. It took me to all three party conferences: going to the Lib-Dem and Tory party conferences, as well as the Labour Party conference, is a subject for another day. I lobbied quite blatantly and I had two members of staff who also did quite a lot of lobbying. I hope that the Minister can tell me why that activity should not be covered in the proposed register.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, let me start by stressing that lobbying is a normal, valuable, regular aspect of any healthy democratic political system. The question is one of transparency and certainly not one of trying to reduce the level of lobbying in this country. Part 1 was designed to address the problem of consultant lobbying firms entertaining and going to see Ministers without it being clear who they were representing. The Government have dealt with the question of employed lobbyists—members of charities and others—through their arrangements for transparency. Every three months, I and others have to declare who we have met and what organisations employ them, including anyone who happens to be an old friend, perhaps from student days: I have to list “the Information Commissioner” or whoever it may be because a meeting has taken place.

We have looked at other systems, in particular the Canadian one, which adopts the universal system of wishing to take on board every single lobbyist. It is a very large and expensive system and unlike what we propose—I should point out to the noble Lord, Lord Norton—it is funded by the public purse and costs the equivalent of £3 million a year.

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[Lord Dubs]

My Lords, I was a very junior Minister in Northern Ireland and, of course, was being lobbied all the time. Such activity would, of course, be covered by the Bill, except to say that most of the people doing the lobbying were not consultant lobbyists but from a range of organisations. Perhaps I may make a few brief points.

I very much agree with my noble friend Lord Rooker about shadow Ministers. It is clear that any lobbyist worth their salt will pinpoint those who will be of influence, should there be a change of Government after an election, and make a beeline for them. That is an important issue. I also agree with my noble friend about government agencies. There were a large number of government agencies in Northern Ireland, which were a bit closer to government than the ones in England. Nevertheless, the point my noble friend makes still applies—I am quite sure that a lot of lobbying of those government agencies went on, and goes on, which would not be covered by the definition of a Permanent Secretary.

However, I should like to make another general point about civil servants. As I said earlier, although I had lots of meetings and was being lobbied, that activity would be covered because I was there. But of course civil servants are lobbied to secure access to a Minister, and that is a crucial part of the process. They need not be very senior civil servants but be senior enough to say to whoever is doing the lobbying, “Yes, I will get you a meeting with the Minister”. The Minister has to agree to such a meeting but in the way things are that nearly always happens. Civil servants who are not that senior can therefore be quite influential. Indeed, in all my meetings with civil servants during that time and when people lobbied me, I do not think that the Permanent Secretary of one of the two departments I represented was there on more than a handful of occasions. It was all done at a less senior level. I am bound to say that I cannot work out where the cut-off point should be, although there clearly has to be one. One of the considerations should be to include those civil servants who are senior enough to assist in the process of gaining access to a Minister. That might be a helpful way of looking at this issue. Someone said that Permanent Secretaries are ultimately responsible. I would say, “if they know”, because, in the nature of things, so much is going on I do not believe that a Permanent Secretary could possibly know about all the contacts made by lobbyists with more junior civil servants. There is a bit of a problem there.

Lastly, I should like to comment on advisers. I was not senior enough to have an adviser, although the Secretary of State had one who helped all of us. I very much agree with noble Lords who said that political advisers are crucial in the process. They open doors, can be extremely influential and give advice to their Ministers, having been lobbied in turn. I am therefore puzzled. I understand that the Minister has said—we had meetings on this before Second Reading—that transparency is what he is after, but I am puzzled as to why the Government are taking such a narrow view of the way in which the lobbying process works. We are talking about a process that seeks to influence legislation and public policy, and the scope of the Bill should be a bit wider to cover people who lobby in that manner.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I take that. I was about to say that the issue of proportionality—how far we go—is a really difficult one here. However, if one is talking about who gives you access to a Minister perhaps we need to include diary secretaries for example. Who we include and who we do not is itself a matter of some difficulty.

[Lord Dubs]

As I was one the of noble Lords who mentioned that point, surely it is those civil servants who are senior enough to decide that they will put to the Minister the prospect of a meeting with the lobbyists?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Perhaps we need to discuss between Committee and Report which definition of senior civil servants Ministers and various Members of the House wish to adopt. I was adopting my own understanding of the senior Civil Service, which is the 5,000 I mentioned.

I will be interested to hear from the Opposition whether they also need to be included in this. Again, that is something that perhaps the Opposition Front Bench and the Government should usefully discuss between Committee and Report. I come back to say that the best can be the enemy of the good in requiring too many people to be brought within the context of this Bill. I take the very powerful speech from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, about non-ministerial departments to mind. I also take some of his other points about particular senior civil servants. We will consider all these points and, in that light, I trust that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his amendment.