Lobbying Transparency (In-house Lobbyists) Bill [HL]

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to be able to speak in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, twice in the same week. I do so today because I start from the premise that transparency is inherently a good thing.

Transparency in lobbying is not only a good thing; it is crucial, because transparency engenders and underpins trust in individuals, in the decision-making system and in the policy-influencing process informing it. The noble Baroness’s Bill makes sense because transparency makes sense. The fact that this modest Bill addresses an omission from the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014 makes the measures within it both logical and necessary—necessary because, as we have already heard, while consultant lobbyists comprise around 20% of those who lobby, they are currently the only group the register covers. In other words, the vast majority are not on the register. They need to be.

I speak as someone who was privileged to spend 95% of his career before coming to the House as an in-house lobbyist for some of the UK’s best household names in the charity sector. In fact, it was through working for charities such as RNID, Macmillan Cancer Relief, as it then was, Cancer Research UK and the Royal British Legion that I came to really appreciate the value of your Lordships’ House. On Monday of next week, the latest Armed Forces Bill, which this time focuses on the Armed Forces covenant, will receive its Second Reading. That is happening only because the principles of the Armed Forces covenant were enshrined in law for the first time in the Armed Forces Act 2011, when I led the public affairs team at the Royal British Legion. That, in turn, came about only because Philip Hollobone, formerly of the other place, and then your Lordships’ House took it to the wire and backed the legion’s campaign on the Armed Forces covenant right through to ping-pong—if my memory serves me correctly.

At no point in that campaign did I or any of my team act without transparency. Indeed, the Prime Minister at the time, now the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, might have wished that we had, at least in the directness of our campaigning. We did not pull our punches, and he was very gracious in the way he conceded the need for the covenant principles of no disadvantage due to service and special treatment where injury is sustained on service to be enshrined in law—and in none the less recommending me for a peerage a few years later. I thank him on both counts. I would never have had a problem with being required to sign a register of in-house lobbyists, and of lobbyists overall, and I cannot imagine why anyone who has nothing to hide would either.

I close by returning to the point about the importance of trust. It is the glue that binds people and politicians together. Earlier this week, the House recognised the urgency of getting the National Security (State Threats) Bill on to the statute book as soon as possible. It did so because democracy is under attack by hostile state and non-state actors as never before. This Bill is the other side of the same coin because it recognises that enhancing faith in our democratic parliamentary system is crucial to taking the fight to those who would seek to undermine our democratic principles. Now is the time to enhance trust through transparency. This Bill does that, and I welcome it.