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

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

If the Scotch Whisky Association was lobbying itself, then the important thing is that if the Scotch Whisky Association is meeting a Minister or a Permanent Secretary, then that would be in the returns which the Minister or Permanent Secretary makes. That would make it very clear that it is the Scotch Whisky Association that the Minister has been meeting. That is what I think people wish to know. In a moment I will address my noble friend’s amendments to say some of the things which the Government intend to do to actually improve the openness to which we are already committed and delivering.

The position—as I understand it—which we have adopted or sought to adopt is the position in Australia. I am delighted to see my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire here—I just wish he was actually right here because he has a wealth of knowledge and experience on this Bill. He very helpfully reminded me that we have modelled these provisions on the position as it is in Australia, whereas Canada has what might be described as medium regulation, which requires some of the information on employees and in-house lobbyists to which the noble Baroness and the noble and learned Lord referred. That system costs £3 million a year and, as my noble friend says, there is actually so much detail that it almost ceases to be useful. There is almost a detail overload, whereas our system replicates the Australian model. We expect it to cost considerably less, at £200,000 a year, and we believe that that is a very good system where the consultant lobbyists are identified, their clients are identified and the Minister works hand in hand with the regular returns from Ministers and Permanent Secretaries as to whom they have met.

I was actually struggling to see how the problems raised by the noble Baroness would be addressed by just adding more names to a register of people who are employed, unless—as we have committed to and are doing—you also indicate who Ministers are actually meeting. It does not add anything else by having the name of the person who was the in-house lobbyist, for the sake of argument, at one of the utility companies when they met the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

Until we see evidence of the case for introducing a register of all professional lobbyists, we remain reluctant to expand the scope of these proposals because we believe that what we have here is proportionate and problem-specific and will increase transparency without discouraging engagement by those who will be affected by policy and legislative decisions, such as businesses, charities, community groups and members of the public.

Amendment 11 would require consultant lobbying firms to disclose the names of all who undertake consultant lobbying activity on their behalf. The Government do not consider that such a requirement is either necessary or appropriate. The Bill requires the publication of the clients of consultant lobbyists, and the existing meeting publication scheme publishes both the persons Ministers and Permanent Secretaries meet as well as the body or firm that employs them. Transparency of who a consultant lobbyist is is therefore achieved on that information alone. To require the disclosure of the names of every private individual who is employed by a consultant lobbying firm would raise issues of proportionality and justification when the disclosure of such names provides no greater transparency, because we will know what the group, organisation or company is that meets the Minister or the Permanent Secretary. Therefore in return for listing a large number of names there seems to be no increase at all—not even a proportionate one—in the amount of the transparency than what is made available at the moment through the scheme of publication of persons whom Ministers and Permanent Secretaries meet.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

The Minister will recall that at every previous stage of the Bill I have pressed that the Government should recognise that the key issue is not who the lobbyist is but who he or she meets, for what purpose and when. I very much welcome what my noble and learned friend has just said about the quality of the record of meetings that this Government have introduced. Perhaps he can go just a step further. He will be aware, from the discussions that have taken place across the House—and there has been support for this at every stage—that the present records of meetings are very often way out of date and not very detailed, and there is a grave discrepancy between the records that come from some government departments and those that come from others. In addition, it is very difficult to access them in a normal way through the computer. I instanced that we tried to find 23 different websites that would give us that information. Is my noble and learned friend now saying that there will now be active involvement by the Government to make sure that the situation is improved right across government?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I am very grateful to my noble friend and I recognise his long-standing interest in this, not just in terms of the Bill. I hope that I will directly address the points he has raised in responding to points made by my noble friend Lord Norton.

My noble friend’s amendment would revise the title of the Bill so that it referred to the registration of consultant lobbyists rather than the transparency of lobbying. His amendment appears intended to suggest that the provisions outlined in Part 1 of the Bill will not enhance the transparency of lobbying. He will not be surprised to learn that I respectfully disagree. This Government have done more than any before to enhance the transparency of government and decision-making, and these provisions will extend that transparency. We are the first Government to proactively and regularly publish details about Ministers’ and Permanent Secretaries’ meetings with external organisations, and we do so alongside a huge amount of open data regarding departmental spending and procurement. We are recognised as international leaders in open government and we continue to introduce initiatives to further extend transparency in government and the public sector.

We listened carefully to the concerns expressed during the Committee stage debate. In response to the question raised by my noble friend Lord Tyler, I am pleased that I can today commit to noble Lords that we will make further improvements to the accessibility of government transparency information. We will ensure greater co-ordination of the publication of data sets so that all returns within a quarter can be found on one page. I hear the criticism that he makes, and we ought to get better at the speediness with which we make this information available, but we will improve the access to and presentation of those data, including by improving the consistency of presentation and titling. We will also ensure greater consistency in the content of departmental reporting, particularly on including the subject of meetings. Finally, we will ensure that the gov.uk transparency pages contain a link to the statutory register of lobbyists so that the data can be easily cross-referenced.

The practical implications of those improvements are that: rather than having to visit a number of different sites or pages, all information will be accessed via one easily located page of gov.uk; the consistency of those data will be improved so that the transparency reports can be more easily located via search functions; and the subject of the meetings will be set out more helpfully—for example, rather than describing them as “introductory” or “catch-up” meetings, the detail of the meeting discussion will be outlined. Therefore, if, for example, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change was meeting someone, the subject would include not just energy policy but things such as fracking.

I hope that these practical proposals to which the Government are committing themselves will improve the transparency of decision-making further than we have already achieved, and that the Part 1 provisions will complement and enhance them. I dare say that they will do more to improve transparency than just having a long list of employees of a consultant firm. Obviously, if an employee—the noble Baroness mentioned Bell Pottinger, so for the sake of consistency let us say that this was an employee of that firm—had a meeting, the record would list not just “Joe Bloggs” but “Joe Bloggs of Bell Pottinger” and the subject of the discussion. As a result of the Bill, the list of Bell Pottinger’s clients would also be made available. I therefore believe that what we propose today does far more to improve transparency than simply making available a list of employees, and it reflects suggestions made by a number of colleagues who have made representations.

Although this does not relate directly to the actual register or to the Government’s scheme, I can also indicate that in our response to debates in Committee and to concerns that have been raised by Members of your Lordships’ House—I do not believe that this has been raised on any of the amendments now before us—we are committing ourselves to subjecting the appointment of the registrar to the scrutiny of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the other place. By doing so, we are reiterating our commitment to the independence of the registrar.

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[Lord Hardie]

My Lords, this amendment reflects a similar amendment to that which was debated in Committee, along with other amendments, including an amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. The Bill regulates lobbying activities only where the object of the lobbying is a Minister of the Crown, a Permanent Secretary, a Second Permanent Secretary or a person serving in the government offices listed in Part 3 of Schedule 1. Again, I do not intend to repeat what I said in Committee, but it is my respectful submission to your Lordships that the class is too restrictive, as was observed by many noble Lords both at Second Reading and in Committee. There seemed to be a general consensus across the Committee that the persons listed would not be the first port of call for lobbyists, who would probably concentrate on political advisers, Parliamentary Private Secretaries and more junior civil servants before approaching Permanent Secretaries, Second Permanent Secretaries and Ministers. Indeed, in the very helpful contribution made by my noble friend Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, who is not in his place, it appears unlikely that Permanent Secretaries will be lobbied if the noble Lord’s own considerable experience is taken into account.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, confirmed my own experience that Parliamentary Private Secretaries have direct access to Ministers and are involved in some meetings determining departmental and government policy. The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, observed in Committee:

“When this Bill was considered in the other place, the point was well made that it appears to have been written by people who do not understand lobbying”.—[Official Report, 5/11/13; col. 139.]

Lobbyists would focus on the channel for reaching the Minister and that channel would include a political adviser, a Parliamentary Private Secretary or civil servants below the level specified in the Bill. It is clear that the Bill will be of little effect if it confines communications to those currently specified in it and does not focus on those people more likely to be the object of lobbying activity. If lobbying is confined to the more effective targets and the Minister is not directly lobbied, there will be no requirement for registration, not even by the restrictive category of consultant lobbyist. Such a result is contrary to the stated desire and the desirable intention of transparency that underpins Part 1 of the Bill.

In his response in Committee the Minister—I am delighted to see him in his place after his illness—referred to the number of civil servants who would be affected if the scope of this provision were extended as proposed. As noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, observed in his intervention at col. 149, the number of such civil servants is irrelevant. What is at issue is the identification of the class of persons the lobbying of whom will require registration. That class has to be sufficiently wide to make lobbying transparent.

In view of the discussion in Committee, it is disappointing that the Government have not come forward with their own amendment to improve the Bill in this respect. The amendment in my name is an attempt to remedy that omission. Without this amendment, the Bill will fail in its objective of increasing the transparency of lobbying Government. It will further undermine public confidence in our political system because it will be seen as an example of Parliament either failing to understand the lobbying process or failing to take effective measures to address and identify a problem. I beg to move.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, Amendment 3, in my name and that of my noble friend, is grouped with the amendment just moved by the noble and learned Lord. As has already been made very clear this afternoon, the key issue is not the role, title or job description of the people who take part in the activity of lobbying but the activity itself. That is absolutely critical. I have a lot of sympathy with my noble friend Lord Norton, who, in his usual way, has put his finger right on that point. That is why I thought that it was extremely important to have the statement from my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness a few minutes ago about the nature, character, efficiency and accuracy of the register of meetings with those who are taking decisions, or making proposals to Parliament, on behalf of the Government.

I should say in parentheses, in welcoming back my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that way back at Second Reading, let alone in Committee, he expressed a lot of interest in the proposals that we were making from these Benches about improving the status of the record of meetings that was introduced for the first time—for which the Government should get credit—in the past few years. As I said in that earlier debate, I am not so worried about who the lobbyists are but am very worried that we know who they lobby, what they lobby about and when. The very full statement made by my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness a few minutes ago goes a very long way to meeting that anxiety. We have made it clear at every stage of the Bill that, for us, that is the core issue. The proactive publication of data on ministerial meetings by the Government makes a potentially huge difference. That is what transparency should be all about.

We also believe it is important that that record should indicate when the meeting with in-house lobbyists takes place. Whether they are the managing director of a whisky firm, or a lowly employee of any other firm, it is the subject matter of the meeting, when it happened and with whom that is of considerable importance. I agree with my noble and learned friend and I am delighted that the House agreed too, a few minutes ago, that simply extending the register into a sort of enormous directory, like a telephone directory, with every lobbyist in the land, whether from a church, charity or voluntary organisation, would not really seem to be anything more than disguising the wood for the trees.

Amendment 3 deals very specifically, and only, with the issue of special advisers. Many in your Lordships’ House have had enormous responsibility in the Civil Service. What is unusual about a special adviser is that he or she of course is not responsible to the head of the department: he or she is not a full-time employed member of the Civil Service, and their first loyalty and responsibility is to the political master for whom they work. The special adviser’s responsibility is to the Secretary of State, or other ministerial politician, and his or her relationship is with them. It is therefore our view that this is the one major exception that should be tackled, either in this Bill or in some other way, because these are special people—special advisers are, by definition, outwith the normal hierarchy of responsibility to the Permanent Secretary in the department.

The principle in the Bill is that if the consultant gains access to or influences a Minister on behalf of a client, the public should know who they and their clients are. However, anyone who has been in this building for any length of time or who has lobbied knows perfectly well that influencing a Minister does not necessarily mean seeing them yourself. There is sometimes an even better way: to meet the Minister’s special adviser. Spads have a rather unfair bad reputation in the press. Many will remember Clare Short’s description of them as living “in the dark”. I think that was about a particularly period in the previous Government, perhaps, and it may not be appropriate for all periods of recent history. That epithet then led to a thought-provoking analysis of the role of special advisers in a book of the same name by the respected academic Dr Andrew Blick. In my limited experience of being on the Government side of the House in the past three years and therefore having spads in my own party, it does not feel as though many now live in the dark. We see them all the time. They are helpful, they are influential; in many cases persuading a spad is the first step to persuading a Minister.

I know that this is also part of their job: to meet outside groups. It is very proper and very effective—a proper role that they should undertake. Perhaps it is a better one than a civil servant in the normal hierarchy. Ministers have only a certain amount of time and sometimes it is the right judgment to ask a senior adviser to see someone first, sound them out and explain the Government’s thinking—there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, these meetings with outside groups are important and details of them, like the ministerial meetings which were so fully referred to earlier, should be transparent.

The first step we could take today to make that point in this House is to say that in this Bill those consultants who lobby spads should have to register, just as if they were meeting Ministers. It would then follow, of course, that although this is outside the immediate scope of the Bill, for this to be meaningful spads would also need to publish all their meetings with all lobbyists, whether they be consultant lobbyists or in-house, just as Ministers do. I very much hope that when we look in detail at the record of meetings in future to see how these can be improved and made even more influential and transparent, my noble friends on the Front Bench will acknowledge that this would be an important step to take.

This is not in any way intended to malign spads or imply that anything they do is wrong. It is the opposite. It says that what they do is useful and, on many occasions, necessary, but keeping any aspect of it hidden feeds a largely unnecessary suspicion that they are up to no good. I referred at earlier stages of the Bill to the fact that two of the big lobbying scandals in this Parliament have involved close advisers to Ministers rather than Ministers themselves, and that resignations resulted.

For example, the Murdoch empire recognised these facts of life very early on. We should too. Both scandals would probably never have got to this stage had encounters between close ministerial advisers and outside groups been a matter of public record. It is therefore as much in the Government’s interests as in the public interest—surely the two should fit hand in glove anyway—for this information to be freely available. I quoted before and I shall quote again. The Prime Minister memorably said:

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant”.

I agree.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, until I became Deputy Leader of your Lordships’ House I did not have a special adviser. I now have one but I am not sure that she has met anyone, although she has said that if she could get a diary secretary it might be a bonus. We take the view, as I indicated earlier, that it is the Ministers who are making the decisions. On that basis, we believe that it is communications with Ministers—and not just meetings, as the noble and learned Lord said—that are pertinent. We believe that these proposals are appropriate and proportionate. I therefore urge the noble and learned Lord—

[Lord Tyler]

I am grateful to my noble and learned friend, who is very good to take points from us all. I sympathise with the point he makes about the scale of the increase in the number of people who would be involved if Amendment 2 was agreed, and the potential enormous cost as a result. However, that does not apply to Amendment 3, as has been made clear on all sides of the House. The very specific nature of the character, responsibility and role of special advisers—I think the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, said that there are 98 of them—would not require a great increase in the amount of information to be given by government in terms of both the record of meetings and who, as regards lobbyists, meets them. Can he give an undertaking that between now and Third Reading he will look very hard—in sympathy with the views that have been expressed on all sides of the House—at the practicalities of including special advisers? In terms of both the meetings they have and the nature of the people who they meet, there is broad support right across the House for their being exceptional. They are indeed, as their title states, special. In those circumstances I hope that my noble friend is prepared to look again at that issue.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I know that my noble friend knows me well enough and I hope that I have made enough appearances at this Dispatch Box for noble Lords to know that I would not wish to give the kind of undertaking that my noble friend seeks if it were to raise an expectation that I am not necessarily able to deliver on. I therefore invite the noble and learned Lord to withdraw his amendment.

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Moved by

[Lord Tyler]

3: Clause 2, page 2, line 7, after “secretary” insert “or special adviser”

[Lord Tyler]

I beg to move, and to test the opinion of the House.

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[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, in Committee I moved an amendment to deal with the linkage between the registration process and existing codes of conduct in the lobbying industry. I warmly welcome the movement that the Government have now undertaken. If I recall rightly, we were given encouraging noises on that particular point in Committee. Therefore I very much support Amendments 12, 15 and 16. I shall listen with interest to what my noble and learned friend has to say about the stiffening of that resolve—if I may put it like that—incorporated in Amendments 13 and 14.

Amendment 23 is, almost by definition, premature. I want to see how this works. I do not want to put more responsibilities on the statutory register than it can easily undertake at the outset. The noble Baroness was quite right to talk about the future. In this particular case, we legislate for the future when it arrives, rather than put more responsibilities on the registrar at this stage. I will listen with interest to what my noble and learned friend has to say about Amendments 13 and 14, to see if there seems to be a practical way in which these could be incorporated and therefore give an even stronger statutory link between the register and the existing codes.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, as I understand the present arrangement—and I am only going by memory from what was said in Committee—the Public Relations Consultants Association already has a code of conduct. If it is correct that the professional organisations may over the longer term actually wind up—and in the period between Committee and Report we were led to believe that this is the case—then I presume that no code of conduct will necessarily apply. That is unless the Government introduce a model code on the basis that my noble friend on the Front Bench has just argued for. I asked the Minister in what circumstances an organisation that registered would not wish to introduce a code of conduct. I presume that during the consultation to which the Minister referred when he moved his amendment, they made clear what those circumstances would be. I wonder if we can be told what Ministers were told. There must be some explanation for why they resist. If there is an explanation—perhaps it is in the written brief or something—maybe we could see it prior to Third Reading. I simply cannot understand what they are objecting to, and we need to know during the course of the debate what it is.