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

Debate between Mark Durkan and Tracey Crouch

Tuesday 10th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

rose—

[Tracey Crouch]

rose—

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

Debate between Mark Durkan and Tracey Crouch

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very pertinent point.

This is why so many people are dissatisfied with the Bill, including bona fide, honest-to-goodness, up-front lobbyists who want to be able to conduct their business on good terms. They need to know that the register exists to ensure that they can conduct their business not only on good terms but on equal terms with anyone else who is competing to provide similar services, peddling similar influence and perhaps having an even greater effect on Government decisions on policy, on the framing of legislation, on programmes or on projects.

I hope that we will come to the amendments that try to address other problems relating to the Bill, but I am speaking in support of those Opposition amendments that are properly seeking to change the definitions relating to consultant lobbying. My own amendment 161 would ensure that the Bill covered more people involved in commercial lobbying who provide either full-time or significant part-time lobbying services on behalf of what the Government call non-lobbying or mainly non-lobbying businesses, and that they too would need to register. Such a provision would protect those who meet those lobbyists, be they MPs, members of Select Committees, Ministers, Parliamentary Private Secretaries, permanent secretaries or senior civil servants. I would like all of them to be scoped into the Bill, rather than it simply focusing on Ministers and permanent secretaries. They would all be better protected if the legislation were better cast.

I am sorry that the Government have scrambled the Bill in this way. If we do not take the time now to get it right, many people will have to pay the price later. Some people will deservedly find themselves caught up in a scandal, but others who do not deserve it will also find themselves in that predicament, because we are deliberately leaving twilight zones in which people will bump into things that they did not realise were there. People might be told that certain things are okay under the legislation—just as people were told that certain things were okay under the expenses rules—only for a different assessment to be made following public scrutiny. We must be vigilant about the standards we are setting for ourselves and others. That means that we need to support the Opposition amendments, and particularly those tabled by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee.

I fully respect the points made by the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) about new clause 5, but I have problems with some of the details of the proposal, and not least with its implications for charities and other bodies. It also sticks to the narrow definition of consultant lobbying, even if it completely recasts that definition by what it subsequently goes on to propose. I understand that she tabled the new clause to make a point, and she has made a valid point very well. She has indicated that she will not press the new clause to a Division, and I will not press my amendment to a vote either.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

This has been a fascinating debate, and I shall not repeat the points that have already been made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) and other colleagues across the Committee. I want to bring some of my own experience to the Chamber. Fundamentally, what is wrong with this part of the Bill is that it does not reflect any kind of understanding of the lobbying industry, of which I am a proud ex-member.

The lobbying industry has changed dramatically since I first joined it in 1998. I worked for a consultancy that, if it existed today, would be caught by the Bill’s provisions because it was a dedicated Government relations lobbying agency. However, the industry has changed and most public affairs firms are now part of wider communications groups, on which the Bill will have no impact. I worked in the industry between 1998 and 2003, and it gave me a fantastic opportunity to learn many things and to engage in the political process.

We should be clear that the lobbying industry is important to a fair and democratic society. It is also important to us as Members of Parliament, in that it can help to inform and educate us on incredibly technical issues. We should not always view the industry with deep, dark suspicion. The only point in the debate that I have disagreed with so far was the description of lobbyists as mendacious and as performing some kind of dark arts. That is incredibly unfair, because most lobbyists are highly professional and very proud of what they do. They want transparency in their industry, and they want a level playing field. The Bill delivers neither. If anything, it could make the industry more opaque, and it will certainly not produce a more level playing field.

I would like to give the House an example from my own experience. Between 2005 and 2010, I was head of public affairs for Aviva. It was known as Norwich Union when I joined it, but it subsequently changed its name. We had a large lobbying team here in the UK and in Europe. As I look around the Chamber, I can see many people whom I, as head of public affairs, probably would have lobbied.

My lobbying team would not have been covered by the provisions in the Bill. We employed a major City law firm to provide specific counsel on legislative issues. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon has pointed out, such lawyers will not be covered by the Bill either. We also employed a consultancy that provided public affairs advice and was part of a wider group; it, too, would not be included in the Bill. We worked closely, too, with trade associations, which again would not be included. If we paid for research by a think-tank and lobbied on the outcome, that, too, would not be included in the Bill.

It is therefore quite clear that this part of the Bill needs to be taken off the table and looked at again, particularly in respect of expanding the definitions. I have a great deal of sympathy with the Opposition Front-Bench team’s amendment, as does the Association of Professional Political Consultants, because it wants a level playing field. Those of us who have worked in the industry consider ourselves professional lobbyists, not just consultant lobbyists.