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

Thérèse Coffey Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Main]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point. I do not have a legal brain, but it might be possible to sort that out. My view is that if, in the course of a conversation, somebody makes a general point about how things can best be moved forward, that is hardly the same as saying, “Here is the mobile telephone number. I’m sure the Minister will meet you for lunch.” or, “How about we have a catch-up over coffee and I will tell you all about this new project I’m trying to push in your area.” I do not feel that those two things are the same.

I am willing—as, I am sure, are many hon. Members—to take on board any improvements that make the Bill deliver what most of us want it to deliver. We can put exceptions and guidance in the Bill, and I included in the new clause clarifications such as

“anything done in response to or compliance with a court order;

anything done for the purpose of complying with a requirement under an enactment;

a public response to an invitation to information or evidence;…

a formal response to a public invitation to tender;

anything done by a person acting in official capacity on behalf of a government organisation;”.

I have tried to include exclusions, and I am more than happy for people to add others if they think they could word the new clause better. We want to get rid of cosy chats, pressure behind the scenes, and people with the big money—£12 million in my constituency has been spent in trying to get this through, which is probably peanuts compared with some other industries.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mrs Main]

I am just about to draw to a close because I would like to hear about the amendments tabled by other Members. This is not about filibustering or talking out the Bill today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

Even that most brutal sport, boxing, has a code of honour so that when an opponent is bloody, battered and exhausted, they are not kept in the ring but we try—if we can—to deliver the coup de grâce. I do not like witnessing the parliamentary equivalent of propping up the opponent. In virtually every aspect, this Bill is battered, bloodied, and ready to fall over. Rather than the grizzled cornermen, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the House are pushing in some game bantamweights to keep the fight going. They are good people, but they are not here today. They are putting other people up to argue for a Bill that was not their doing. Rather than that, we should end this cruel sport and do what the all-party Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform proposed, once it was allowed to report and get engaged in this process. It proposed that the Bill be put into a special Committee so it that could be discussed and got right—not delayed, but brought back to the House as a new Bill that does the business for everybody—within six months. I argue that there would be a strong consensus behind that new Bill.

We have worked hard and I pay tribute to my Committee, two members of which—the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn)—are present in the debate. Other members are on shift to come and do their turn over the next three days. Both they, and members of staff who worked incredibly hard to get a report in front of Members in about seven working days, deserve the utmost credit.

I believe in evidence-based policy making. Through that period of about seven days, we called for, sought and proactively received evidence that provided a welter of overwhelming information to say that the Bill does not work or do what it promised to do. This Bill does not do what it should say on the can—I do not know whether the Trade Descriptions Act applies in the House of Commons, but if it did there would be a strong case for putting somebody at least in front of a magistrate. This is not the lobbying Bill, it is the 1% lobbying Bill. Most of the problems that have been identified across the House, in the media and elsewhere, will not be affected or tackled by the Bill.

As well as producing a massive wodge of evidence for Members to interpret, my Committee also proposed a number of amendments designed to make the Bill what it should be—a genuine lobbying Bill. In clause 1, as part of our long debate over the next three days, we are attempting to ask: who are the lobbyists? When one lobbying group’s trade association says, “We think maybe 20% of lobbyists will be covered” and another says, “1% of lobbyists will be covered”, there is clearly a massive welter of people who do what we normally think of as lobbying but who will not be covered.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

I would like to understand how many people the hon. Gentleman believes will be required to register as a lobbyist under the proposals that he and his Committee have put forward.

[Mr Allen]

Under the Government proposals, the Public Relations Consultants Association says that fewer than 1% of meetings with Ministers take place by consultants without the clients present. Transparency International states that the Government are not even going to capture the 20% of the industry that they have identified as the reason for the register. One can choose whatever figure one wishes.

On the earlier intervention by the Deputy Leader of the House, I say gently that this is not a choice between 100% of everything we regard as lobbying being registered and enormous bureaucracy, and 1% being registered. Let us grow up, have a debate, and find a happy medium. It does not have to be perfect the first time, but it certainly does not need to be as imperfect as this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

In following the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), let me say that I am surprised that he did not rest his rebuttal of the arguments about amendment 76 on clause 4, which clearly shows that the register—in the way it deals with persons—would cover those exact points. However, that does not fully allay the concerns we should have when we see the Government’s amendments to what is already a highly flawed Bill, not least Government amendments 92 to 95 to schedule 1, about which I am sure we will hear from the Government.

Like others, I do not want to take up too much time now, given the range of issues that we need to reach in order to deal with the layers of inadequacy and evasion that are, to my mind, deliberately built into the Bill. The Government who told us that lobbying was the next big scandal have basically come up with the narrowest of nets to deal with professional lobbying, restricting it not to professional lobbying as we all know and understand it—lobbying as we see it practised in and around the parliamentary estate and elsewhere in public life, at various levels of government—but to a narrow definition of “consultant lobbying”.

We have a net that is deliberately narrow, made up of holes that are deliberately wide. That is why I welcome the amendments from the Opposition Front Bench and the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which would ensure a wider net with smaller holes. If Parliament achieves that, we will have done something for our credibility, as the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) said. However, if we remain with the Bill as provided by the Government, or if we amend it in the way they have proposed, Parliament will be open not just to ridicule, but to suspicion. Why would we go along with a glaringly inadequate Bill? Why would we fail to respond to the representations that have come from so many people in the business who will not be affected—I am sure that some will be happily unaffected—but are bemused at what the Government have produced in part 1?

I know that we looked at the Bill more widely on Second Reading, Mr Caton, but I hope it is in order to make the argument in the debate about this group of amendments and part 1 that it is hard for people not to be suspicious when they see the lobbying to be registered so narrowly defined in part 1, and the issues to be covered in part 2 so widely scoped. As many hon. Members who have spoken have pointed out, none of the lobbying scandals that have happened in recent years—not even those during the life of this Parliament—would have been ameliorated or mitigated in any way by the scope of this Bill. Instead of pretending that it will solve the next big scandal, let us be clear: it would not have addressed any of the big, small or medium scandals that we have seen in the last few years. That has to be a matter of design on the part of the Government. They cannot have missed all those points just as a matter of haphazard chance and sloppy drafting. To my mind, the scoping in part 1 is deliberately evasive.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

The Government have already said that they are trying to fix a specific issue relating to a gap in transparency. I do not think I got an answer from the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), so can the hon. Gentleman explain how many people he thinks will be required to register under the amendments we are discussing? Does he believe that MPs should also make a declaration whenever they meet a lobbyist, be they in-house, or from a trade union or a charity?

[Mark Durkan]

As other hon. Members have said, we do need a lobbying Bill, but we needed more consultation and proper pre-legislative scrutiny precisely to determine how many people would be caught and whether they should be comfortably caught under this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but does she agree that the transparency shown by publishing ministerial diaries, including the companies that Ministers meet and the purpose of the meetings, fulfils that role, and that trying to extend the law is effectively using a sledgehammer to crack a small nut, which concerns the PR industry in particular?