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

Thomas Docherty Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an eloquent case. The hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) is a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Under the current proposals, only two of the nearly 1,000 meetings would have been captured. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a completely nonsensical approach?

[Mark Durkan]

What my hon. Friend describes absolutely trivialises the claims that the Government are making for this Bill, especially when we consider what bearing it would have on the amount of lobbying of the Government and what would be registered. If we consider the Bill in terms of transparency, the slight, little bit of translucence that will emerge at the very edge of the current lobbying business is hardly what would pass for transparency in any meaningful sense of the word.

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[Chris Bryant]

It is not a question of the advantage that they would gain; it is a question of the disadvantage of being on the voluntary register. If the Government are to introduce one mandatory register, saying that it is all that is required by public society, of course such organisations will make that decision.

[Thomas Docherty]

The Deputy Leader of the House has just given a figure of 350. I suspect that the Government plucked that figure from Australia and Canada and bunged it into the impact assessment, and that it is not based on any knowledge of the United Kingdom industry.

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is right. It is clear from clause 2—the amendments that we are considering relate partly to clause 2 and to paragraph 3 of schedule 1 —that any organisation whose main purpose is not lobbying, such as a legal firm, an accountancy firm of a broadcaster, will not be required to register at all. The hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon made a very good point when he said that the industry had changed in the last 10 years. Many Government relations companies that used to stand alone have been brought into wider companies that deal with public relations and communications of a much more general sort. Those organisations will not be required to register. Moreover, the words

“in the course of a business”

in clause 2 make it pretty clear that a large number of businesses will be able to opt out of the provision entirely.

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[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It does not have to stop there. The lobbyist can carry on, as paragraph 3 of schedule 1 states:

“A person does not carry on the business of consultant lobbying if…the person…carries on a business which is mainly a non-lobbying business”.

They can opt out in hundreds of different ways.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend. Is he aware that Lord Black not only uses his position directly but awards a parliamentary pass to a senior lobbyist of the Telegraph Media Group, who can then wander freely through the corridors of Parliament lobbying MPs and peers?

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[John McDonnell]

That is an extremely valid point. In the real world of lobbying, I have experience of that constituency issue, with BAA employees employed virtually full-time—yes, with a range of experts—intensively lobbying relatively junior staff in the Department for Transport and the Treasury, building up a head of steam around a particular demand from BAA that eventually shapes the decision made by Ministers. My understanding of the debate so far is that such lobbying would not be covered by the Bill and BAA in its new form, as Heathrow airport, would not be caught by it.

Things have moved on. Governments are increasingly outsourcing the preparation of the material that will eventually enable Ministers to take decisions. That outsourcing relies upon the commissioning of external experts—not within Government, but often academics and others—and in addition to that, the setting up of various commissions. The Howard Davies commission is consulting various organisations on behalf of Government about the expansion of aviation in London and the south-east, especially the issues surrounding the expansion of Heathrow. My understanding of the Bill is that the lobbying of the external advisers and members of such commissions is also not caught by the legislation.

Members may have experienced that process, but let me explain. An intensive lobbying exercise is being undertaken by the aviation industry across the country. Businesses that own individual airports are intensively lobbying Howard Davies’s commission, and they are lobbying external experts commissioned to undertake pieces of work, because obviously they are looking to expand their particular airport. I do not believe, and I am happy if the Minister wants to advise me differently, that any of that lobbying will be caught by the Bill.

The plea from the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) and the hon. Members for Chatham and Aylesford, for St Albans and for Foyle—right across the piece—was that, if we are going to legislate, we must legislate in the real world, and we are not doing so. We are going through an exercise that people will think is a waste of time, and many will find it disingenuous. Some may think that, when we have ticked the box, we have sorted out lobbying, but the real-world lobbying will go on as before.

As the Prime Minister rightly said, lobbying is open to the potential for scandal. There have been scandals. What causes me anxiety is that I am prevented from protecting my constituents from a heavily resourced and effective internal lobbying machine within an organisation that could destroy parts of my community and the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of people in west London. The Bill does not meet the purpose. It does not rise to the challenge that the Prime Minister set us, which is to ensure that we have a transparent lobbying process. That transparency can, we hope, enable us to have some element of probity within the system of lobbying overall.

I take what my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda said. The criticism has come from all parts of the Committee. There must be some recognition from Government that these legislative proposals do not stack up. I know that by way of a taunt to the Leader of the House what happened in the case of the NHS legislation was mentioned earlier, but I think the idea of a short pause while we try to get some consensus discussions going is the most constructive way forward. In that way we can learn the lessons from the lobbying industry itself. Members of this House across the parties have had years of experience of lobbying, so we can get some decent legislation in place, otherwise we will bring ourselves into potential disrepute. Members of the public who expect us to represent and protect them will think we are not doing our jobs effectively.

I urge the Government to listen to their own Back Benchers as much as to those on the Opposition Benches who have no axe to grind. Let us see whether we can have some cross-party discussions over the next week or two. We should not allow the Bill to leave this House and expect the House of Lords to sort it out, as usual. That is a derogation of our duty. We must do the work here and send the best Bill we possibly can to the other place, because that is what we are paid for.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful, Mr Caton, to catch your eye in this debate.

Many colleagues have commented on the drafting of the Bill. I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) about the merits of the private Member’s Bill. Last year I introduced a private Member’s Bill on this very subject, supported by our Front-Bench team. I was lucky to work with Simon Patrick and the formidable Kate Emms on the drafting of that Bill. May I helpfully suggest to the Deputy Leader of the House that the Clerks of the House might be well qualified to help the Government draft a more effective and fully baked Bill than the one before us?

I gently point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda that he mentioned my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) by name. I know that my hon. Friend is not a properly read parliamentarian, but I am fairly confident that according to “Erskine May” we are not allowed to mention the name of a right hon. Member, even in a quotation, but I am sure that he did not mean to do so. As he is a new boy in this place, we will let that one pass.

The Government have been caught by their own phenomenally tight definition. I shall speak mainly about Opposition amendment 18, which would remove paragraph 3(1)(a) and (b) of schedule 1, which is ambiguous and creates uncertainty. Sub-paragraph (1) creates a loophole which cripples the aims of the Bill. On Second Reading and in the debate today, I have been struck by the fact that the Government consistently believe that, if they say that a measure is not intended to have a particular effect, that somehow means that it will not have that effect.

The Government were correct one time. As the Deputy Leader of the House said earlier, the Government are not seeking to capture lobbyists—they are seeking to capture 1% of those who would otherwise be defined as lobbyists. Credit is due to the Government; that is the one element that is consistent with their intentions. Unfortunately, sub-paragraph (1) does not capture even that 1%. Sub-paragraph (1)(a) excludes

“a business which is mainly a non-lobbying business”,

and sub-paragraph (1)(b) excludes a business whose lobbying efforts are

“an insubstantial proportion of that business.”

That would mean, for example, that big tobacco firms did not have to declare their in-house lobbying activities, but a small firm of public affairs professionals or consultants campaigning on behalf of, say, Action on Smoking and Health, would have to do so. I will return to that point later. The term “non-lobbying business” is insubstantial and too vague and does not have any real meaning.

The Government’s attempt to try to correct this error, amendment 93, which says

“consists mainly of non-lobbying”,

does not improve matters in the slightest. Unfortunately, what the Government by their own definition mean by lobbying is purely that direct communication with Ministers of the Crown and permanent secretaries. I could understand if the Government were defining lobbying as being what we think of as lobbying. It is interesting the number of Members on both sides of the House who describe themselves as lobbyists. Unfortunately, I suspect that none of those so-called lobbyists are actually lobbyists under the Government’s own definition. They have defeated themselves by drawing their amendments so closely.

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[Chi Onwurah]

I support the excellent comments that my hon. Friend is making. Will he set himself the challenge of explaining why a Government who set such store in supporting small and medium enterprises, should, as he describes, put such a regulatory and financial burden upon them?

[Thomas Docherty]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend, who spoke eloquently from the Front Bench during proceedings on my private Member’s Bill last year, setting out why the Opposition want to see workable legislation. I am more than happy to set out what is wrong with the impact assessment. It uses the Government’s figures and is confused. It says that the register, which covers only consultant lobbyists, will cost £500,000 to set up and a further £200,000 to run each year. That is according to the Government’s own figures, so it must be right. Almost all the firms who are members of the APPC are SMEs. I would be amazed if there were one that employed more than 250 people in total. Most are firms with between 20 and 50 employees, so these are not large firms. They are the entrepreneurial firms that we hear so much about from Government Members. But the Government and their civil servants have made up some rash figures. They have said that there are about 1,100 lobbying consultants in this country. I am still not clear where that figure has come from. I think they have taken the APPC list and accepted that that is probably pretty much every one who is “a lobbyist”. They have then said that, if the cost is £500,000, that can be shared by 1,000, which I assume is the 1,000 lobbyists. However, the Bill contradicts that. It says that payment is per firm—the Deputy Leader of the House graciously nods in agreement—and probably only 10 to 20 firms will be caught by the current definition. I am not a great mathematician, but if one takes £500,000 and divides it by 20, that is not £500. It is significantly more. That is just the start-up cost in the first year. That is a disproportionate and huge impact on small businesses.

[Andy Sawford]

I am trying to make some sense of a pretty nonsensical set of proposals. On my hon. Friend’s point about how the costs would stack up, there are some public affairs companies that are global, such as Edelman and Weber Shandwick. Does he have a view on whether there should be some variation in how the costs are apportioned to the small—perhaps one-person band—lobby company relative to some of these very large companies?

[Thomas Docherty]

I will just touch on the issue of some of the very large firms. One of the huge flaws is the issue of non-lobbying business—that a firm that is not a lobbying company would not be captured. One example is DLA Piper, a well-regarded law firm and lobbying communication consultancy; it is exactly the type of company that could probably afford to pay something. We are talking about £25,000 per company as the cost of the register, which is not the £500 that the Government’s impact assessment claims. DLA Piper is exempt. The irony about the Front-Bench team that we have today is that the reason why the Deputy Prime Minister’s fingerprints are not on the Bill is that his wife previously worked for DLA Piper. The Deputy Prime Minister, correctly in my view, recused himself from the whole process. Under the Bill as it has been drawn up, however, DLA Piper is not covered. I hope that the Minister for the Cabinet Office is reflecting on that irony.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point. Does he share my concern that unless the Government listen to some of the comments made in the Committee this afternoon, we may issue an open invitation to those who might be caught by the Bill to organise their affairs so that they do not have to register, as they will not fall within the Bill’s definitions as they stand?

[Thomas Docherty]

That is a perceptive intervention with which I wholeheartedly agree. I bear lawyers no ill will, but it is correct that all that will happen is that some of the smaller third-party companies that might be caught and faced with this hefty bill will simply move that element of their business to the likes of DLA Piper or MHP Communications, which I will come on to.

The Deputy Leader of the House asked a genuine question when he said that surely companies would still wish to register through the APPC register or elsewhere. The answer to that genuine question is this: why would they when they are not required to and there is no commercial benefit in doing so? Having met the APPC on a couple of occasions—I was briefly a member of its board—I know that its huge concern is that its members will say, “We’re paying money already for regulation and red tape, so why would we choose to take on this second voluntary code when the Government themselves don’t think it’s necessary?”

[Tom Brake]

It was indeed a genuine question I asked, but I do not think that the hon. Gentleman has answered it. He asks why organisations would continue to maintain their entry on a voluntary register under what the Government propose, but of course those organisations have already entered a voluntary register, which they were not required to do.

[Thomas Docherty]

With your indulgence, Sir Roger, let me try to answer what I think is a genuine intervention from the Deputy Leader of the House. I was involved in the APPC back in 2008-09, when the previous Government effectively told the industry that it was drinking in the last chance saloon. In the previous Parliament, we had the Public Administration Committee report that, as I recall, recommended a statutory register if the industry did not improve public confidence and Parliament’s confidence in it. I made the point that those firms that are working in the correct manner and striving to improve their reputation would join a voluntary body, which they duly did, and the UK Public Affairs Council was set up to try to bring those things together. Regrettably, it was clear that the small number of dubious lobbying firms—dubious individuals, to be more accurate—would choose not to. Many of those who sign up to the voluntary register do so because they want to demonstrate that they are playing to the highest ethical standards and that there is bureaucracy and paperwork involved. It is not a case of chaps sitting around and signing off each other’s practices.

Firms also made the point that, when asked by potential clients whether they are a member of a register, they would simply say, “Well, we don’t do that activity.” In my three years as a consultant lobbyist—I understand that the Government do not accept my definition of a lobbyist—I do not recall once having a meeting with a permanent secretary or Minister, so my firm would have had no need to register. That is why I think that there is a real danger that those firms would say, “We don’t undertake that activity, so the Government and Parliament do not think we need to register,” and therefore the provisions will fall away.

[Andy Sawford]

I am trying to understand the intention of the Bill as well as its effect. My understanding of the companies that currently participate in the voluntary register is that effectively they are the good guys, although I am sure that we could find examples of where they have not always met the highest standards. What we should really be trying to do, with regard to bringing transparency, is identifying people currently operating outside any ability for us to see what their line of work is or their willingness to be transparent and bring them into some sphere of registration.

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[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, as ever—I can see why the good Scots of Corby made such an excellent choice last year—and very perceptive. It goes to the heart of the debate about the Government’s intention and what lobbying is. To be fair, the Minister and the Deputy Leader of the House have set out what they are trying to achieve. The first clause does exactly what they want it to do, which is capture only third-party lobbyists. As the Deputy Leader of the House has said, all they are interested in is a scandal that has never happened, and frankly is never going to happen, and so they do nothing to tackle all the scandals we have had. If I understand it correctly—the two Ministers are present, so they can correct me if I get this wrong—all they are interested in doing is ensuring that if a consultant lobbyist sits in a room with a Minister, that Minister, who one would hope is a fairly bright person, is left in no doubt that that person is a lobbyist, as if he could not have worked that out beforehand—

[Tom Brake]

And who they were lobbying for.

[Thomas Docherty]

Yes, but that does nothing to tackle what the rest of the Committee thinks are the real scandals, such as those we have seen even in the past three or four years: Fred Michel, Fijigate, Lords for hire, as exposed by The Sunday Times, MPs like cabs for hire—I could go on. None of those scandals would have been caught or stopped by the Bill.

[Tom Brake]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree, however, that some of the cases he just referred to would be covered by things like the MPs’ code of conduct and that we do not require a register of lobbyists to address some of those issues?

[Thomas Docherty]

If the right hon. Gentleman wants to set out which of the scandals—MPs for hire, Fred Michel, Fijigate or whatever—are covered by the codes, I would be happy to hear him do so. The problem is that they are not. We have already heard some eloquent speeches from my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda and others showing that that is not the case.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Is not part of the problem that some of the so-called scandals to which the hon. Gentleman refers involved people impersonating lobbyists and so did not involve lobbying in any meaningful way at all? With regard to his earlier exchanges with the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford), I must say that I find the idea that those who sign up for the voluntary register are necessarily the good guys rather naive. I think that the Government are trying to deal with a genuine concern in this regard and should be congratulated on doing so.

[Thomas Docherty]

I must say that I think the PRU needs to get a better briefing sorted out, because I am not sure what genuine concerns the hon. Gentleman refers to. Perhaps his inbox is different from mine, but in the three and a bit years that I have been in Parliament not a single constituent has contacted me to say, “I’m really concerned that the permanent secretary at the Government Department, when sitting in a room, does not know who the person sitting opposite him is and who his clients are.” Actually, given his constituency, I suspect that his inbox is very different from mine.

[Caroline Lucas]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that it would also be a scandal if people got the impression, no doubt completely erroneously, that he was speaking at such length so that we do not reach later amendments on the amendment paper? I am sure that is not the case, but we have to give the Bill an awful lot of scrutiny tonight, so I gently say to him that it would be enormously helpful if he would bear that in mind when making his comments.

[Thomas Docherty]

I can honestly confirm that I am a parliamentary bore and that I am speaking at this great length because I can bore on the subject, and I think that Members on both sides of the Committee would agree that I am demonstrating that with some aplomb. The hon. Lady makes a serious point about the lack of time that the Government have made available. I deeply regret that the Bill has not gone upstairs, where you would have ably chaired the proceedings, Sir Roger—you would have kept us all in order, as you do so well as Chairman of the Panel of Chairs—and that all we have is four and a half hours—

[The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman must be aware that he is, and has been, absolutely in order. Were it otherwise, he would have been stopped.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am most grateful to be admonished for staying in order.

The hon. Lady makes a serious point. We have only four and a half or five hours to consider a huge piece of legislation. Frankly, this should have been scrutinised much better. I fail to see what constitutional imperative has brought it to the Floor of the House. I hope that the other place will do a genuine job of forcing the Government to come back and make some proper amendments, because I think that there are some real issues.

These are not issues that just I have concerns about. We have had the most bizarre and unlikely coalition. The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency has said of the Bill:

“It only applies to consultant lobbyists whose business is mainly lobbying. It would exclude those for whom lobbying is only a small part of the business. This could apply to a large number of significant lobbyists-for-hire”.

At the other end of the debate, the Public Relations Consultants Association polled its own members and found that only 1% of activity was covered from under 20% of the organisation’s concern. Even the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who I see in his place paying close attention, has said:

“The Bill tries to exclude people whose main business is not lobbying, but it does not define what constitutes a mainly non-lobbying business.”

The hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) has also criticised the loophole, saying:

“I suspect all that this new rule will do is ensure that in some instances big corporate interests will bring their lobbying activity back ‘in house’. Instead of hiring a public affairs consultancy, the big defence, banking and energy interests will give the work to their public affairs department. And because their main business is defence, or banking, or energy, they can safely ignore those provisions of the Bill.”

It is a dreadful state of affairs when two Government Back Benchers—I use the word “Government” slightly loosely, perhaps—are criticising the Bill. I hope the Minister will take on board the genuine concerns that have been expressed.

We have been told that the intention is not to exclude people. To pick up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford), let me give one example of a significant public affairs consultancy—MHP Communications. I should declare that I have met MHP Communications representatives, who have seen me about developments in my constituency. They conducted themselves appropriately at all times.

[Andy Sawford]

My hon. Friend illustrates the complexity of the industry well. MHP Communications derived originally from AS Biss, which was a public affairs-focused agency. It merged with a media company to become Mandate—I am not sure what the balance of that new company would have been—and has now become MHP. It has taken lots of different forms.

We refer to the different registers; the PRCA code, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations government affairs group’s code and the Association of Professional Political Consultants code relate to different kinds of companies. That is why catching APPC members, of whom we are all very aware and whose business is on the web for us to see, does not get us far at all in terms of transparency.

[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is the heart of the problem. Let me quote what MHP itself has said:

“do we work for a ‘non-lobbying business’? In our case, MHP Communications is a full service communications consultancy. We operate a single bottom line approach, and so do not break out the work of our public affairs division. Employees are employees; there is no ‘MHP Public Affairs Ltd’. And the work of MHP is certainly not mainly concerned with lobbying. Even if we were to limit ourselves to our public affairs team, the definition talks about actively lobbying, in the sense of seeking to persuade…members of the Government as well as officials—and this is not ‘mainly’ what we do all day.”

That is the problem with the clause and the Government’s attempt to fix it. It all gets circular—even if we accept that MHP is a lobbying entity, lobbying is defined purely as communicating with a Minister of the Crown and a permanent secretary.

Let us take special advisers, who are not covered at all; we all know that they often have more influence than the Under-Secretary of State. Under the Government’s plan, the lobbyist will be perfectly entitled to have lengthy and detailed influential discussions with a special adviser, and that would not be covered by the Bill. However, the lobbyist could meet the Under-Secretary of State and that meeting would be. Which meeting would be the real problem? One needs look only at the debacle of News International and Fred Michel to see the kind of scandal that can happen.

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I commend to the hon. Gentleman amendment 45 on that subject, which is in the group after next. Hopefully, we will get to it tonight.

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[Thomas Docherty]

Amendment 45 is a genuine attempt to address at least some of the problem, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of another issue. I am a big fan of Babcock, a major employer of my constituents and his; some 3,500 people work at Rosyth dockyard. The Government believe that simply listing a meeting with Mr John Gardner, the public affairs director for Babcock, would somehow show transparency. However, as the hon. Gentleman and I know, Babcock has six or seven significant arms, including its nuclear engineering division, which I suspect is of particular interest to him; its defence business, which is of interest to my constituency; the rail division; and the facilities management division. It would not be clear to anybody what such a meeting would be about and what transparency there would be.

Let me bring my remarks to a timely close. Our amendment 18 would sort the issue out in a constructive, well-drafted manner. We are grateful for the assistance of the able Clerks upstairs.

Vicars would not be covered; the Church of England’s public affairs team would be covered, but not the individual vicar, as they would not be paid to lobby. Parishioners would not be covered either and nor would someone giving evidence to a Select Committee. That would impinge on parliamentary privilege, which we hope the Government accept should not be a matter for the courts. We also recognise that someone responding to a Government request for information should not be covered.

I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House and the Minister have listened closely and take away helpful advice from both sides and that the issue can be dealt with in this place, rather than being sorted out yet again in the other place.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Miss Chloe Smith)]

I rise to address the Opposition amendments and to speak in favour of those tabled by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I shall also address other points raised in the debate.

I begin with the amendments from Opposition Front Benchers, which would replace “consultant lobbying” with “professional lobbying” throughout part 1. The amendments define “professional lobbying” as undertaking lobbying

“on behalf of a client, or…on behalf of an employer.”

Amendment 18 provides a list of exemptions from the Opposition’s broad definition of lobbying outlined in amendments 19, 20 and 21.

The Opposition’s intention is clear, but unfortunately their drafting lacks similar clarity. They have diligently—some might say single-mindedly or simple-mindedly—substituted the term “consultant lobbying” with “professional lobbying”, but notwithstanding the years of experience demonstrated by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), their concept of professional lobbying appears not to have been sufficiently thoroughly considered. It shocks me that after 13 years of thinking about these things, they have brought forward so little.

The Government’s proposals for a register are designed to address the specific problem that we have identified: it is not always clear whose interests are represented by consultant lobbyists when they meet Ministers and permanent secretaries.

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The proposed exceptions from the Opposition’s somewhat unwieldy definition include some sensible exclusions from their concept of professional lobbying but also some major loopholes. For example, an exemption for those who lobby but are not “remunerated” is an invitation to the less scrupulous elements of the industry instead to receive payment in kind. The Government’s provisions do not allow such weak evasion.

[Thomas Docherty]

Will the Minister give way?

[Miss Smith]

Once.

[Thomas Docherty]

I had better make it good, then. The Minister said that the amendments are badly drafted—obviously, Mr Patrick and his team are excellent—but they have been drafted with the support of the PRCA, the APPC, the CIPR and the ALT. What does she know that everyone in the industry, on both sides of the argument, does not know?

[Miss Smith]

I made it clear at the outset that the Government are seeking to address a slightly different and very well-defined problem. I do not have the years of experience of working as a lobbyist that the hon. Gentleman appears to be advocating I should have, but it is clear to me that a robust definition of “lobbying” is essential to the integrity of any register. The amendments tabled by Opposition Front Benchers suggest that they have struggled and ultimately failed to meet the prerequisite for successful lobbying regulation even on their own terms.