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

William Cash Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Miss Smith]

I appreciate the hon. Lady’s arguments in support of amendment 136. I regard the Bill and the explanations we have given as sufficient, but I am willing to continue to review the issue.

Amendments 34, 36, 37 and 152 would require lobbyists to disclose financial information. Amendment 56 would also alter the information requirements in clause 4 to require the disclosure of the purpose and subject of any lobbing. We have been very clear that the objective of the register is the identification of the interests that are being represented by consultant lobbying firms. Lobbyists should therefore be required to disclose their clients. We are not persuaded that the burden that would be imposed, on both the industry and the regulator, of requiring further information is justified by the fairly limited insight it will provide. It is not a proportionate approach to the problem identified. I urge hon. Members not to press the amendments.

The Opposition’s amendment 40 would alter clause 10 on self-incrimination and limit the information that persons are required to provide in response to an information notice. This unclear and oddly drafted amendment tops off the evening. Its unwelcome effect would be that, in response to an information notice, a person would not be required to provide any self-incriminating information including any offence committed in relation to the register. It would therefore entirely undermine the enforcement regime relating to the register. The registrar could still seek to investigate registration breaches using information notices, but the result would be that, where there had been such a breach, the lobbyist would be entitled to refuse to provide any information and only lobbyists that had not breached it would be required to provide information. I urge the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) not to press that crowning glory of an amendment.

The purpose of new clauses 2 and 7 is unclear. They appear to require that, if a registered professional lobbyist is appointed to a role in Government or to work for a Government party, their appointment should be scrutinised by a Committee and restrictions placed on their activities. I ask the Opposition: who should such a Committee consist of and what would be their remit? What restrictions would be placed on the activity of such an appointee? The proposed new clauses clearly do not provide the answers. The Opposition are weak and muddled, and I urge them not to press the new clauses.

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

Business is proceeding in such a fashion that we may not even get to the very important questions of parliamentary privilege addressed by amendment 164, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). The fact is that this is about this House of Commons. It is incredible that we should not be able to discuss the way in which this Bill interacts with the privilege question.

[Miss Smith]

I am exceedingly grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, because it gives me the opportunity to look down the selection list. I am grateful to the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, who has worked with parliamentary counsel to produce amendment 151. The Government would like to support that amendment tonight because we believe that that important area of the Bill needs further clarification. Under the amendment, the existing MP exemption—