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Lobbying (Whitehall/Westminster)

I thank my friend for that intervention. I believe that being a Member of Parliament is a full-time job. I shall return to that point later, because a large number of MPs, many of whom will retire from the House at the next election, have taken well remunerated posts. I do not mean £5,000 or £10,000, but £50,000 or £70,000—in one case as much as £110,000. Such sums completely dwarf the parliamentary salary. What is the problem with lobbying? It is unregulated, it cannot be accounted for and it is largely out of sight. That is the view of the non-profit charity Spinwatch, which monitors public relations, spin and lobbying in society. It says—and I agree—that lobbying is secretive and that it leads no evidence trail. At the moment, insofar as there is regulation, it is conducted by the three main umbrella bodies. They have codes of practice, but sanctions are rarely employed. During the past decade, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations has formally reprimanded only two of its members; the Association of Professional Political Consultants last used its procedures in 1998—11 years ago; and the Public Relations Consultants Association has never received a formal complaint that required the involvement of its professional practices committee. So there we go. It is not as if the industry is so squeaky clean that the absence of references to the Standards and Privileges Committees could tell us something. That is why the Public Administration Committee is calling for transparency and disclosure. Indeed, we go further: we want details of the person being lobbied and the minutes of meetings. Lobbying happens overseas. People here recoil in horror at the thought of senior civil servants' diaries being open to the media, the press and hon. Members, but it happens overseas. The Committee visited Brussels last year or the year before, and in June last year, the European Commission introduced a voluntary register of lobbyists. Later this year, probably in June or July, the Commission will decide whether to go for a mandatory register. In the United States, President Obama is red hot on transparency and is a great backer of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. Of course, there have been scandals in the US; people who are fraudulent or corrupt are inventive and will exploit loopholes, which must be closed. That is how to deal with the problem. Our sister democracy in Canada has regulated lobbying by statute for more than 20 years. Its system focuses on improper access to decision makers. It therefore knows the identity of the lobbyists, on whose behalf they are lobbying, the issues on which are lobbying, and the targets of the lobbying. That is happening in Canada, but why do we need it here? Power is concentrated in the United Kingdom. We all remember the Drapergate affair. In 1998, Derek Draper worked for Lord Mandelson, who is now Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. I believe that Derek Draper is now a psychotherapist. In 1998, he famously said that there were only 17 people who exercised real power in the new Labour Government, that he knew them all and that he could introduce lobbyists to them all. After that, the Government acted, and properly so. They brought in new guidance—““Guidance for Civil Servants: Contact with Lobbyists””—which said that they should not do anything that would place them under an obligation to the lobbyist. That was good guidance, but it has not been updated since 1998. What do we want, and do we want it now? We want a mandatory register of lobbying activity to be provided for by statute, we want it to be independently managed and enforced, and it should include information provided by lobbyists and those being lobbied. We want the names of the individuals carrying out the lobbying activity and the organisations that employ or hire them; and in the case of multi-client consultancies, we want the names of the clients. We want information about any public offices previously held by lobbyists—for example, if they were former MPs. Such information would come from their career history, and there is no great secret about that. We also want a list of the interests of decision makers in the public services—I think of Ministers, senior civil servants and senior public servants—and summaries of their career histories outside the public service. Finally, we want information about contacts between lobbyists and decision makers, especially diary records and minutes of meetings. That is what we want, and we want it now. I turn now to the revolving door, which was mentioned by my friend the Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn). Lobbying is about identifying and influencing those who exercise power and make decisions. Lobbyists buy access. The Government spend around £79 billion every year buying services from the private sector. Over the past 20 or 30 years, first under Margaret Thatcher and then under Tony Blair and the present Prime Minister, whole slabs of the public sector have been privatised. The private sector now has a foot in the door of the health service, and as I speak, the House is debating the Royal Mail and the Government's proposal to part-privatise it, with TNT, a Dutch company, being a preferred partner. A decision has not yet been made, but Lord Mandelson has said that TNT is in the frame. Just imagine what TNT would give for inside information on discussions within the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform about giving a private-sector company a chunk of Royal Mail. What can we do to prevent that? We already have a sort of quarantine system. When Ministers and senior civil servants leave office, they have to notify the advisory committee on business appointments. If there is a connection between someone from the public services subsequently profiting from the knowledge and contacts he or she acquired, the committee is supposed to blow the whistle—but it is a very quiet whistle. Lord Warner came before the Select Committee. He used to be the Minister with responsibility for health service reform, and he now has seven or eight consultancies. They are all above board and have been declared. He told the Select Committee that the advisory committee on business appointments had told him:"““The main thing…I could not do for the first year after being a Minister was to lobby Ministers, whatever that means””." We know from the Mayhew report that the system is not policed—that is a huge lacuna—and it needs a complete overhaul. It is a huge problem, and it is impossible to condense it into 10 or 15 minutes, but I have done my best. I finish on this note. I have been talking to my colleagues in the Labour party, and they say if people outside knew what was happening and the money that was involved, they would recoil in horror. It is not advertised. About a year ago, some of my friends proposed changing the standing orders of the parliamentary Labour party so that if a Member of Parliament or Lord wanted to take a second job, perhaps in consultancy, they would be obliged to write to the party stating the time commitments, remuneration and how the job would advance the party's aims and objectives. That is what is required to drag lobbying into the daylight. I hope that the Minister will respond positively to this new landscape. Things have changed in the past few weeks, and I hope that he will tell us that the Government are committed to introducing a mandatory register for lobbyists along the lines that I have set out.