---

Lobbying (Whitehall)

I wish I could say that the House is clearly galvanised by this issue, but sadly it is not. I also suspect that many of us feel the need to depart this place as soon as we can, to reach further parts of the kingdom. None the less, it is a great pleasure to introduce on behalf of the Public Administration Committee our report, "Lobbying: Access and Influence in Whitehall", to which is attached the Government response, and a further report that the Committee produced in December 2009. We first reported in January 2009 and the Government, for a variety of reasons, were not able to reply to that report until October 2009. It will be noticed that that is rather longer than the normal two-month reply period, but we understood some of the reasons for that, not least that Ministers changed during that time, which is always a difficulty. I just want to say to my right hon. Friend the Minister that I know that today is her birthday and I feel particularly bad about detaining her, when I know that she wants to go out and celebrate this great day. So I will try not to detain her too long. Then, in December 2009, the Committee produced a further report commenting on the Government's reply and taking the issue forward. I want to start by explaining why the Committee thought that it was a good idea to look at lobbying. It was not because we were in the middle of a scandal; sometimes, that is the reason why we decide to look at a particular issue. In this case, there was not a pressing contemporary scandal, but we thought that there was an issue that needed attending to. I pay particular tribute here to my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan), who I see has now been promoted to honorary Parliamentary Private Secretary for the afternoon. As he just said to me, it is the highest accolade of his political career and I must say that it is well-deserved and indeed long overdue. He had been concerned for some time about a particular issue, which was the failure of multi-client consultancies to disclose their clients. He talked to me about that issue, I then talked to the Committee about it and we thought that it was an issue worth exploring. However, we thought that the way to do so was to have a more general look at the lobbying industry itself, which had not been done in modern times. It had not really been done at all inside Parliament for 15 years, and at that time it had been done only in relation to Parliament itself and not in relation to Government. So we wanted to take a step back and look at what lobbying was, how it organised itself, its interaction with Government and whether there were issues that required attention. Now we all know that lobbying makes the world go round. We all lobby. As Members of Parliament, we are both lobbied all the time and we lobby all the time. We are vigorous lobbyists on behalf of all the interests and causes in our constituencies and indeed on behalf of many interests and causes beyond our constituencies. Everybody— every interest and cause in the land—lobbies, either directly or indirectly. We know that Prince Charles lobbies and we know that he does so regularly and assiduously. I am in favour of all this lobbying. I think that good lobbying helps to make good government, for two reasons. The first is that people in a democracy are entitled to express their views, to have their interests recognised and to press those views and interests on public policy and on government. The second is that, on the other side, the Government benefit hugely from their contact with the world of lobbying, because they need to know the things that lobbyists know. The Government need to have the detailed knowledge that comes from knowing every area of life and activity.