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Lobbying (Whitehall)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Benton. After the debate, like you, I have to repair to the frozen north before the next snowstorm, although I appreciate that Luton is not quite as far north as Bootle. The last point my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) made was that as and when things go wrong—when a crisis arises—he is rather pessimistic that the Government of the day might do the wrong thing. Perhaps he could then say, "We told you so. Here's our report; just implement it." He perhaps should not be too clever about it, but he could at least offer the report and say, "Here's one we made earlier. This is what you should do." I would like to think that we are ahead of the game and that, at a future point, the report that we recommended will be adopted, rather than the Government inching towards that position. We have made progress, however, and that is good. I wish my right hon. Friend the Minister a happy birthday and hope that she is not delayed too long by our debate. The Chamber is not too crowded, so she might get away fairly soon. The report is absolutely splendid, and although I put my name to it, the credit goes to the whole Committee and, indeed, to those Officers whom my hon. Friend the Committee Chairman praised so fully and appropriately. I should also say—he would not say this, and he has perhaps heard me give such compliments before—that his chairmanship of our Committee is absolutely first class. In my 13 years in the House, the most enjoyable and worthwhile thing I have done is to be a member of the Public Administration Committee for the past seven years. At least for the next six months, I hope to continue to be a member of it. The Committee has a splendid group of members and produces first-class reports, as it has done over several years. My fellow Committee members present will have heard my arguments before, so I apologise for raising them yet again. My concerns were always about the power of lobbying at the very centre of the Government. I have drawn a spectrum of lobbying, or perhaps a division between its two types, one of which I call altruistic lobbying—indeed, that is the sort of lobbying that I do. I represent the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament—I have mentioned that organisation before in the House. It does not pay me any money; I support it because I believe in its aims and objectives. It is a matter of personal belief, rather than a question of interest. I also sponsor the National Pensioners Convention lobby of Parliament every year. As I am above pensionable age, I should declare an interest, but I also believe in what that organisation is doing. There are a number of other organisations that we support, in a sense, because we passionately believe in their objectives, and that is what I call altruistic lobbying. Moving along the spectrum, one then has the professional organisations. I have personal associations with the trade union Unison, the Association of Colleges—as co-chair of the all-party group on further education and lifelong learning—and million+, which is an organisation of new universities, the chairman of which is vice-chancellor of my local university. Again, there is no financial interest involved. We do these things because we happen to agree with what such organisations stand for and what they are doing. We then get to the more serious end of the spectrum, which is where large sums of Government money and contracts are involved. Those are invariably dealt with at the highest level of Government, and that is what my concerns relate to. The links between the defence industry and the Ministry of Defence are well known. The contracts concerned are literally worth billions, not just millions. As far as is reasonable—as long as one is not giving away national secrets that would be advantageous to an enemy—such contracts should be transparent. There have been scandals in the past about the defence industry and its relations with not just the British Government but foreign Governments. I am also very concerned about the extent to which the previous Prime Minister had visitations at Downing street from big business interests, particularly those of the health industry. Time and again, there were reports in the journals about meetings at Downing street involving large numbers of American health corporations that considered the rich pickings they could get from the national health service. That process is still taking place, and it worries me greatly. We should not be privatising the health service under the disguise of commissioning or whatever. The drive that has come from American health interests, in particular, is very unhealthy and unwelcome. That is all done at the level of Downing street, not even at the level of the Department of Health. That should be exposed and made public. We get leaks in the press, but that is not anything like enough. Another area that I know a little about is dealt with by the Department for Transport, which is talking about ordering rolling stock from different companies. Many of us were very concerned about the Government's decision to place a big order with Hitachi rather than with companies in Britain that have productive capacity, particularly because the Department for Transport now has its own in-house ROSCO—rolling stock company. That has been an advance, but the ordering process and the links between the companies and the Government ought to be much more transparent. I want them to be made public. Something that worried me perhaps more than anything was the gambling interests and the American gambling corporations that went into Downing street and pressed the previous Prime Minister to drive forward a large number of giant casinos across Britain. In fact, we saw them off through a combination of Back-Bench lobbying by myself and others. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) also felt that the matter was deeply unhealthy. We did not want the legacy of a Labour Government to be a nation left with increasing levels of gambling addiction and more large casinos. The idea that an economy somehow has to be based on a giant casino, particularly in a poor area, is really reprehensible. However, as a result of parliamentary pressure and lobbying against the gambling corporations, they were seen off to a large extent. That was very healthy. I understand, again from leaks in the journals, that the American gambling corporations were very disappointed in the previous Prime Minister because he did not manage to get through what they wanted, which was for Britain to become an offshore Las Vegas. My opinion on the matter is not just a result of my puritanical ancestry. It would have been deeply unhealthy for Britain to go down that route and we should not have done so. Again, lobbying was done at a central level, and that was unacceptable. It is interesting to note from the Government's response to the report that they have apparently agreed to publish details of ministerial meetings with outside interests. That is very welcome. However, at the last minute, they showed reluctance to publish information about lobbying activity involving the most senior officials. The Government are therefore saying, "Yes, you can know everything, except that which is most important." I want to know what the senior officials are doing with these big companies. That is what really matters and that is what I want to see exposed. Many years ago, I was a supporter—the constituency chair—of Brian Sedgemore, who at that time was the Labour Member of Parliament for Luton, West. I was his party chair and campaign organiser when he was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Tony Benn. He and Tony Benn went to have dinner with the warden of, I think, All Souls—certainly the warden of an Oxford college. Brian Sedgemore put forward the view that government ought to be open and public so that all these things would be known. The warden turned to Tony Benn and said, "Mr. Benn, do you know that your Parliamentary Private Secretary is mad?" Brian Sedgemore was perhaps ahead of his time, but I agreed with him then and do so now. We have some way to go. The report is a tremendous advance and I would like to think that a future Labour Government will implement it in full so that we have the statutory register and reach the healthy state of affairs in which such things are known publicly and the electorate will know what senior officials and Ministers are doing in their offices regarding big contracts with wealthy corporations, meaning that they no longer have that hidden from them. I look forward to hearing what other hon. Members have to say.