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Lobbying (Whitehall)

Lord Mandelson, whether or not he is watching the debate, will know what my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) said this afternoon. I shall be brief and have only two or three points to make, the first of which is about the context in which we are discussing the matter. We need more transparency in our politics. People's trust in politicians is at an all-time low. We have all, collectively, been seared by the MPs' expenses business. I had a debate in this Chamber on this subject in February 2009, which was just about the time that we were reading about Lords for lobbying: peers who had been approached by fake lobbyists and asked to do their bidding. Two of those peers were suspended from the House of Lords, which was unprecedented. That has never happened before, and I hope it will never happen again. We pick up our newspapers and read about former Ministers. One of yesterday's plotters has a £60,000 to £70,000 contract with Alliance Boots, and she used to be the Secretary of State for Health. Any number of former Ministers are doing two jobs, and we should know more about that. There is a public interest imperative in having the greatest transparency possible. We need to know where power lies and how it is exercised. In February's debate, which took place nearly a year ago, I reminded colleagues about Derek Draper's famous claim in 1998—he used to be very close to Lord Mandelson and perhaps still is—that there were 17 people in the new Labour Government, that he knew them all and that he could introduce people to them. That was disgraceful, and something should have been done about it. We can only deal with the Derek Drapers of this world by making lobbying open and transparent. The Committee's report calls for a mandatory register. My friend the Member for Selby mentioned the Committee on Standards in Public Life. I put the question of a mandatory register to Sir Christopher Kelly at the meeting we had back in February, and he agreed that there should be one. There is no other way of addressing the issue. My friend the Member for Selby mentioned the position of solicitors and the Law Society. Any number of law firms have a lobbying branch. DLA Piper is one such firm, and its lobbying branch is Global Communications. Eben Black from DLA Piper appeared before our Committee—I dare say has written to colleagues—claiming that the solicitor's code, which prohibits the publication of client details, also covers people, such as him, who are not solicitors. The Law Society has also been in touch with the Committee to say that client confidentiality will prohibit the disclosure of client names. The only way around that is to go for a mandatory register in statute: a statutory register. Eben Black and the Law Society are in favour of that. My friend the Member for Selby mentioned some kind of compromise, but I do not think that it would be workable to tell solicitors that new clients have to be disclosed while existing clients could not be. That would put older clients, if I may so term them, in a more advantageous and privileged position than newer clients. It is just too complicated. It will never fly, so we need a statutory register. Colleagues have mentioned examples from overseas. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. The United States, which was mentioned by my friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), is a bad example. Politics in the United States is polluted by the need to raise millions and millions in campaign finance. A better comparator for us is Canada. It is unfortunate that we did not visit Ottawa when we were in north America to discuss how lobbying is managed there, but we have the advantage of the annual report of the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada. I have said many times that Canada is a sister democracy. Its system is probably the closest anywhere to what we have in Westminster. The Canadians first legislated on lobbying back in 1989, and they have progressively tightened the rules. The commissioner makes four points on the front page of the annual report:""Free and open access to government is an important matter of public interest;""Lobbying public office holders is a legitimate activity;""It is desirable that public office holders and the general public be able to know who is attempting to influence government;""The system for the registration of paid lobbyists should not impede free and open access to government."" That is simple; there is not a huge bureaucracy. A new Lobbying Act in 2008 created the post of Commissioner of Lobbying. Everything is in the report, which can be accessed on the web pages. It states that lobbyists have to put in monthly returns to say who they are lobbying. Such transparency is testimony to the health and vibrancy of Canadian democracy. My friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) has a part-time job with Boots the Chemist, but in Canada, there is five-year prohibition on designated public office holders taking such positions, although it can be waived by the commissioner in certain circumstances. Five years—here, people move seamlessly from Whitehall and Westminster straight into commerce in a matter of months. In addition, our system is not policed. The Advisory Committee on Public Appointments will tell ex-Ministers, perhaps Defence Ministers who have been responsible for billion-pound budgets, that they should not lobby for six months or 12 months, but that is never policed, and we do not know what whisperings go on behind the curtain. In view of that, I was disappointed by the Government response. No disrespect to the Minister, but I thought that it was limp and feeble—words that were used by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday. When the Government published their response in October 2009, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency stated:""The Government has dropped the ball on political reform—and ignored public concerns—by refusing to force lobbyists to operate in the open."" That is what we are talking about. This nation spends £79 billion of public money in the commercial sector every year. The lobbing industry is worth £2 billion, but we do not know who is influencing whom, and that is wrong. It runs against the whole current of opinion. I cannot understand for the life of me why the Government took this decision, which runs counter to what I believe that we as a Government have been trying to achieve. I do not know where this leaves us. We are at the fag end of this Parliament, and many of us will not be here for the next one, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. We could have a new Government, but I share the view of my friend the Member for Cannock Chase that the issue will not go away. I predict that within four or five years we will have a statutory register of lobbyists and we will bring this practice out of the shadows and into the open.