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Lobbying (Whitehall)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr. Benton. On behalf of the packed ranks of Her Majesty's Opposition, I wish the Minister a very happy birthday. One is not 30 every day, as I think you know, Mr. Benton, so I hope that she puts on her dancing shoes tonight. I congratulate the Select Committee on its report. The Committee matters, because it has a habit of picking on important subjects a little ahead of the curve and applying itself to them with considerable incision and persistence. The report does it a great deal of credit. I certainly learned much from it, not least about possible lessons to be learned from international spheres of regulation. The hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) spoke well on that. I congratulate the Chairman, the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), on the elegant way in which he framed this debate and on his typical modesty in the words that followed his comments on being heir to the throne. I congratulate the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) on stepping up to the plate and playing the role of a speaking Parliamentary Private Secretary to such effect. I understand that there are 12 PPS vacancies in the Administration, such is the reluctance of Labour Back Benchers to serve the current Prime Minister. I can only assume that after today's performance, the number is down to 11. I hope so, not least because of the robust position that the hon. Gentleman took with his own Minister. I also congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the proactive part that he has played in triggering the interest of the Committee in this important issue, because there clearly is a risk here. He and the Chairman were very clear on the risk of a blow-up. The Chairman was right about how this place operates: if something must be done, a mentality takes over, and there is the risk that we will probably do something entirely disproportionate to what has occurred. Therefore, it is important to try to look at this proactively and relatively calmly. The context is exactly as the hon. Member for Pendle described: we are operating in an atmosphere of low—arguably, zero—trust. We have, in effect, destroyed confidence in Government institutions at a time when the country needs to have confidence, and we are engaged in the painstaking process of rebuilding it. This is not just about MPs' expenses. I do not know what the experience of colleagues has been, but certainly in my constituency, I hear a voice of anxiety—anger—about how decisions are taken. In part, it is about the remoteness of decision making, and the feeling that communities are not involved or listened to. The hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) spoke about the effects of centralisation in the process. There is also anxiety about the way in which the Government make up their mind on things and then consult. In my part of the world, the words "public consultation" and "sham" are synonymous. There is also real anxiety about undue influence on the decision making of the Government. That came home to me when I was speaking to a conference of voluntary organisations, as the Minister does regularly as well. I remember vividly a lady shouting at me from the back, full of anger, about her perception of the influence that pharmaceutical companies had on the Government. I have no means of knowing whether she was right or wrong, but she had strong feelings and influenced the audience. I recognise such passion and anger because it is what my constituents and most of the residents of Hillingdon feel about the decision on the third runway at Heathrow. The process was inflamed by a perception that the Department making the decision was far too close to BAA—the major beneficiary of the decision. The Freedom of Information Act 2000 was extraordinarily useful to my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening) in exposing that unhealthy proximity in that process.