Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
Main Page: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe's debates with the Cabinet Office
(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
There will be due scrutiny of those who bid for the prizes. These are meetings that do not involve government property or government business but are undertaken by Ministers in their capacity as members of a political party, so my understanding is that they will not be official meetings with civil servants present.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, in 2013 the now noble Lord, Lord Lansley, introduced the lobbying Bill in the other place. It does not extend to activities such as those that the Minister just mentioned. Is that a satisfactory state of affairs? Should we not amend the lobbying Act to cover more of the activities now being revealed by the press?
Lord Young of Cookham
The Government are genuinely open to discussions about how we improve accountability and transparency in our political process. I am very happy to look at those proposals. In the past it has not been possible to achieve the sort of consensus one would like on these sensitive matters of political issue.