Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

In following the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), let me say that I am surprised that he did not rest his rebuttal of the arguments about amendment 76 on clause 4, which clearly shows that the register—in the way it deals with persons—would cover those exact points. However, that does not fully allay the concerns we should have when we see the Government’s amendments to what is already a highly flawed Bill, not least Government amendments 92 to 95 to schedule 1, about which I am sure we will hear from the Government.

Like others, I do not want to take up too much time now, given the range of issues that we need to reach in order to deal with the layers of inadequacy and evasion that are, to my mind, deliberately built into the Bill. The Government who told us that lobbying was the next big scandal have basically come up with the narrowest of nets to deal with professional lobbying, restricting it not to professional lobbying as we all know and understand it—lobbying as we see it practised in and around the parliamentary estate and elsewhere in public life, at various levels of government—but to a narrow definition of “consultant lobbying”.

We have a net that is deliberately narrow, made up of holes that are deliberately wide. That is why I welcome the amendments from the Opposition Front Bench and the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which would ensure a wider net with smaller holes. If Parliament achieves that, we will have done something for our credibility, as the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) said. However, if we remain with the Bill as provided by the Government, or if we amend it in the way they have proposed, Parliament will be open not just to ridicule, but to suspicion. Why would we go along with a glaringly inadequate Bill? Why would we fail to respond to the representations that have come from so many people in the business who will not be affected—I am sure that some will be happily unaffected—but are bemused at what the Government have produced in part 1?

I know that we looked at the Bill more widely on Second Reading, Mr Caton, but I hope it is in order to make the argument in the debate about this group of amendments and part 1 that it is hard for people not to be suspicious when they see the lobbying to be registered so narrowly defined in part 1, and the issues to be covered in part 2 so widely scoped. As many hon. Members who have spoken have pointed out, none of the lobbying scandals that have happened in recent years—not even those during the life of this Parliament—would have been ameliorated or mitigated in any way by the scope of this Bill. Instead of pretending that it will solve the next big scandal, let us be clear: it would not have addressed any of the big, small or medium scandals that we have seen in the last few years. That has to be a matter of design on the part of the Government. They cannot have missed all those points just as a matter of haphazard chance and sloppy drafting. To my mind, the scoping in part 1 is deliberately evasive.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

The Government have already said that they are trying to fix a specific issue relating to a gap in transparency. I do not think I got an answer from the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), so can the hon. Gentleman explain how many people he thinks will be required to register under the amendments we are discussing? Does he believe that MPs should also make a declaration whenever they meet a lobbyist, be they in-house, or from a trade union or a charity?

[Mark Durkan]

As other hon. Members have said, we do need a lobbying Bill, but we needed more consultation and proper pre-legislative scrutiny precisely to determine how many people would be caught and whether they should be comfortably caught under this Bill.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an eloquent case. The hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) is a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Under the current proposals, only two of the nearly 1,000 meetings would have been captured. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a completely nonsensical approach?

[Mark Durkan]

What my hon. Friend describes absolutely trivialises the claims that the Government are making for this Bill, especially when we consider what bearing it would have on the amount of lobbying of the Government and what would be registered. If we consider the Bill in terms of transparency, the slight, little bit of translucence that will emerge at the very edge of the current lobbying business is hardly what would pass for transparency in any meaningful sense of the word.

[Mrs Main]

If some of those meetings are not captured, the only thing open to hon. Members is parliamentary questions and so on, yet quite often the response we get says that the cost of finding out whether somebody met someone else would be disproportionate. That is a problem. Once we get past that gatekeeper, we have no opportunity to explore what conversations were had or what impact they might have had.

[Mark Durkan]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. The point of transparency and registration is about being able to say that, if all such engagement is absolutely above board and matter of fact, there is nothing to hide and nothing to worry about. When the picture is created, or when it can be canvassed by some, that there is something untoward about such contacts and representations—that they are an attempt to get undue influence in pursuit of a particular vested interest—the whole public policy system and Parliament suffer. That is what happens when those suspicions abound. We are trying to protect ourselves and the public understanding and trust of Government and parliamentary processes by ensuring we have a more meaningful Bill.

That is why the amendments before us are important, not least amendment 48—which, as we know from the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, will probably be put to a vote—and the Opposition amendments, beginning with amendment 2, which basically take to task the Bill’s deliberately narrow definition of “consultant lobbying” by replacing it with a wider term, “professional lobbying”. This group of amendments also contains amendment 161, which stands in my name, which also tries to add more definition to the type and character of lobbying that we want the Bill to capture. Indeed, the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon said that there are issues with lobbying activity that is clearly carried on in firms and on behalf of firms. Such lobbying is a dedicated, professional wing of activity on the part of corporations, and it should be captured in any appropriate Bill.

[Chris Bryant]

Not least in broadcasting, which is one of the most lobbyacious parts of society, and for a very good reason—a lot of broadcasting depends on legislation. However, broadcasting firms hardly ever employ third-party consultants; rather, they always use their own, normally enormous in-house operation. Also, those lobbyists would not bother going to see the permanent secretary, because the permanent secretary would not be bright enough to understand the technicalities. Instead, they would go to the junior officials in the Department who do. None of that would be captured by this Bill.

[Mark Durkan]

I fully agree with the hon. Gentleman. I will not be tempted to wander away from the issues that we are meant to be dealing with in this group of amendments, but he is right to point out some of the flaws that exist elsewhere in part 1 of the Bill and to the wholesale escape by corporate lobbyists working on behalf of various bodies. Whether those lobbyists are working on behalf of allegedly public bodies, private commercial bodies or much larger international conglomerates, they should not be able to escape the scope of the Bill as lightly and handily as they are going to do. As the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon has pointed out, the Bill is framed in such a way that some people will simply be able to recast their business in order completely to escape being touched by the legislation.

[Helen Goodman]

Let me illustrate that point. I have just looked at my diary for this week. It contains six meetings with people from corporate bodies or trade associations, and six with people from what we might loosely call the voluntary sector. None of the first six would be caught by the provisions in the Bill, but all the second six would. Does my hon. Friend not agree that that is absolutely ridiculous?

[Mark Durkan]

I do. At risk of receiving a caution from the Chair, I must agree that my hon. Friend is contrasting the inadequate provisions in part 1 of the Bill with the egregious and excessive provisions in part 2. Many of us suspect that those charities, voluntary organisations and public advocacy campaign groups that will find themselves in line of danger under part 2 are being used as a human shield to protect those that should have been targeted in part 1 but have deliberately been given free licence and allowed to escape. This part of the Bill, particularly in the light of some of the Government amendments, will say to those who might be sitting on the next big scandal, “Carry on regardless. Carry on happily. We don’t want to touch you, and we have deliberately framed this legislation so that it will not touch you.”

[Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

As a former lobbyist and an honorary fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, I have to say that it is actually worse than that. Unless the Government accept amendment 52, which would make it necessary for management consultancies, lawyers and accountant to register, lobbying will become much less transparent as a direct result of the Bill.

[Mark Durkan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very pertinent point.

This is why so many people are dissatisfied with the Bill, including bona fide, honest-to-goodness, up-front lobbyists who want to be able to conduct their business on good terms. They need to know that the register exists to ensure that they can conduct their business not only on good terms but on equal terms with anyone else who is competing to provide similar services, peddling similar influence and perhaps having an even greater effect on Government decisions on policy, on the framing of legislation, on programmes or on projects.

I hope that we will come to the amendments that try to address other problems relating to the Bill, but I am speaking in support of those Opposition amendments that are properly seeking to change the definitions relating to consultant lobbying. My own amendment 161 would ensure that the Bill covered more people involved in commercial lobbying who provide either full-time or significant part-time lobbying services on behalf of what the Government call non-lobbying or mainly non-lobbying businesses, and that they too would need to register. Such a provision would protect those who meet those lobbyists, be they MPs, members of Select Committees, Ministers, Parliamentary Private Secretaries, permanent secretaries or senior civil servants. I would like all of them to be scoped into the Bill, rather than it simply focusing on Ministers and permanent secretaries. They would all be better protected if the legislation were better cast.

I am sorry that the Government have scrambled the Bill in this way. If we do not take the time now to get it right, many people will have to pay the price later. Some people will deservedly find themselves caught up in a scandal, but others who do not deserve it will also find themselves in that predicament, because we are deliberately leaving twilight zones in which people will bump into things that they did not realise were there. People might be told that certain things are okay under the legislation—just as people were told that certain things were okay under the expenses rules—only for a different assessment to be made following public scrutiny. We must be vigilant about the standards we are setting for ourselves and others. That means that we need to support the Opposition amendments, and particularly those tabled by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee.

I fully respect the points made by the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) about new clause 5, but I have problems with some of the details of the proposal, and not least with its implications for charities and other bodies. It also sticks to the narrow definition of consultant lobbying, even if it completely recasts that definition by what it subsequently goes on to propose. I understand that she tabled the new clause to make a point, and she has made a valid point very well. She has indicated that she will not press the new clause to a Division, and I will not press my amendment to a vote either.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

This has been a fascinating debate, and I shall not repeat the points that have already been made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) and other colleagues across the Committee. I want to bring some of my own experience to the Chamber. Fundamentally, what is wrong with this part of the Bill is that it does not reflect any kind of understanding of the lobbying industry, of which I am a proud ex-member.

The lobbying industry has changed dramatically since I first joined it in 1998. I worked for a consultancy that, if it existed today, would be caught by the Bill’s provisions because it was a dedicated Government relations lobbying agency. However, the industry has changed and most public affairs firms are now part of wider communications groups, on which the Bill will have no impact. I worked in the industry between 1998 and 2003, and it gave me a fantastic opportunity to learn many things and to engage in the political process.

We should be clear that the lobbying industry is important to a fair and democratic society. It is also important to us as Members of Parliament, in that it can help to inform and educate us on incredibly technical issues. We should not always view the industry with deep, dark suspicion. The only point in the debate that I have disagreed with so far was the description of lobbyists as mendacious and as performing some kind of dark arts. That is incredibly unfair, because most lobbyists are highly professional and very proud of what they do. They want transparency in their industry, and they want a level playing field. The Bill delivers neither. If anything, it could make the industry more opaque, and it will certainly not produce a more level playing field.

I would like to give the House an example from my own experience. Between 2005 and 2010, I was head of public affairs for Aviva. It was known as Norwich Union when I joined it, but it subsequently changed its name. We had a large lobbying team here in the UK and in Europe. As I look around the Chamber, I can see many people whom I, as head of public affairs, probably would have lobbied.

My lobbying team would not have been covered by the provisions in the Bill. We employed a major City law firm to provide specific counsel on legislative issues. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon has pointed out, such lawyers will not be covered by the Bill either. We also employed a consultancy that provided public affairs advice and was part of a wider group; it, too, would not be included in the Bill. We worked closely, too, with trade associations, which again would not be included. If we paid for research by a think-tank and lobbied on the outcome, that, too, would not be included in the Bill.

It is therefore quite clear that this part of the Bill needs to be taken off the table and looked at again, particularly in respect of expanding the definitions. I have a great deal of sympathy with the Opposition Front-Bench team’s amendment, as does the Association of Professional Political Consultants, because it wants a level playing field. Those of us who have worked in the industry consider ourselves professional lobbyists, not just consultant lobbyists.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Such is the paucity of the drafting of the Bill—cobbled together, I think, at the last minute—that the real danger is that even the people who the Government think do consultant lobbying do not do it in the terms of the Bill, and will therefore be excluded from the register. The Government may think that 350 organisations will be covered, but I think that that is a very dubious, dodgy number. I think that it is more likely to be 35 or three and a half or even three.

[Mark Durkan]

rose—

[Mr Cox]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), and then to the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon, although he was unkind enough not to give way to me a second time.

[Mark Durkan]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right about not just the existing paucity of the definition in the Bill, but about the tautology that we are being asked to introduce in the form of the circular definition in amendment 84. Would it not be more honest for the Government simply to propose that the Bill should define a consultant lobbyist as anyone who places an entry in the section of the Yellow Pages that is headed “Consultant Lobbyists”, and that those who do not so define themselves should be exempt?

[Chris Bryant]

I think that that would be slightly to treat the legislation with contempt—so I am right up there with the hon. Gentleman.