Parliamentary Lobbying

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Paul Flynn]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. We cannot deal in excuses and half truths any more, because of the position we are in. If there is a rule—and the Government created that rule, for goodness’ sake—let Ministers abide by it and not make silly excuses.

Advocates and paid representatives of some of the worst and most oppressive regimes in the world use this building and this House, to invite MPs—sometimes naive MPs—to visit their countries, to try to win their support. Among such countries, Azerbaijan and Equatorial Guinea are very active at the moment. Should we allow that to continue? Should we allow this building and its facilities, and the good will of Members to be used, in the way that other Parliaments have cosied up to oppressive regimes?

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Paul Flynn]

My hon. Friend is going to mention Libya.

[Robert Halfon]

No, I am not.

I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks and I congratulate him on securing the debate. I am a vice-chairman of the all-party group on the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq. I have been there twice, and the visits are declared in the register. They have been incredibly educational, because I wanted to visit a progressive, Muslim and democratic nation that follows the rule of law. Surely my visits were a good thing?

[Paul Flynn]

My comrade Robert—as I call him—and I serve together on the Public Administration Committee, and we have many common causes. I would not suggest that there was anything untoward in what he does, and I am sure that he does not receive an income from the Government of that country. However, other MPs do, directly or indirectly, from some regimes. Money is being paid—it is all there. It is a question about the way in which we are going.

I want to pay tribute to Tamasin Cave of SpinWatch and the other organisations that have persisted in their support for the Select Committee’s recommendations about what all Governments are doing. We must ask ourselves: are the Government serious about the matter? Are we making any progress in rebuilding our reputations? Are we quelling what the Prime Minister called the public’s “worst fears and suspicions”? We have to be concerned about those fears and suspicions. The perception of how this place behaves is crucial.

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[Simon Hart]

I suspect Mr Robertson may get at us if we drift off lobby groups too obviously. All I will say is that there is a huge difference between a trade organisation and a regulator, and confusion arises when people try to be both. Any measure that separates the role of a trade representative and a regulator has to be something that we view positively.

The hon. Member for Newport West has mentioned definitions. With the greatest respect to him, he over-simplified the situation. There are many worthy charities representing large numbers of people—in some cases, they represent smaller numbers of people—that fall into the lobby category. We must all ensure that we do nothing to interrupt the ability of the charitable sector to lobby us hard. If we do not permit or encourage that, we will create a worse situation as far as public confidence is concerned.

[Robert Halfon]

I note what my hon. Friend has said about lobbying by charities. Although many charities do a remarkable job, does he not agree that charities would be better off focusing on their charitable works? In 2009, Oxfam reportedly got 25% of its funding from the state, but then spent £25 million on what was described as “helping people to lobby Government”. Surely, most of Oxfam’s excellent work should be primarily focused on the front line.

[Simon Hart]

I agree with my hon. Friend up to a point. One purpose of the charities, however, is to persuade Government and political parties to recognise the needs of their charitable members and to legislate—or not legislate—accordingly, so it is a perfectly legitimate activity. Age Concern, for example, does very good work in informing and persuading us.

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[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Mr Robertson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn)—

[Paul Flynn]

Comrade.

[Robert Halfon]

I congratulate my honourable comrade on the Public Administration Committee on his remarks today. Underneath all the rhetoric from all parties, there is quite a lot of overlap. Although we need to be transparent and open, we should not necessarily see all lobbying as a sort of great conspiracy. I declare my interests, as set out in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

In my view, there are three kinds of lobbying. The first, which has already been described, is constituents writing to us or contacting us on a range of issues. The second involves charities and pressure groups. Many of those charities have huge budgets for public relations and public affairs. Many also have former special advisers working for them who know the Government inside-out, and therefore have what might be described as privileged access. The third kind is the traditional lobbying being highlighted today, which involves private firms, trade unions and big public sector agencies, and the public affairs firms that they hire.

I am proud that in my constituency we have a large bingo club with 40,000 members, and I was only too pleased when, a couple of weeks ago, the Bingo Association came to lobby me about various taxation issues. I cannot see anything wrong with that; it is a good thing, because I want to support my incredibly popular bingo club. We should not condemn all lobbying as sinister and retrograde, because some of it can be used to inform us. Tonight, I have an Adjournment debate on university technical colleges, and e-mails and letters that I have received from all kinds of interest groups have helped me to prepare for it.

[Paul Flynn]

It should be clear to my hon. Friend that that is not part of our concern. I have tweeted him about his 40,000 bingo club members, and commiserated with him on the fact that such is his constituents’ despair over the future of the economy that they have all resorted to gambling.

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend’s wit has no bounds, which is why I enjoy sitting on the Select Committee with him so often.

I support groups and websites such as SpinWatch, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency, the Sunlight Centre and Guido Fawkes, because the more openness and transparency the better, but this will be incredibly difficult. Let us say that there is a lobby company called Westminster Communications—I do not know if there is—[Interruption.] There is. Okay, let us call it Westminster X. If we say that that company has to lobby, there is nothing to prevent it rebranding itself as Widget Strategies Ltd and describing itself as a management consultancy, as opposed to a political one. How do we then register all the businesses that come to see us? Do we have a blanket diary entry and register everything? It is not as easy as it looks.

The case of Adam Werritty has been briefly mentioned. I do not think that that was a lobbying scandal; it was to do with the relationship between special advisers and Ministers. Sometimes the boundaries of special advisers are unclear. Under the previous Government there were Lord Levy and Alastair Campbell, who became a semi-civil servant. There is a lot of confusion, and that is why the Adam Werritty thing needed to happen. The Government need to make the role of special advisers much clearer, including how many there should be and what their duties are.

I agree 100% with my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West—he is almost my hon. Friend—about the issue of revolving doors, or Ministers leaving Whitehall and getting jobs. We had an interesting Select Committee sitting with Ian Lang, whose committee—the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments—seems not to keep records of individuals whom it has advised not to take up Government jobs, or of individuals who have taken up jobs after leaving Government.

[Mr MacShane]

Will the hon. Gentleman accept from me that it is not so much ex-Ministers who get these jobs, but senior civil servants, who award massive contracts in their Departments and very shortly afterwards go to sit on the boards of some of the companies involved?

[Robert Halfon]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. There are scandalous cases of senior civil servants walking out of one door and in through another. I find it particularly outrageous that the Government spend millions of pounds hiring head-hunters and recruitment consultants, yet some of those recruitment consultants have former senior civil servants on board who worked in the human resources department and—surprise, surprise—the job is given to that head-hunting agency. There is no difference between head-hunting agencies raking it in from the taxpayer, and being hired by the Government to carry out some of the activities that my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West described.

I regret that the previous Government did not do more. I was not around at the time, but a report by the Public Administration Committee urged the Government to compile a register on lobbying. However, the Government never failed to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It is rich of many Opposition Members to start to have a go at the Government now, when they had so many years to get this right and did nothing.

I welcome the Prime Minister’s confirmation that he will go further and bring in a proper register of lobbyists, including of organisations such as think-tanks and trade unions, which are politically active and part of the lobbying landscape. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) condemned people who work as special advisers and then become MPs. I was one of those dreaded people. My work as a political consultant and as a special adviser helped to prepare me for Parliament. The hon. Gentleman would not criticise a lawyer who had spent all his life learning law before becoming a judge.

[John Mann]

The hon. Gentleman is wrong. The concept, and the word, is not “condemned”; it is about pointing to the danger of interchangeability. It is not about condemning individuals for what they do.

[Robert Halfon]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and the answer is that there must be openness and transparency, but it is not so terrible if a businessman hires someone who has worked in Government or for the Opposition because they understand what has been going on.

We must be more careful and much tougher with quangos—paid for by the taxpayer—that hire paid lobbyists to lobby the taxpayer for more money. Figures show that the Ordnance Survey and the Audit Commission spent more than £600,000 on lobbyists in 2009. Transparency and openness are key; all the problems will go away if everyone is clear about what is happening, and about which lobby groups are lobbying which Ministers and MPs, but there will be a difficulty with the definition.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I warmly congratulate the comrades, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), and the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). It is an unusual alliance; perhaps they met around the sides of politics, from the ends of the Back Benches. I completely agree about transparency; it is key. Several Members have referred to the fact that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has said that he was eating in a private capacity, not a ministerial one. I suspect that he might, on occasion, have eaten in both capacities on the same evening and that, like a cow, he has more than one stomach, and is therefore able to ruminate on behalf of several people.

[Robert Halfon]

On a point of order, Mr Robertson. That seems to be a case of fatism. Is that not inappropriate?

[John Robertson (in the Chair)]

That is not a point of order.

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[Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) on securing the debate, which has been a good one. He is a doughty campaigner and several important issues have been raised. Among the many important issues raised by the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) was that of unintended consequences. My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) stressed the importance of the principle of transparency. The hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) made the point that there is a great deal of common ground between politicians in the House, and I shall revert to that. My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) pointed out that lobbyists fulfil a useful role and that it is the question of regulation that concerns us. I also thank him for introducing us to a word with which I was not familiar—“lobbyacious.” Finally, we heard, briefly but pithily, from the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), who underlined the complexity of the subject and warned us to be careful not to introduce unintended consequences.

I hope that Members agree that we should all do our best to establish a genuine consensus in the House on how best to register lobbying activity. It is well worth remembering that how best to regulate lobbyists featured in the manifestos of all three main British political parties during the general election campaign. The Labour party stated:

“We will create a Statutory Register of Lobbyists to ensure complete transparency in their activities.”

The Liberal Democrat manifesto stated that the improper influence of lobbyists should be curbed by

“introducing a statutory register of lobbyists”.

Indeed, the Conservative manifesto said:

“We will regulate lobbying through introducing a statutory register of lobbyists and ensuring greater transparency.”

The coalition agreement also has a commitment to a statutory register.

I hope that the Minister will indicate when the long-waited consultation paper will see the light of day. I read with interest his interview in the current House magazine, and it was rather unfair of it to refer to him as “Nick Clegg’s babysitter”. [Hon. Members: “Aah.”] I am glad that hon. Members agree that that is a rather unfair description. I dare say that some would prefer to describe the Minister as “David Cameron’s handmaiden.”

In that interview, the Minister alluded to several other constitutional issues, which mean that the register of lobbyists has slipped from the Deputy Prime Minister’s initial target of later this year. I sincerely hope that the Minister’s work load will not prevent him from keeping his promise of at least a consultation document in the next few weeks. If he could provide us with a publication date today, that would be most helpful.

When that consultation document is published, I hope that there will be a widespread debate and that the Government will listen carefully to the views expressed by all.

[Robert Halfon]

Although the hon. Gentleman rightly urges the Government to take action on this and for us to fulfil our election manifesto commitment, does he not regret that his own party did not follow through the recommendations of the 2009 report of the Public Administration Committee?

[Mr David]

If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I will address that point in a moment.

It is important for the Government to learn from the unfortunate episodes that we have witnessed in this House in recent times. I also urge them to study carefully the experiences of other legislatures, particularly in Australia and Canada. There is no easy formula or one-size-fits-all approach—nothing can be taken off the shelf—but we can learn from what has happened in other countries.

I would like to make a few suggestions about the principles that I believe should underpin any future statutory register of lobbyists. Building on the cornerstone of transparency, to which several Members referred, the Public Administration Committee stated in its 2009 report that information in a statutory register must include

“the names of the individuals carrying out lobbying activity and of any organisation employing or hiring them, whether a consultancy, law firm, corporation or campaigning organisation.”

Secondly, it stated that the information should include,

“in the case of multi-client consultancies, the names of their clients.”

Thirdly, it recommended the inclusion of

“information about any public office previously held by an individual lobbyist—essentially, excerpts from their career history.”

Fourthly, the report said that there should be

“a list of the interests of decision makers within the public service (Ministers, senior civil servants and senior public servants) and summaries of their career histories outside the public service”.

Fifthly, it stated that there should be

“information about contacts between lobbyists and decision makers—essentially, diary records and minutes of meetings. The aim would be to cover all meetings and conversations between decision makers and outside interests.”

Those five points are a good starting point. Some will suggest that they do not go far enough, while others will say that they go too far. They are, however, a useful point at which to begin our discourse. As the hon. Member for Harlow suggested, some may wonder why the report was not implemented when Labour was in government. I shall pre-empt that argument by saying that, while it is true that Labour did not take up the Committee’s call for a statutory register, it nevertheless indicated in January 2010 that, if a voluntary system proved ineffectual, it would be necessary to go further. I suggest that the time has indeed come for us to go further.

There is a danger that our approach to this admittedly complex and difficult area could end up being too broad and general. We must also be mindful of unintended consequences, as a number of Members have said. We are all advocates and ambassadors for our constituents, and many of us support a wide range of organisations that do not fit the widely accepted definition of a lobbying organisation. We must be careful that we take that into account when we define which bodies and individuals should be included in a statutory register of lobbying interests.

Finally, a register of lobbyists will not wholly solve the problem of the exercise of inappropriate influence. Let us not forget that the friend of the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), Mr Adam Werritty, was not a lobbyist as such. If anything, that episode clearly demonstrates that it is necessary for us to have in place a number of safeguards that are vigorously enforced. A statutory register of lobbyists, however, would be a vital element in ensuring that faith is restored once again in our parliamentary democracy.

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[Mr Harper]

Yes, and I am very pleased to do so.

The hon. Member for Newport West also referred to Ministers who take up roles on leaving office. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister strengthened the guidelines on that in the ministerial code he published last year. Ministers must seek the advice of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments and they must abide by it. That was not previously the case. Ministers had to get the advice, but they did not have to abide by it. In addition, for the first time, my right hon. Friend introduced a ministerial code that bans former Ministers from lobbying for two years after leaving office. So, they are absolutely not allowed to go straight out of office, get a job and start lobbying the Government again. That is a very helpful step forward.

[Robert Halfon]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s remarks about the advisory committee, but does he not think it would be better if it published its recommendations for everybody to see? We could then see which Ministers had followed the advice and who had not.

[Mr Harper]

I listened very carefully to what my hon. Friend said about the inquiry that the Public Administration Committee is undertaking at the moment and the evidence it has heard. Clearly, when it publishes its report, the Government will look very carefully at its recommendations and respond in due course. I look forward to the Committee’s report.