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7 Jan 2010 : Column 152WH—continued
Another group that falls into that category is the Huntsworth group, which has a variety of public affairs firms under its wing. Of those, Citigate and Grayling declare their clients, but Quiller does not. A gentleman called George Bridges recently left Quiller to work for the Conservative Front-Bench team, and one of the
public relations newspapers has argued that, because he was one of the main reasons for many people signing up to Quiller, the company would suffer from that loss. Clearly, if one part of a group is signed up to declaring its clients, all should be. I challenge the public affairs council, if it is to be credible, to insist on that. It cannot have part of a group declaring its clients and another part not.
I urge the Minister to consider whether it is beyond the pale for her to commit to writing to all major public affairs companies, urging them to declare their clients. Is it beyond the pale for her to write to the FTSE 100 companies and urge them that the next time they contract a public affairs company they do so with one that publicly declares its clients and is involved in the public affairs council? I offer the same challenge to the Opposition: would the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) be prepared to write such letters to the top lobbying companies, and to the FTSE 100 companies to urge them to employ lobbyists who adopt the highest ethical rules?
If we are serious about self-regulation, which both the Government and the Opposition are committed to, we have to take further action. We in Parliament must look at a report produced by the Committee on Standards in Public Life a couple of years ago, which stated that consultancies that service all-party groups should adopt those standards. There are probably things that Parliament can do to encourage that.
I am in a particular position this afternoon-I do not know whether Lord Mandelson is watching, but if he is, the Minister knows that I can just lose any note he sends. This is a decision that she can make on her own, but I hope that she will at least consider the suggestion. I hope that the likes of Lord Bell and Peter Bingle of Bell Pottinger, and Alan Parker of Brunswick, who are in danger of becoming the Arthur Daleys of the public affairs industry if they hold out against the declaration of clients, will also heed the call from the Opposition Front Bench. I am sure that the Treasury Bench will today call on those companies to join the modern world and declare their clients.
3.24 pm
Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle) (Lab): Lord Mandelson, whether or not he is watching the debate, will know what my friend the hon. 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 he 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, West (Ms Hewitt) 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.
3.35 pm
Mr. Nick Hurd (Ruislip-Northwood) (Con): 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.
Kelvin Hopkins: Will the hon. Gentleman not agree, though, with the point that I made about the role of Downing street in respect of BAA? It was not just about the Department; those decisions were made in Downing street, where the lobbying took place.
Mr. Hurd: I cannot prove or disprove that. I am trying to get across the public perception that the decision was over-influenced by BAA's access to and privileged relationship with the Department for Transport. The reality is one thing. However, I am more concerned about the perception and how it compounds public unease about the way that decisions are taken by those who govern in their name.
I congratulate the Committee, because we need to look at this issue more closely. The balance of the report looked at those doing the lobbying, notwithstanding the powerful statements made by the hon. Member for Pendle on the need for greater policing of what happens, for example, to Ministers once they leave office with their freedom to pursue gain elsewhere, and the need to look again at the system of regulation there.
I found the report persuasive in its message that the current system of self-regulation is not effective, for the reasons stated, including a lack of consistency and the lack of one trusted body. Although it has not been picked up so far in the debate, the point was well made about it being difficult for the three organisations to combine the role of being effectively a trade association that is dependent on members and a regulator of those members. That dynamic and tension is unsustainable.
The third point made by the report, which was persuasively argued, was about there being no evidence of an effective complaints process in this system.
The report was clear, and the line of the Committee was clear, about the need for a new body to enforce standards and a mandatory register of contacts. I found the Government's line less clear, when it eventually came-we will return to that. The hon. Member for Pendle described the Government's response as limp and feeble, and I agree. I was certainly disappointed with it. The Government's line seems to be that they prefer to focus on those who are lobbied, rather than on those who are doing the lobbying. In that context, I welcome the move to produce quarterly publications of information about ministerial meetings, which is a welcome development. I share the view of the hon. Member for Luton, North that that should be extended to senior officials as well, because as the hon. Member for Pendle said, the move to greater transparency is inevitable and we must go with it.
I was less clear about the Government's view in respect of the need for a register. They have clearly come down on the side of more effective voluntary self-regulation, which is our instinct as well, but the Committee Chairman described their response as "gnomic"-not a word that I would ever use to describe the current Minister; certainly not on her birthday-and I agree. The response is unclear in that regard. The Committee Chairman cited the following quote:
"The Government agrees that any system of regulation ...voluntary...or statutory...requires a register of lobbyists to ensure that lobbying activity is transparent."
But a few pages earlier, a large section is given over to expanding on the possible risks of mandatory registration, as outlined by the Committee on Standards in Public
Life. The message from the Government is not clear enough in this respect. I should like to press the Minister to be clear, because if we are to go down the path of more effective voluntary self-regulation, which is our instinct, we need to send a much stronger signal to the industry than the Government's response delivers, particularly on the need for greater transparency. The hon. Member for Pendle was powerful in that regard, but we endorse that principle.
The hon. Member for Selby kindly quoted my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude), who said:
"Public affairs firms should publish all client lists and their full-time and part-time staff... The Solicitors' Code of Conduct should also be amended so solicitors' firms who engage in public affairs work can disclose their lobbying clients".
I should like the Government to be clearer on their position. I get no sense from their response about a big stick being waved in the direction of the industry and no sense of urgency. In fact, they have taken a long time to say very little indeed.
I close my remarks with three questions to the Minister. First, why the delay in responding? I am not a member of the Committee, so I am not privy to the correspondence or the explanations given, but a change of Ministers is not a sufficiently good response in respect of a delay of nine months in responding to such an important report-seven months more than the parliamentary protocol dictates. I should like the courtesy of some explanation for that unusual delay in responding.
Secondly, if the message is, "We want to see more effective self-regulation," what will the Government do to assess the response of the sector? The Government response is silent on the process from here on and silent on a timetable. This is an opportunity for the Minister to place on the record a much stronger message to the lobbying industry, saying that if it fails to self-regulate effectively, it should be prepared for intense pressure from Parliament to legislate to ensure greater accountability.
Thirdly and more specifically, we are concerned about a trend within lobbying for public sector organisations to hire lobbyists effectively to lobby the Government. We published a dossier called "Government Lobbying Government", which identifies some £10 million of public money being used apparently in this circle of public sector organisations-predominantly quangos-lobbying Departments for funds or legislative action. That strikes us as unhealthy and quite wrong in the current climate of concern about public expenditure. We draw the Government's attention to the action in the United States, where the Byrd amendment of 1996 prohibits the use of federal contracts, grants, loans or moneys to influence, or attempt to influence, the Executive or legislative branch. The Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 states that moneys derived from Government contracts in excess of $500,000 cannot be used to fund the influencing of legislative action, directly or indirectly.
I should like the Minister to place on the record her position on the Government's approach to clamping down on public money being used by public sector companies to lobby the Government.
I congratulate the Committee on an excellent report that throws some useful light into some potentially dark corners.
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