Political and Constitutional Reform CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the CBI

1. The CBI is the UK’s leading business organisation, speaking for some 240,000 businesses that together employ around a third of the private sector workforce. With offices across the UK as well as representation in Brussels, Washington, Beijing and Delhi the CBI communicates the British business voice around the world.

2. We welcome the opportunity to provide written evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee’s inquiry into introducing a statutory register of lobbyists. The CBI’s response to the Government’s consultation is currently being developed in consultation with CBI members and we will provide a copy to the Committee when finalised. The consultation response will outline our full position, but we wish to make the following points at this stage:

Lobbying is a fundamental part of the UK political process and is essential to generating effective, consistent and pragmatic public policy. Proposals to regulate lobbying must strike the right balance between improving transparency and upholding existing freedoms to put forward views to government.

We believe the Government must more clearly articulate the problem that a register would address and what it would achieve before taking proposals further.

Lobbying contacts with ministers are of greatest legitimate public interest and the Government should improve the way it records this information.

Plans for further pre-legislative scrutiny via a white paper and draft bill are essential. This will help ensure any final policy outcomes do not have an overly burdensome regulatory impact and can be implemented effectively.

3. Lobbying is a fundamental part of the UK political process and is essential to generating effective, consistent and pragmatic public policy. Proposals to regulate lobbying must strike the appropriate balance between improving transparency and upholding existing freedoms to put forward views to government.

4. The CBI engages with the Government throughout the policy development process, putting forward views on behalf of our members both proactively and at the invitation of the Government. This dialogue is in the long-term interest of developing public policy reflecting the needs and realities of British business and the economy. We are therefore pleased the consultation paper emphasises the need to maintain essential communication flow between business leaders and government.

5. We believe the Government must more clearly articulate the problem that a register would address and what it would achieve before taking proposals further.

6. The consultation paper states the purpose of a statutory register as increasing transparency to make it clear “who is lobbying and for whom,” and the accompanying impact assessment adds that a lack of transparency “creates a market failure caused by imperfect information that can undermine public confidence in the decision making process and its results.”

7. We agree with the Regulatory Policy Committee’s statement on the impact assessment, which says that “market failure [is identified] as the driver for the proposal, but [the impact assessment] does not explain how significant this is and how the proposal will address the causes of the market failure specifically.”1 We strongly recommend that the Government addresses this point before taking its proposals further.

8. We recognise that insufficient transparency in lobbying could have the potential to undermine public perceptions of the political system and its policy outcomes. However, we believe the government must set out in greater detail a description of the problem requiring attention, its causes and how a statutory register would provide a resolution. Once this is achieved, the government will be better positioned to identify preferred solutions. If this is not addressed, there is a risk of regulatory failure and a weakening of confidence in the Government’s proposals.

9. Lobbying contacts with ministers are of greatest legitimate public interest, and the Government should use this consultation process to review how this engagement is recorded.

10. The Government does not propose that any information on ministers’ meetings with external parties should be included in a register as this would duplicate information already in the public domain. We agree that information should not be duplicated but are concerned that the Government’s argument is undermined by the way this information is currently presented in practice. We have three principal concerns, which we believe should be addressed as a matter of urgency:

There is no adequate central government portal for accessing this information. The data.gov.uk website—which is mentioned in the consultation paper—directs users to a third-party website called Who’s Lobbying, which aggregates information from government departments.2 Similar information is provided on the Number 10 website, although this does not aggregate data from across all government departments.3

Information is not kept up to date, with the latest information available for the period ending 30 June 2011, some eight months out of date at time of writing.

Information is not presented consistently across departments, with some departments providing Word documents, some spreadsheets and some PDF files. The level of information available about meetings is also not consistent.

11. Plans for further pre-legislative scrutiny via a white paper and draft bill are essential. This will help ensure final policy outcomes do not have an overly burdensome regulatory impact and can be implemented effectively.

12. We are pleased that the Government plans to undertake further pre-legislative scrutiny of its proposals via a white paper and draft bill to be scrutinised by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee before taking forward primary legislation. This will provide significant opportunity for interested parties to comment on the proposals and should support the development of a policy that is workable and does not stifle essential communication between government and external parties.

February 2012