Parliamentary Lobbying

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Robertson."““It's an issue that crosses party lines and has tainted our politics for too long...an issue that exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money. I'm talking about lobbying—and we all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisors for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way. In this party, we believe in competition, not cronyism. We believe in market economics, not crony capitalism. So we must be the party that sorts all this out. Today it is a £2 billion industry that has a huge presence in Parliament… I believe that secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics. It arouses people's worst fears and suspicions about how our political system works.””" All those words were from our Prime Minister when he was in opposition. The purpose of today's debate is to ask how far we have got. How far has the Prime Minister delivered on those promises? The political class is probably less trusted than at any time in history. After the expenses scandal, the public have the right not to trust us. They will look at what we do and will almost always reach the worst conclusion on our motives. It will probably take at least a decade for MPs and for politics to win back the trust and confidence that we enjoyed in the past. What have the Government done in their 18 months in power? They certainly promised, in the coalition agreement, a compulsory register of lobbyists, but progress has not been promising. All parties promise to end the excesses of lobbyists when they are in opposition. In government, both the Tories and Labour have bottled it. The reason why the previous Government did not progress on instituting reforms was revealed in a frank interview by a former Cabinet Office Minister, who said it was because he and the Government were lobbied. We members of the Public Administration Committee were also lobbied, and we made the point that the people we had before us, giving their excuses as to why there should be no interference and why they should carry on in their own way, were professional persuaders and, in many cases, professional deceivers. They had to present the best case, and of course they were brilliant at doing that, because they train people on how to give evidence to Select Committees. Thank goodness that the Public Administration Committee took a stronger line; its recommendation was that we need more safeguards to cleanse the parliamentary stable. We were short of a smoking gun when we made our report in January 2009, but smoking guns appeared within weeks; there was the sting involving the four Members of the other place and the ““cash for legislating”” campaign, and the extraordinary, shaming episode of politicians for hire. A group of distinguished politicians with great reputations were shown on television putting their integrity and reputation up for sale for a certain amount of money. Potentially, that episode was a greater scandal than the expenses one, but as far as I can see, we are making virtually no progress on improving that situation.