Parliamentary Lobbying

The hon. Gentleman will want to listen to my speech. He may have a ““career”” in this House, but I have a vocation here, attempting to represent the interests of my constituents. That seems to me what being a Member of Parliament should be about. Let me give an illustration of this interchangeability, or ““incestuous relationship””, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West has described it. We will go to the top and start with the Prime Minister, because of course the founder of Shandwick lobbyists was Lord Chadlington. Lord Chadlington was the Prime Minister's patron to get his parliamentary seat in Witney and, as was reported in The Sunday Times in 2007, he offered the Prime Minister his little farm and pool, in which the Prime Minister's family were invited to swim. Actually, he did a lot more than that, because the little farm is the same building that he gave the Prime Minister and that the Prime Minister used for the first six months that he was a Member of Parliament. And Lord Chadlington is a man who formed a lobbying company, which was eventually sold on to Huntsman—sorry, Huntsworth lobbyists. People can see that Huntsworth does not lobby me that often. [Laughter.] Huntsworth has its tentacles across the world. One of its subsidiaries is called Quiller. The Minister will be smiling, because Quiller employs lots of people from lots of different political parties, including advisers. I have never heard of it myself, but apparently two of them were advisers to the Labour party; they were a Mr Smith and a Mr Slinger. I never came across them myself. There were also a Mr Alistair Murray, who advised the Liberal Democrat party, and a Mr Parkinson, a Ms Roycroft and a Mr Malcolm Morton, who were all aides to Conservative MPs. Indeed, the Minister will know Mr Malcolm Morton, because he was an adviser to the Minister. Saying that is not to criticise either the Minister or Mr Morton, but it demonstrates the interchangeability between the political world and the lobbying world. That preferential access is gained by personal contacts, which is what is fundamentally wrong with the current situation.