It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Members for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) and for St Albans (Mrs Main). I do not necessarily agree with everything they said, but at least they have been thoughtful and have a good idea of what they are talking about. A number of my Opposition colleagues have also made very good speeches.
We have to agree that not all lobbyists are bad. As Members of Parliament, we get a lot of information from lobbyists that we use to our benefit. There is no
way that I, as a member of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, could see every person who wants a meeting with me, but I try to meet those who will shed a light on whatever idea the Committee is talking about at the time. We use that information when we talk to Ministers and that is how it should be.
I do not believe that the Bill gives us transparency. It is very narrow and I think that an idea was formed somewhere along the line about how it could be used. Although I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) that it is a bad Bill, I also think that there must be a reason why these things are being done. These people are not idiots—they know what they are doing and there must be a reason behind it. Although the Bill is a bad Bill, I believe that its purpose is to stop my party winning the next election. If last week’s vote on Syria had gone a different way—I am glad to say that it did not—would that have been because third parties had lobbied us to support the Government in what they were trying to do?
We suffered as a party in the 2005 election when the coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats, picked up a lot of votes on the back of an anti-war vote. Their support slackened off, as we saw when we got to the 2010 election. I believe that the Bill would have stopped the third parties in 2005 saying, “Don’t vote for a Government who go to war.” I think that worked against us. The Government are not that stupid, and avoiding that is one reason why we have the Bill. We have talked about the rail network and its effect, and the same applies here. The Bill could be used against anything that is anti-Government.
What are we doing? We are talking about registers of interests. Only 1% of those who lobby will be put on a register and the rest would not be on it. Why would that be? Who are we highlighting—the small groups, the individuals and the third-party wee groups who get together occasionally? Why would we want to do that? There must be a reason. Therefore, why are we doing that when we are not tackling the big lobbyists whom we met regularly? Why are they exempt? I ask these questions—I hope that the Minister can answer them—because I have not for the life of me worked out why the Government would want to do this.