The hon. and learned Gentleman will have a chance to make a contribution if he catches your eye, Ms Primarolo.
The point is this: we will have the same individual, Mr Smith from Wimbledon, and we will know who his clients are. Under the Bill, as currently drafted, we will know who his employer is. If amendment 76 is made, we will not know who his employer is, so there will be a gaping hole in our knowledge. It might not matter so much for us, but there are tens of millions of people outside in the country who want to know why the Government abandoned legislation on, say, plain tobacco packaging, or why they suddenly decided to proceed with the privatisation of our national health service.
Amendment 76 would have a dramatic impact on the rest of the Bill, rendering parts of it entirely redundant. Clause 4, for example, requires a lobbyist captured by the Bill to register the address of their main place of business or, if there is no such place, their home address. The individual lobbyist’s home address could be registered and we would not know their place of employment. Yet
clause 4 has been drafted precisely to attempt to ascertain where that person would be working from. Again, the Government amendment imperils the very principle of transparency that the Bill claims to advocate.