Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

I feel as if I am being rude to my Back-Bench colleagues, but yet again I think that that demonstrates a lack of understanding about the lobbying industry. Only very rarely would a lobbying company or consultancy have a direct meeting with a Member of Parliament or Minister. Such companies are the facilitators of meetings for their clients, who quite often happen to be big companies. I remember when I was an in-house lobbyist having a meeting with my hon. Friend when he was an adviser to the shadow Treasury team on matters relating to European tax legislation. We need to be clear that the lobbying industry today provides a very different service and is a very different industry from what it was 10 or 15 years ago.