I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) on her speech. I like the fact that she takes no hostages from among her own colleagues, betraying their ignorance and all. I entirely agree with her: there is no point in introducing a Bill that destroys the whole premise of decent, open, transparent lobbying in this country, because it is one of the fundamental precepts that inform the way we do our democratic business.
Our legislation would be consistently weaker if people had no opportunity to lobby us. Let us face it: most of the time we are dealing not with issues on which we are the experts but those that are way beyond our normal ken, so it is important that people come here to inform our decisions.
I would say, just as the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford said, that it is very rare for a lobbyist to devote their energy to the permanent secretary, who will nearly always be entirely irrelevant to the process in hand. Normally, the Minister would be the person of last resort to whom a lobbyist would go because they would want to persuade members of a Select Committee, people sitting on the Bill Committee and all sorts of other people that need to be persuaded long before thinking of engaging with the Minister. Special advisers are essential to that process.