I am most grateful to be admonished for staying in order.
The hon. Lady makes a serious point. We have only four and a half or five hours to consider a huge piece of legislation. Frankly, this should have been scrutinised much better. I fail to see what constitutional imperative has brought it to the Floor of the House. I hope that the other place will do a genuine job of forcing the Government to come back and make some proper amendments, because I think that there are some real issues.
These are not issues that just I have concerns about. We have had the most bizarre and unlikely coalition. The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency has said of the Bill:
“It only applies to consultant lobbyists whose business is mainly lobbying. It would exclude those for whom lobbying is only a small part of the business. This could apply to a large number of significant lobbyists-for-hire”.
At the other end of the debate, the Public Relations Consultants Association polled its own members and found that only 1% of activity was covered from under 20% of the organisation’s concern. Even the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who I see in his place paying close attention, has said:
“The Bill tries to exclude people whose main business is not lobbying, but it does not define what constitutes a mainly non-lobbying business.”
The hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) has also criticised the loophole, saying:
“I suspect all that this new rule will do is ensure that in some instances big corporate interests will bring their lobbying activity back ‘in house’. Instead of hiring a public affairs consultancy, the big defence, banking and energy interests will give the work to
their public affairs department. And because their main business is defence, or banking, or energy, they can safely ignore those provisions of the Bill.”
It is a dreadful state of affairs when two Government Back Benchers—I use the word “Government” slightly loosely, perhaps—are criticising the Bill. I hope the Minister will take on board the genuine concerns that have been expressed.
We have been told that the intention is not to exclude people. To pick up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford), let me give one example of a significant public affairs consultancy—MHP Communications. I should declare that I have met MHP Communications representatives, who have seen me about developments in my constituency. They conducted themselves appropriately at all times.