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

I want to respond to a couple of the amendments before we wind up. Amendments 3 and 4 would alter clause 1 and provide that lobbying was prohibited unless a lobbyist had both registered and signed up to the register’s code of conduct. Amendment 42 would establish a civil sanction in relation to breaches of the code of conduct. New clause 1 provides that the registrar must produce a code. However, there is little detail about what provision such a code would make other than that it would forbid inappropriate financial relations between registered persons and parliamentarians. The amendments reveal that, as we perhaps knew already, the Opposition intend not only a register of lobbyists but a full-blown regulator of the industry.