The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), like others, will be aware from when he did his law degree—as I am from when I did mine—that there are three golden principles running through our judicial system that come into play when judges interpret legislation. The first is the mischief rule, which asks what mischief the law was introduced to deal with; the second is the golden rule, which means generously interpreting a piece of legislation; and the third is the literal rule, which means interpreting it literally. That is where I would like to start with the amendment and these provisions.
I hope you will forgive me, Sir Edward, if I digress a little—I will not take up too much time—but we were told that the reason for introducing a lobbying Bill was that there was a significant problem with lobbying in this country. Everyone was talking about the next scandal being lobbying, but we were in fact talking about, for example, somebody being paid—a Member of Parliament, say, or somebody else—to ask questions that are not within the rules. We were also talking about people who have access to Ministers and are able to campaign and lobby for private companies—for example, Lynton Crosby and people like that. What we were talking about was money changing hands and others not knowing what was happening. That was what was meant by the scandalous part of lobbying. As a Member of Parliament, I should not be asking questions in the House or raising issues because somebody is sponsoring me or giving me money to line someone else’s pockets, make a company richer or help it to secure a contract that it should perhaps not have.
“Lobbying” refers to those types of situation; sadly , this Bill does not really deal with any of them. Part 1, which deals with consultant lobbyists, catches only about 1% of those concerned—it would not catch people like Lynton Crosby. Part 2 deals with charities and voluntary organisations. If somebody from a cancer charity comes to speak to me about—
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