It is a rare occasion when one feels that the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) has been disappointingly brief. [Laughter.] I cannot remember any similar occasion.
I rise with a sense of excitement about the Bill because anyone who speaks to it will go down in parliamentary history as partaking in one of the worst Bills that has ever appeared before the House. Students of the future will study this with amazement—to think that a Bill of this kind could ever be introduced. Speaking to the amendments is rather like trying to chromium-plate a pile of horse dung, imagining that we could improve it in any way.
I feel sympathetic, as was said from the Front Bench, towards the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith) who as the responsible Minister was given the gloomy task of introducing this Bill to our Select Committee in July, on the last day before we went off for the summer recess. She had a torrid time, trying to defend the indefensible. I said that I was sympathetic to her, given that she was sitting there, garlanded with an albatross of nonsense. I am delighted to know that she has given up and gone to spend more time with the truth, having escaped from the Front Bench. I wish her well in her future career; it could not have got worse. I am sure that when she was assailed by this blizzard of e-mails—not from just 10 or 20 charities, but from hundreds—she realised how damaging the Bill was. These amendments would go some way to improving it.
As was said earlier, we should see the wheeze. Of course no hon. Member behaves badly; nothing done in this House or the other place would be dishonourable. The whole purpose behind the Bill and why it was introduced was to address hints of a scandal. It was not yet established, but there was a fear that a scandal had taken place, involving the country of Fiji. The matter has still not been settled, but there was also an equally minor scandal involving a Member of the other place with respect to the Cayman Islands.
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We are in a very vulnerable position. The Member involved in the Cayman Islands case was doing something that would be absolutely forbidden in the House of Commons, but it was justified after the first stage of the investigation in the other House on the grounds that Members of that House are not paid and have to earn a few bob here and there. If they are taking money from another country—and there are Members in this House who are doing the same thing, acting as representatives of countries such as Azerbaijan and various other oppressive regimes—that is apparently okay. However, it is not okay. We have a serious group of scandals here that we are not addressing.
The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark suggested that we should include special advisers. Well, of course we should, and—one of the amendments deals with this—we should also include electronic mail. I believe that 500 e-mails were sent by one of Murdoch’s lackeys to a Secretary of State’s special adviser in an attempt to influence him in regard to a decision. Is it okay for the Bill not to cover that?
The Bill does not cover the great problems that we had with one particular Secretary of State who achieved absolution through resignation. There was a very worrying situation involving a lobbyist who was working for that Secretary of State. He was not employed by that Secretary of State, or by the Government; apparently, he was employed by certain right-wing think-tanks in America, but he was certainly present at private meetings, and
was privy to all kinds of information. When the matter came out, it should have been referred to the adviser on ministerial interests, but it was not. The adviser resigned, and another was appointed. When our Committee held a hearing to consider whether the proposed replacement was the right man, we decided unanimously that he was not. We voted against it, but he got in. We said, “What we need is a Rottweiler, but what we have is a poodle.” We must deal with the lobbying that takes place at the highest level in respect of decisions to go to war and decisions to buy armaments.
Let me give an example of something that could happen here; indeed, something similar is happening here. In America, a couple called the Kagans were at Petraeus’s right hand. They were present at every private meeting that took place, and constantly advised Petraeus to beef up the aggression and play down the war movement. They were not employed by Petraeus, they were not employed by the military and they were not employed by the American Government. They were employed by the American arms industry. That gives us some clue as to why we have continual pressure for perpetual war to keep the orders going. Is that taken care of in the Bill?
We have a scandal in this country, which was revealed by The Sunday Times. Apparently, in the past 15 years the astronomical figure of 3,500 former civil servants have been working for the arms industry. Many members of the civil service now retire at a very early age and embark on a second career, using their civil service expertise and contacts files. In one instance, a General Kiszely offered his services. He said that when he went to the Cenotaph and was waiting for the Queen to turn up, there was not much else to do: one would not be thinking about the fallen. He said that it was a good marketing opportunity, and that he could talk to people there and settle contracts.
New clause 7, in particular, is designed to deal with the fact that the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments provides very weak rules to limit the way in which former Ministers, civil servants, generals and admirals can prostitute the knowledge that they gain when they are in high office in order to make as much money as they can afterwards. The problem is not the damage they do afterwards, because their knowledge is a wasting asset and soon becomes out of date. The great problem is this. When people are Ministers, top civil servants or heads of Department, what are they doing? When they have to settle contracts involving billions of pounds, do they say they will do so in the public interest and in the pursuit of best value for money, or in the back of their mind are they thinking that if they give the contract to firm A, B or C, one of them might do a deal with them and they may get their hacienda in Spain in retirement as a result of that decision? It is a deeply corrupting part of our system. ACBA never succeeds in limiting it; it has no powers. It can take any decision and give any advice, but it cannot impose those decisions.
In a fascinating television programme, the ACBA chair—