It\u2019s clear from our survey that the lobbying industry speaks with one voice when it says that the 2014 Lobbying Act is fundamentally broken and needs to be overhauled.<\/p>\n
When the Act was being hammered out under the Coalition Government it was blindingly obvious that it simply wouldn\u2019t work. The Act isn\u2019t so much undermined by the odd clause here, or a strange bit of wording there, but is a total failure of design. There are six key exemptions baked into the text \u2013 everything from not being registered for VAT through to being able to show lobbying is only a small part of your business – that conspire to keep the overwhelming majority of lobbying off the register and out of public view.<\/p>\n
The Act only applies to consultant lobbyists, meaning the many thousands that work in-house, be it at banks, law firms or charities, are able to fire off as many messages to Ministers as they like with no obligation to sign. There is no ability to log correspondence with various civil servants, MPs or SpAds. The Lobbying Act fails to shine even a little light on the unillumined corridors of power.<\/p>\n
To put it another way, Westminster \u2013 supposedly the mother of all Parliaments \u2013 has the least transparent lobbying regime in the West, which is a cause for national shame. What we need isn\u2019t a register that captures a small number of lobbyists, but a register of lobbying activity. We need to ensure that it captures correspondence with SpAds and civil servants, not simply Ministers and Permanent Secretaries.<\/p>\n
If a decade-long string of scandals weren\u2019t enough, the events of this year alone have built an unanswerable case for reforming the Lobbying Act. If we want to rebuild public confidence in the political system, which has been repeatedly rocked, we need to start with lobbying. This Government claims that sunlight is the best disinfectant, so it\u2019s beyond time it pulled back the blinds.<\/p>\n
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