Meeting of the Parliament 07 January 2016
Calm your jets, Mr Brodie.
After all those things and the current financial controversies of some MPs, that general standing is not high. Thankfully, the Parliament has been largely free of such scandals—and long may that continue. Indeed, the reason I wanted to introduce a bill was to ensure that we put in place systems to prevent such things from happening, thus protecting our democracy, this Parliament and those engage with it. It would take only one or two scandals to really damage the Parliament’s standing, and that would be a major setback for all of us and for this institution. In that respect, a good, robust and workable lobbying bill fits with the preventative agenda that the Government promotes and which I think all of us support.
However, it is hard to deny the view of many that, compared with ordinary people—the average man or woman in the street—powerful interests enjoy disproportionate access to Government, politicians and decision makers as well as disproportionate influence over policy and the legislative process. We could pick out a whole range of issues, but the fact is that organisations that are engaged in promoting renewable energy, fracking, cuts to air passenger duty, airport expansion and a whole range of other matters regularly spend very significant amounts of time, money and effort on getting what they want. There is nothing wrong at all with that—they are perfectly entitled to do so—but the public should have a right to know who they are speaking to, the reason for those communications and what, if any, was the outcome. That is not revolutionary stuff—it fits in with the Parliament’s founding principles.
The bill is therefore timely and absolutely appropriate. New powers are coming to this place and we know that, with new powers, lobbying follows. There was almost no Scottish lobbying industry of note before the Parliament existed but, as powers have come, lobbying activity has increased and now it goes on in this place every minute of every day. Again, I stress that that is not a bad thing, but it is right that we legislate now in an atmosphere of relative calm and not in the wake of a scandal, when party-political advantage would clearly and inevitably influence our discussions and decisions.
That said, if we are to legislate, it must be done properly. As it stands, the bill is, in my opinion, in need of radical amendment to make it fit for purpose, and I am pleased that colleagues from all parties on the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee recognise some of the major flaws in the Government’s proposals and the need for improvement.
One of those major flaws is the proposal to include only face-to-face meetings between the lobbyist and the lobbied. On first reading that proposal, I immediately wondered whether the Government thinks that we still live in the 19th century or a world where telecommunications and computers do not exist. I see that the minister has a fancy biro pen, so I assume that he does not write with a quill on parchment. I am sure that he does not send smoke signals or speak to people via two bean cans tied together with string.
The Government says that it wants to deliver an economy that is futureproofed and has world-class connectivity. With that come new-fangled gimmicks with strange names such as the telephone, the computer, email, conference calls, videoconferencing and—for heaven’s sake—Skype and FaceTime. I can hear the minister muttering, “It doesn’t matter. They will never catch on.”