Speaking as one who lobbies in a volunteer capacity I’m strongly in favour of transparency and I have another axe to grind too: equality of access. It’s much harder for individuals and small groups to get their voices heard at the closed, secretive round-table discussions at which Whitehall policy is often developed.

The consultation details are posted on the Cabinet Office website. If you want to add your voice don’t hang around as the consultation closes on Friday 20 April. If you don’t have time to respond directly there’s a tool at Unlock Democracy you can use to make a quick contribution.

What follows is the essence of my response. The quotes are from the consultation document. I’ve only commented on the bits I think need to change.

How should lobbyists be defined?

Lobbyists should mean those who undertake lobbying activities on behalf of a third party client or whose employees conduct lobbying activities on behalf of a third party client. It may also include certain other categories of person following consultation. It should not mean those who engage in lobbying activities on their own behalf rather than for a client.

This definition is inadequate because it excludes the majority of the industry: lobbyists who lobby full-time on behalf of their employers rather than for third parties. I believe the definition should include all paid lobbyists: those working on behalf of clients as well as those employed by companies, trade bodies, business groups, trade unions and large charities. Staff and firms working on a pro-bono basis should also be included because the aim is to make lobbyist influence transparent, and influence is not necessarily the same as spending.

Information to be included on the register

The information on the register should consist of the company registration details; the names of those persons employed, contracted or otherwise engaged to carry out lobbying and whether that person is a former Minister or senior civil servant. The information should also include a list of clients on whose behalf the lobbyist carries out lobbying activities. The information might also include limited financial information.

The proposed information to appear on the register is insufficient to make it useful. In order to understand how lobbyists influence policy we also need to know the topics on which each lobbyist is making representations, how often they’ve had an audience with the Government on each issue, when those meetings took place and the amount of money being spent by each company (or individual).

[The information on the register] should not include details of meetings with Ministers, which are already made available by each Government Department on www.data.gov.uk.

The Government already publishes quarterly information about Ministers’ meetings. Information about which stakeholders are meeting Ministers to put forward their views on policies is therefore already in the public domain.

This is insufficient without also publishing the details of what those stakeholders discussed with the Ministers. It gives carte blanche to lobbyists working for large organisations, which can have a full range of interests, to lobby opaquely leaving the public to make vague assumptions about what’s going on.

Scope

A register should include those who lobby the UK Government and UK Parliament.

I think local councils should be required to maintain and publish similar registers as much murky influence is wielded by lobbyists at the local government level too.

Other comments

The register is not intended to cover the normal interaction between constituents and their MPs.

I agree with this point however I would prefer the line to be drawn significantly closer to this thin end of the wedge than is currently proposed.

Nor should the essential flow of communication between business leaders and Government, civil figures, community organisations and Government and so on, be included.

There’s no justification given for this decision and I don’t agree with it. If influence is being sought through these channels then it should sought transparently. We must avoid allowing lobbyists to obscure their their operations by fronting them through organisations that are technically outside the register’s scope.

The Government does not wish to create an obstacle to necessary interaction with policy makers or an undue burden on those who work as lobbyists or employ lobbyists.

In my opinion the extensions I’ve suggested would not impose any further obstacle for professional lobbyists than the existing proposals would.

To ensure universal access the register must be published in a machine-readable format compatible with the European Interoperability Framework definition of an Open Standard and licensed under the Open Government License.

In my opinion making lobbyist influence transparent is only half the battle towards an evidence-based policy-making framework in which all stakeholders are represented equally. The other half of the job is to ensure robust and meaningful public-interest representation during the legislative process. Lobbyists and commercial interests should no longer be allowed to hold opaque round-table discussions with minsters without seats at the table being made available to relevant public and consumer-interest groups too.

Here are my top five ideas so far:

• Repeal the Digital Economy Act (see also Coadec’s duplicate idea)
• Abolish the party whips
• Controls on mass surveillance (e.g. ANPR systems)
• Abolish CRB checks
• Repeal the Third Law of Thermodynamics(!) (also, this)

If you’ve spotted any other good ones, please link them in the comments.

I thought it would be interesting to compare the contents of the Liberal Democrat Freedom Bill with the new Government’s version:

What do I conclude from this comparison? That the Government’s outline proposals are a massive step in the right direction however there is still more work to do.

1. Scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the ContactPoint Database.
2. Outlaw the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
3. Extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.
4. Adopt the Scottish approach to stopping retention of innocent people’s DNA on the DNA database.
5. Defend trial by jury.
6. Restore rights to non-violent protest.
7. A review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
8. Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.
9. Further regulation of CCTV.
10. Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.
11. A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.
12. End the detention of children for immigration purposes.

Oh my!

As a digital- and civil-rights campaigner this list fills my heart with joy. The successful passage of this Bill through Parliament would not end the need to champion human rights in the digital era* however it would be a famous victory for that cause: we could say with certainty that this election, that the ousting of Labour from Government, was the point at which the high-water mark of authoritarian social policy in Britain was reached.

Some fellow campaigners have today urged caution and are reserving judgement until the details of the Bill are published. I cannot fault them for their cynicism however I am filled with hope that today we have seen not only the dawn of a new politics in Britain, but a new era of liberty, freedom, privacy and respect for human rights in the UK.

I shall be raising my glass to the death of ID cards and the Database State tonight!

* Three omissions stand out: repeal clauses 11-18 of the Digital Economy Act; make the NHS Summary Care Record opt-in rather than opt-out; end the Vetting and Barring scheme, abolish the Independent Safeguarding Authority and reform CRB checks to make them fair. It’s possible that these will be included in the detail of the Bill.

The prospect of a government of national unity* – a coalition including both the Conservatives and Labour – is conspicuous by its absence. Instead both parties are courting the support of the third force in British politics – the Liberal Democrats – to make up the numbers they need to govern.

The situation has given the Lib Dems a rare opportunity to influence Government policy directly. Top of the Liberals’ wish-list is electoral reform – changing the first-past-the-post voting system to some kind of proportional representation. Unfortunately none of the options on the table offer them a realistic prospect of achieving this.

The Tories are opposed to electoral reform, as the current system favours them (disproportionately), while Labour’s death-bed conversion to the cause lacks both conviction and the requisite mandate to see it through. A Lib/Lab alliance would still fall short of a commons majority so it would require the support of a hodge-podge of minority-party MPs in order to get anything done. Such a rainbow coalition would be unlikely to provide stable government in the national interest, would exclude from government the party with the biggest share of the vote, and might disagree with itself so violently on other matters that it could even collapse before it managed to get anything done.

The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, has become the first for generations to catch a whiff of government yet he has been presented with an agonising dilemma: to share power with the Conservatives he would have to abandon the most cherished ambition of his party and set aside the reason he says he went into politics in the first place.

Much depends on the detail of the power-sharing offer being made by the Tories however, when it comes down to it, Clegg will have to decide whether he thinks working with the Tories or against them serves the Liberal agenda best. In other words, will he choose to join a Conservative-led Government and fight within it for that in which Liberals believe, or will he choose to sit opposite a minority Tory administration and fight against that in which they do not?

On that point I think my previous advice applies.

But oh! The irony…

* With Cameron as Prime Minister, Brown as Chancellor and Clegg as Home Secretary, what could possibly go wrong?