Government to revise plans for statutory lobbying register

The Cabinet Office has pledged to revise its proposals for a statutory register of lobbyists after its original model was widely criticised for being ineffective.

Last summer, the cross-party Political and Constitutional Reform Committee slammed the government’s proposals for regulating lobbying, concluding that no register would be better than the one the government had outlined.

On Friday 1 February a new Commercial Lobbyists (Registration and Code of Conduct) Bill, brought forward by Labour MP Thomas Docherty, had its second reading and was debated in the Commons. Docherty’s Bill went further than the government’s original proposals in that it suggested any statutory register should apply to all those who undertake commercial paid lobbying, not just the third-party lobbyists who were captured by the government's plan.

Docherty’s Bill also suggested that any register must be underpinned by a code of conduct, though it did not go into detail about what such a code would contain. Docherty gave a guarantee that he would produce a draft code of conduct prior to any Committee stage of the Bill.

However, at the end of the debate Docherty withdrew his Bill following assurances from Chloe Smith, Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office, that the government is revisiting the issue and will produce new proposals.