Labour MP for, Nottingham North, Graham Allen has issued a statement following the latest scandal regarding lobbying:
"It is all too easy to set up All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) in Parliament and the rules need to be tightened. There has been a proliferation of all-party groups especially since the last election, developing them from respected debating societies to conduits of influence to media, public and ministers . It is far too easy to set up an all-party group. The potential for abuse need to be removed urgently "says Graham Allen MP Chair of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform which produced the recent report on lobbying.
I understand that some APPG's are supported, staffed or have a Secretariat maintained by external interests. Many produce reports. These reports may represent the views of just a handful of members of Parliament or be drafted by external advisers or sponsors. The all-party group concept is a good one but it needs much more effective policing to prevent the possibility of abuse by outside interests. They should not be funded from outside. If MP's feel strongly enough about a particular issue to set up an all-party group then they should be prepared to use their own time and parliamentary resources to fund and run that group.
All-party groups do not speak for Parliament but only for the tiny self selecting minority involved with them. This distinction may not always be apparent and needs to be much clearer . All party groups producing their own reports or press releases which emanate from somewhere in Parliament may be mistaken as speaking with the full authority of Parliament itself. They may appear to some to have the same status as official Parliamentary Select Committee reports which cover the same field but are in fact produced by MP's and Chairs who are properly elected by their colleagues and after extensive and painstaking evidence sessions, consideration and scrupulous initial drafting by impartial Parliamentary clerks."
All-party groups have become a part of the lobbying infrastructure. They are not only used by lobbyists but also by active MPs who are frustrated by Governments failure to interact openly and effectively with Parliament. Governments have been the biggest abusers of all-party groups, traditionally seeing them as part of the toy box in the safe playground for managing MPs and allowing them to ventilate harmlessly. The parallels with Governments use of MP's allowances are obvious. Abuses are easily characterised as the weakness of venal individual MP's but we also need a more demanding analysis -that this is another consequence of the domination of Government over a dependent Parliament which constantly corrupts our Westminster democracy and which must be addressed by party leaders, parliamentarians and commentators alike.
MPs can now demonstrate that they are serious about holding government to account not only at the margins by limiting properly regulated all-party groups to MP's only, but more importantly by superseding them by the stronger scrutiny processes which would characterise an independent Parliament ".
