Instead of targeting the powerful, the 2014 act was designed to silence charities, protectors of the powerless
Nothing should surprise us in the outright dishonesty of Boris Johnson’s Commons replies. But on Wednesday at PMQs, caught in the deepening glue trap of sleaze, he tried lashing out at Labour for voting against the 2014 lobbying act and campaigning to abolish it in its 2019 manifesto.
Indeed Labour did, for very good reasons, as the BBC’s Reality Check justly reported. To clean up politics, Labour’s manifesto promised a new act, with a lobbying register covering business contacts with all senior government employees, not just ministers. MPs would be prevented from taking paid second jobs, and the toothless advisory committee on business appointments would be replaced with a powerful watchdog against corrupt revolving doors between government and paid lobbyists. How different that would be from the rotten 2014 act that ministers struggled to defend in the Commons.
