Alison White Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists Presentation for stakeholder conference 21 January 2016

The role of Registrar As I know there are some in the audience, who may still be unclear about the legislation, I will start with a brief explanation. The role of Registrar was established following the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014, the first time there has been a statutory register in this country. The Registrar is an independent statutory office, established to keep and publish the Register of Consultant Lobbyists, in which those who lobby on behalf of a third party in return for payment will be required to declare the names of their clients and whether or not they subscribe to a relevant code of conduct. I have a duty to monitor compliance with the requirement to register and a power to undertake enforcement action in instances of non- compliance.

Current state The Register was launched on 25 March 2015, just ahead of the dissolution of Parliament before the General Election. As at this afternoon, there are 113 active registrants, including accountants and lawyers. There have been some departures at the time of annual renewal-it appears that most of these are for reasons either of structural company changes or three consecutive nil returns. Guidance has been issued on registration, which has recently been further enhanced, and compliance. I have also provided specialist advice to Think Tanks. I launched a new consultation on data retention and communications just before Christmas, which is open till the end of January. We recently further enhanced the technical solution and website, and we have plans for some further modest changes in due course, based on feedback from users.

Areas of transgression Registration must take place ahead of communications-it is not retrospective. There have been a number of instances where organisations have carried out relevant communications ahead of registration-the best course of action in these circumstances is to be completely honest when the situation comes to light. If organisations register, and state a nil return for the pre-registration period-we will check. Such checks have already revealed where companies had indeed carried out relevant communications- this leaves me few options in terms of enforcement.

Areas of transgression We have found that we need to check registration information and quarterly returns very thoroughly, as many organisations submit incorrect information. We have examples of organisations stating that they subscribe to codes of conduct when they do not or stating incorrect details of directors-we check all returns as far as possible, and conduct sample checks on existing information to make sure it remains relevant. It would clearly be preferable for organisations to have corporate governance procedures which managed this in house.

Areas of transgression In order to ensure integrity of information contained in the Register, we try to ensure consistency in client names. We ask organisations not to abbreviate unless the abbreviation is the correct client name, and to consistently state the client name from quarter to quarter-we also try to ensure consistency across registrants, so that users can identify where the same client is serviced by multiple consultant lobbyists. It takes quite a lot of time to do this, and we often have to check and correct, so it would be really useful if you could help us with this, and state client names consistently from quarter to quarter.

Areas of transgression We ask registrants to advise us of any changes to their registration details as soon as new information becomes available. We recognise the challenges for those organisations with large numbers of partners-we are trying to find a technical solution to help, but that is likely to be in the next financial year. It is important that we know as soon as key information changes-for example, if you leave membership of a representative body, at that date you no longer subscribe to its code of conduct-it is important we know that as soon as it happens.

Areas of transgression We do look at successive nil returns to consider whether those organisations need to stay on the Register, and we also look at organisations which declare more than five clients, especially if that seems disproportionate to their size. These checks have revealed organisations that are not declaring their clients correctly. Finally, quarterly submission dates should be in your diaries-we always send out reminders, and then further reminders, but this quarter we had 12 organisations who were late despite being reminded several times. I do wish to remind you that if this happens I will start to think about the enforcement action I need to take.

Issues for potential registrants to consider There have been some instances where companies have either not been sufficiently aware of the requirements or have misunderstood or misinterpreted them. I ask all organisations to carefully consider when they interact with Ministers or Permanent Secretaries whether those communications are registrable. Those communications may be informal, unplanned or social and a critical consideration is whether Ministerial communication is part of client expectations-such communication does not need to be a billed line item. The legislation is drafted in such a way that the content of a covering from a consultant lobbyist may be the registrable communication, rather than the letter from a client which is attached to it. The key message from me is that if you are not sure-please check with my Office.

Conclusion on transgression The learning points from all this is that I would like more attention to be paid to tightening up your corporate governance and compliance procedures to make sure that whoever is completing the return is doing it correctly, and that there are proportionate checking processes to satisfy directors that what their staff are doing can be relied upon. There has been more than one instance where staff transgressed, and when my Office identified that, it was a surprise to the directors-this indicates that due diligence procedures are simply not strong enough, so I ask those of you who are directors to check.

Where to next? I would like to conclude with an overview of my plans for the year ahead. I do anticipate that my work on communications and education will continue-I spend a lot of time helping organisations with compliance and answering their questions. Additionally, my programme of investigative work will continue, and become more intensive as the year progresses-that programme even in its infancy, has already delivered results. I have uncovered clear evidence of serious non-compliance, so this work is important to preserve the credibility of the Register. I will also continue my work to provide and refresh guidance to ensure this is up to date and relevant, especially as my experience continues to develop.

Where to next? I think it is worth saying something about costs especially in the light of recent Ministerial decisions to increase the fee for registration. During the current financial year, I planned that the total cost of setting up and operating the Register would be in the region of 320 thousand pounds, of which just short of 250 thousand was required for operations. During the year, despite the costs of compliance being higher than anticipated, I was able to return 15 thousand to the exchequer. Whilst set up costs will almost disappear in the year ahead, I do expect that the costs of compliance will remain relatively significant for all the reasons I explained earlier. Clearly, I wish to do all I can to operate as efficiently as possible, but costs are highly influenced by the behaviour of those that interact with the Register, particularly those that transgress. My current estimate is that just over 80 thousand pounds will be recouped from registrant fees in the current year-given the savings I have delivered, this broadly brings running costs into balance with planned expectations.