Review of the Lobbying Act (Scotland) 2016

Closed 28 Aug 2020

Opened 17 Jun 2020

Contact

Clerking Team

PAPLS

Lobbying.Review@Parliament.Scot

Published responses

View submitted responses where consent has been given to publish the response.

Overview

Call for written views

The Scottish Parliament’s Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee is seeking views on the operation of the Lobbying (Scotland) Act 2016 (“the Lobbying Act”) .

You don’t need to answer every question if it’s not relevant to you.

        What has changed

  • In your view, what concerns was the Lobbying Act seeking to address?
     
  • Two years’ on, has the Lobbying Act addressed those concerns?
     

  • In particular, has the Act added value? If so, in what way? For example, has the Act improved transparency? Do you think it has changed the way in which lobbying is carried out?

  • Do you support a legislative approach to regulating lobbying activity? If so, why? If not, for what reason? Has your view on the value of a legislative approach changed since the commencement of the Lobbying Act?

    Improvements without legislation
     
  • In your view, is the Lobbying Act working in the way it was intended? If not, why not? What needs to change to ensure that it is working as intended (i.e without making changes to the legislation)?

    Improvements requiring legislative change
     
  • Could the legislation be improved in any way? If so, please indicate why and in what way?
     

  • In particular, do you have any views on whether changes should be made to the following (please indicate why and in what way):

    a) the Act covers lobbying to a Member of the Scottish Parliament, a member of the Scottish Government, a junior Scottish Minister,  a law officer, a special adviser or the permanent secretary. Does the Act cover the right groups of decision makers?

    b) the Act requires face-to-face communications which are also regulated lobbying to be registered. Are these the right communications to capture?

    c) Could the legislation be changed in relation to the circumstances in which a person undertaking “regulated lobbying” is required to provide information, to be included in the register, about costs incurred by them when engaging in regulated lobbying?

    Bill assumptions v. reality of the Act

  • Have assumptions made at the Bill’s introduction in its Financial Memorandum and Policy Memorandum and during its passage through Parliament held true (for example, on costs or impact) and, if not, why not?

    Any other points
     
  • Are there any other issues you would like to raise in connection with the operation of the Lobbying Act?


In addition to seeking responses to the call for evidence questions, organisations on the Scottish Lobbying Register will be invited to provide additional information about their lobbying and engagement activities. This additional information will not be published with your submission and will be anonymised. 

How to submit your views

Please submit your views via the submission form, accessed below.

The call for written views will close at 5.00 pm on Friday 28 August 2020.

In most cases we will publish your written submission on the Scottish Parliament's website. What you send us may be quoted in the Committee's report or in its Committee meetings. These are public meetings that are broadcast online.

If you wish to request that your submission be published without your name, please contact us via: Lobbying.Review@Parliament.Scot 

The Scottish Parliament and its Committees value diversity. We seek to work towards committee witnesses being broadly representative of Scotland’s society. As such we encourage members of underrepresented groups to submit written evidence.

Before making a submission, please read our privacy notice about submitting your views to a Committee. This tells you about how we process your personal data.  If you are under 12 years of age, please read this privacy notice.

We welcome written views in any language.