Professor Niamh Hardiman:

I think our recent moves to have a register of lobbyists are very helpful in that regard. Again, it is part of tightening up our rule base monitoring and trying to introduce more oversight and regulation of how interests gain voice in political access and representations. That is very helpful. The point I keep coming back to is that this is never enough by itself. We also need to think about the way in which we might open out deliberation about policy and expose the kind of engagements that Governments have with different kinds of interests to scrutiny and inspection. It is partly Government in the sunlight. Whenever something is secret, we may want to know why. Is there something we should know about here?