Coalition shifts position after a weekend of sleaze, lobbying register now coming in

Today is not a good day for politics or parliament. The latest, depressing sleaze revelations are only going to increase public cynicism about politics and parliament.

It seems that a statutory register of lobbyists will now be coming in. Francis Maude, in a striking shift from the government’s post Queen’s speech position, told Andrew Neil on The Sunday Politics ‘we are going to do this.’ But it is hard to see how a statutory register of lobbyists would stop MPs and peers from doing what Panorama, the Telegraph and The Sunday Times appear to have caught them doing.

My instinct is that no set of regulations or regulators will be able to eliminate every opportunity of wrongdoing. Money, like water, can always find a way through. Instead, what we need is for all MPs and peers to be of good character, to understand that all their actions must be above suspicion. To be fair, I sense that the vast majority of them appreciate this and behave in this manner.