Conclusion 10

The purpose of post-legislative scrutiny is to judge the extent to which legislation is achieving its stated aims, rather than to revisit those aims and to reopen debates that should have been had at second reading. To expand the Register of Consultant Lobbyists to encompass all those conducting lobbying activity would be to fundamentally change the purpose of the Act from one designed to address the gap in the Government’s transparency releases created by the use of consultant lobbyists to one designed to duplicate or replace them. It would require the Office of the Registrar for Consultant Lobbyists to be replaced with a new body with a very different remit and powers. As such, in our view it would be beyond the scope of post-legislative scrutiny and this inquiry.