Conservative Party: Cameron calls for inquiry into lobbying scandal

Speaking at his regular press conference, David Cameron commented on the lobbying scandal and the forthcoming Budget.

"Anyone who watched any of the Dispatches programme last night could not help but be disgusted by what they saw", Cameron said, reacting to the documentary featuring incriminating videos of ex-Ministers and a backbench MP accepting cash for lobbying.

"No wonder there is a deepening suspicion that politicians are out to serve themselves and not the country", he said.

Two months ago Cameron had described lobbying as "the next big scandal waiting to happen". Now that it has happened, he called for a full review of the issue "so that the government can learn the lessons of what has gone wrong, and change the rules to stop it happening again".

Pledging to act before it happened again, he said:

• We’re going to make absolutely sure that ex-Ministers are not allowed to use the contacts and knowledge gained in government for their own private gain.
• We’ll double the time when it’s forbidden for ex-Ministers to lobby government from twelve months to two years.
• We’ll extend to ten years the period during which ex-Ministers must seek advice from the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments.
• We’ll put that Committee on a statutory basis, so ignoring its advice will be an offence.
• And we’ve also got to put a stop to the practice of one part of government lobbying another part of government.

Turning to the economy, Cameron spoke about the need to "take action now to cut the enormous deficit", as well as "urgent action to get growth going".

Speaking on the day before the Budget, he said Labour’s Budgets tend to include "a whole load of giveaways up front while all the nasty stuff is stashed away in the small print".

With that in mind, he announced that this year the Conservatives are "going to do something a bit different" with their response.

"We’re going to crowd source the Budget. Instead of just picking over the small print ourselves we want to throw open that process so that everyone can have a dig around to see what Labour are hiding", he said.

"So we’re going to publish the Budget on the Conservatives website, page by page in a simple, easily readable format. We want people to log on, have a look, pick out the misleading bits and help us hold Labour to account."