A barnacle bill from Cabinet Office crew

Proposed regulation utterly fails in its aim of regulating professional lobbyists.

Before summer recess Tories were jubilant that election strategist Lynton Crosby had, in his own words, “brushed the barnacles off the boat”.

He’d apparently convinced the party leadership to drop divisive or distracting issues to concentrate on a core message of a healing economy, falling immigration and a job that needed to be finished.

Yet, just a few weeks later, MPs are to spend the next three days discussing the Government’s lobbying legislation, a barnacle of a bill the public largely don’t understand and MPs don’t want at least not in its current form.

Labour veteran Paul Flynn was being kind when he described it as a “legislative atrocity” last week.

The only other act as poorly drafted in recent years was the NHS reforms initially so incomprehensible that David Cameron had to call a “pause” to allow them to be deciphered.

It can surely only be coincidence that the man responsible for the NHS Act then Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is now piloting the lobbying bill through the Commons.

Or, at least, he’s trying to. Backbenchers from all sides will attempt to amend it beyond all recognition this week.

The problem is the legislation utterly fails in its fairly noble aim of regulating professional lobbyists people paid purely to influence MPs and decision-making in parliament.

It would only apply to a tiny fraction of lobbyists and instead it’s worrying charities and voluntary groups you might call them the Big Society who legitimately want to press their cases and raise awareness among MPs.

Lansley’s efforts aren’t helped by the fact the bill was actually produced by the Cabinet Office a slightly mysterious department of Government that generally only hits the headlines for ineptitude. It manages to get in the news quite a bit.

It acts as a sort of depositary for ministers the government doesn’t know quite what to do with a bit like Craggy Island in the superlative sitcom Father Ted.

Craggy Island was peopled by Father Jack an elderly and inveterate smoker and drinker, Father Ted well-meaning but prone to causing chaos, and Father Dougal Ted’s young and simple sidekick.

The Cabinet Office is staffed by Kenneth Clarke veteran cigar chomper and whisky swiller, Francis Maude the man who single-handedly caused a run on the petrol pumps last year when he suggested folk should stock up ahead of a strike, and Chloe Smith once the baby of the House and best known for an appalling Newsnight interview when she was a Treasury minister that ended with Jeremy Paxman asking her: “You ever think you are incompetent?”

Smith is largely liable for the atrocious lobbying legislation.

And where Father Ted has the weird and persistent housekeeper Mrs Doyle making occasional appearances the Cabinet Office has Oliver Letwin.

Letwin looks like a sort of super-intelligent womble. Or at least he is always described as bright. The evidence for this is fairly thin given he was once mugged after letting some nyaffs into his house to use the toilet, disposed of official documents in public bins, claimed expenses for fixing his personal tennis court and was instrumental in drawing up the government’s press regulation charter.

Despite this cast of comedy characters, the Cabinet Office is responsible for the civil service and for overseeing the smooth running of government.

Make up your own mind about how well that’s going.