David Cameron warned before the last general election that lobbying was “the next big scandal waiting to happen.”

It was during his concerted offensive to persuade us that the Tory leopard had changed its spots and that decency, fairness and honesty rather than greed and self-interest now dictated its policies.

“It’s an issue that crosses party lines and has tainted our politics for too long — an issue that exposes the far too cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money,” he went on.

Who could have taken issue with what he was saying?

Parliament was rocked by a succession of scandals involving MPs taking backhanders to ask questions or being caught on camera offering to prostitute themselves for £5,000 an hour to lobby for private companies.

Add to this the nauseating spectacle of MPs from all major parties flipping their designated family home to maximise housing benefits and filling their boots through unjustified expenses claims and no wonder that voters were pig-sick at the antics of their parliamentary representatives.

Cameron’s professed determination to clean up the Augean stables may well have contributed to his arrival in Downing Street.

However, despite the rhetoric, money still buys political influence and the Lobbying Act puts charities and trade unions in its sights rather than big business.

The Prime Minister may not like to be reminded about his party treasurer Peter Cruddas having to resign in March 2012 after being recorded offering access to Cameron, George Osborne and their policy committee for donations of £250,000.

That outrage was passed off as an individual loose cannon getting a bit carried away, but the Tory Party still openly offers £50,000 donors the chance to meet Cameron and his cronies at select gatherings.

According to the provisions of the Lobbying Act that came into force yesterday, such easy at-a-price access to ministers poses less of a threat to democracy than the transparent campaigning of trade unions, charities and single-issue groups.

Lobbyists for powerful corporate vested interests will be free to enjoy confidential meetings with ministers while people seeking to hold government to account will be frustrated.

Trade unions, charities and single-issue campaigns will have unreasonable limits imposed on the amount of finance they can devote to activity during an election period even though the sums they raise are puny in comparison to the funds raised directly by business for the Tories or the wall-to-wall propaganda deployed by pro-Tory media.

Anti-Tory political forces have to fight with one hand behind their backs in the run-up to next May because of this latest example of Nick Clegg falling in line with Cameron’s demands.

Labour has promised to repeal the Lobbying Act if it forms a government after the general election.

It insists that it would set up a statutory register for all lobbyists, including those employed directly by business, and would deal with the “revolving door” through which ex-ministers join lobbying firms and exploit connections gained in government.

Promises aren’t difficult to make during an election campaign, especially in response to the wave of anger generated by this one-sided and unjust measure, so mass pressure will be needed to ensure that this pledge is honoured.

Britain’s democracy has been tainted in recent decades by greed, corruption and excessive corporate influence.

Getting rid of the conservative coalition’s pernicious Lobbying Act is essential to rebuilding a measure of public confidence in the political process.