My father, Mike Steele, who has died aged 88, was a lobby correspondent and worked in the Houses of Parliament over a period of five decades.

An Australian by birth, he joined the lobby in 1962, eight years after arriving in the UK. He began as a correspondent in the Commons for the Northcliffe group of provincial newspapers and then, after an interlude working in the Liberal party’s communications team, returned to report on parliamentary matters as a freelance for the Newspoint organisation, supplying stories for HTV Wales, the Leicester Mercury and Ulster Television.