Media Advertising

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will consider establishing a statutory regulator of media advertising.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, as a matter of principle, the Government prefer effective self-regulation over statutory regulation. In the case of the advertising industry, we support the system of co-regulation and self-regulation for broadcast and non-broadcast advertising, enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority. We believe that this regulatory system works well for consumers and advertisers, and we support the previous Government’s assessment in its 2013 policy paper that the ASA is an exemplar of successful self-regulation.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

Effective, yes. My Lords, last July I saw an ad in the New Statesman for magnetic stimulation treatment for Alzheimer’s. I guessed it was not effective and I complained to the ASA. Yesterday, eight months on, it upheld my complaint, but now nothing happens. No one is fined or reprimanded; no one has to contact the people who bought this machine on a false prospectus, let alone compensate them for being misled. Is the Minister really happy with that self-regulatory system with no enforcement? Will she agree to discuss with the ASA, whose chair is in the House, whether better consumer protection could be developed?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I can understand that the time delay was frustrating for the problem the noble Baroness mentioned. It took time because the ASA is sensible at bringing in outside expert advice when it needs to be sought to get the right decision. The ASA can deploy sanctions of various degrees of severity on advertisers it regards as non-compliant. These sanctions are usually proactively taken by the ASA. It is certainly very independent in the way it looks at things.

Lobbying (Transparency) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 18th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

My Lords, I think I am probably beginning to sound a bit repetitive, I am afraid, but there we are. These amendments would largely repeat a number of sections of existing legislation. The Government believe that existing legislation is effective as it stands and does not need to be supplemented.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

This is a slight aside, but I am sorry that the Government are taking this view. We know that they do not want the Bill, but it seems a shame that they are not engaging with how to make it as good as it can be—which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is doing—so that, should it become an Act, it can be made to work. I am sorry that the Government are taking the view that, because they do not like the whole Bill, they will not engage on its content. That is a small comment. There seems to be a slight loss of the expertise of the Cabinet Office and the Government to make this Bill as good as possible, even if, at the end of the day, we do not manage to get it on the statute book.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

As the noble Baroness obviously realises, the Government feel that the Act we already have is the right one. Our aim was for lobbying regulation to avoid unnecessary burdens, not to establish top-to-bottom regulation of all who lobby. That is why we set up an appropriate way to ensure high levels of transparency, but only in the specific areas of the lobbying industry where that was needed, and that is the Government’s position.

Public Contracts: Conflicts of Interest

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Thursday 17th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

Obviously, these appointments are the responsibility of each department, and each department follows the Civil Service Code, which sets out the process for dealing with any possible breaches. Essentially, cases are dealt with by the department according to its own processes and can ultimately be referred to the Civil Service Commission to investigate. The propriety and ethics team can give general advice on the application of the code.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, of course data protection does not prevent the people on that conflict of interest committee being willing to have their names released, so will the Minister tell us whether they can be asked to release their names? Will she also comment on the other big conflict of interest, which is the revolving door? The committee that looks at this for ministerial and civil servant retirees has never turned down any of those appointments, many of whom then turn up on exactly these committees but technically have no conflict of interest. Will she agree to review the terms of reference of that committee?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I do not think that I can go further than what I said about the Data Protection Act. As far as public appointments are concerned, we need to remember that there is a Commissioner for Public Appointments. Appointments come under the remit of that commissioner and they are made using the process from the commissioner’s Code of Practice for Ministerial Appointments to Public Bodies. This is a strong code of practice and it is backed up by the regulations under the Act—the Public Contracts Regulations 2015—which set out the requirement to take,

“appropriate measures to effectively prevent, identify and remedy conflicts of interest arising in the conduct of procurement procedures so as to avoid any distortion of competition and to ensure equal treatment of all economic operators”.

Franchise: British Citizens Abroad

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

This has nothing to do with the EU referendum. That was run under the Westminster franchise. This is a completely different set of rules, and the idea is to bring it in with primary and secondary legislation.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I have twice asked the Minister’s predecessor—or perhaps three times—whether this means that such people will then become permitted donors. This is serious: it means that non-doms, who may not have lived here for 50 years, who may not have paid income tax for 50 years and who have no real interest in this country, would be able to be permitted donors, and foreign money could pour into our political parties.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

All those things are under consideration. I think that what the noble Baroness says is unlikely to be the case, but I will get back to her to make sure that that is correct.

Public Institutions

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Thursday 30th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I certainly will.

On the point about lobbying raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, I will be interested in the noble Lord’s Private Member’s Bill when it appears on 9 September. I certainly cannot now say that we will agree with everything, but of course we will listen and take soundings, and we will be interested in what the noble Lord has to say. As he and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, know, the register is designed to shine the light of transparency on those who seek to influence the Government and will complement the existing government transparency regime whereby Ministers and Permanent Secretaries proactively publish details of their meetings. The register requires people who are paid to lobby government on behalf of others to disclose their clients on a publicly available register. The register also enhances scrutiny by requiring them to declare whether they subscribe to the code of conduct. Both the register and published meeting information include names of the organisations in question and are published in open, searchable formats. It is also possible to search the register for specific organisations.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, also mentioned public appointments. The Gerry Grimstone report put forward recommendations to strengthen the process. That will increase transparency, and it retains a critical role for the independent Commissioner for Public Appointments to make sure that public appointments are open and transparent.

The UK aspires to and can rightly claim to be the most open and transparent country in the world. Our democracy and governance is stable, robust and held to account by a strong, free press and an ever-growing range of ways to understand and scrutinise the decisions government makes and the way it operates.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I congratulate the noble Baroness on keeping a straight face at that moment.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I am not keeping a straight face. I am smiling—but I always smile.

The confidence with which our public institutions are held is the foundation that allows our great democracy to function. While government may have significant legal power to impose its will, it operates effectively with the people it serves with the consent borne of confidence and trust.

There are of course many examples of countries around the world where confidence in public institutions has been fatally eroded, often because of corruption or mismanagement, and where the ability to govern effectively is destroyed, hampering economic development and destroying prosperity. Confidence in public institutions is then precious, and the Government are committed to continually deepening openness and transparency to support it.

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, talked about this. I suggest that transparency and openness are different but connected parts of how modern government and institutions should function. Transparency, where the workings of institutions can be seen and understood, underpins openness, where government and institutions work with and alongside the people they serve to deliver the best possible services and outcomes. However, I agree that transparency should be used as a tool, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said, and we have to be careful to use it with other things as well.

The UK should, rightly, be proud of its status as a global leader on both transparency and openness. The Government continue to push at the boundaries of the information they publish and they strive to ensure that citizens can fully participate in making the decisions that affect them. For example, the UK leads the world in the release of open data and has recently been ranked number one in the World Wide Web Foundation’s Open Data Barometer for the third year running.

Open data—the release in a structured format of key government data licensed in such a way as to allow anyone to use them—allows the public meaningful, open access to important data about how our public institutions function. These data on how public money is spent and on how well key parts of government are performing, as well as, importantly, data of high value held by government about things such as the transport network, create significantly greater opportunities for government to be held to account and, crucially, allow others outside government to come forward to build new data-driven products and services using previously hidden government data. One example of that is the tool Citymapper, a smartphone application developed in the UK that takes into account a wealth of open transport data to help you get from A to B in the fastest possible time.

The economic benefits of transparency are clear but perhaps it is harder to measure the impact of greater transparency and openness on public confidence in institutions. What seems indisputable is that trust in public institutions is growing. Research by Edelman as part of its annual Trust Barometer shows that since 2012 trust in government has risen. More strikingly, research by Ipsos MORI shows that civil servants in particular have seen a large increase in trust since 1983: only 25% said they trusted civil servants to tell the truth in 1983 compared with 55% now.

Succession to Peerages Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Friday 11th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Could I just finish with this example? I am arguing that the Bill seems to be based on the continued assumption that women should not gain a title—recognition—because of what they have done but because of what a father, grandfather or great-uncle did. I give way to the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

I am sorry, my Lords, I think in this debate you cannot give way—you just have to keep going.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I am delighted to get that bit of advice. The assumption behind this—that because there are titled families the best way to deal with that is to pass the title, where there is not a man, to a woman—is, in the 21st century, the wrong assumption. As a feminist and on behalf of the other women here who have great experience in the trade union movement, for example, and who have won their spurs by their own efforts, I say that that is the way we should recognise women, not because of what their male forebears have done. If a woman wants a title, I say, “Do the same as anyone else. Go out and earn your spurs. Work in civil society, trade unions, business, academia, medicine or law”. That, surely, is the way to be recognised and to be valued in society. In the 21st century, that is the feminist way forward—not to inherit a title because of a male forebear.

Wilson Doctrine

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 22nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

My noble friend makes a very good point. As he said, it is not the case that parliamentarians are excluded, but certain rules and protocols have to be met if there is a requirement to use any of these powers against parliamentarians.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, given the slight uncertainty about this issue, will the Minister agree to enter into discussions after this with all parties? The metadata will obviously include all parliamentarians. It would be right for everyone, particularly MPs, to know whether it is possible that their communications are being kept. That should be on the record so that everyone knows the position, and those talks should be cross-party.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I thank the noble Baroness for that question. She is right that it would be sensible for us to come back in the autumn and discuss this further after the review on this subject has taken place. That is why I am really not able to comment any further. Until that review is complete it makes it very difficult for me to say anything.