Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, it is late at night to have to introduce a new element into the debate, but the natural conclusion is that the Charity Commission should withdraw completely from this role of policing what should and should not happen in terms of public policy and elections. But CC9 is there and the Charity Commission is now developing more advice on this point. Either we trust the commission to do the job or we do not. I fear that what my noble friend Lord Hodgson has just said does not increase my trust.

In those circumstances, we are still faced with a genuine dilemma. As the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, said, as things stand at the moment many charities, large and small, feel that they are going to be subjected to two quite separate sets of regulations in this regard and they feel that is unfair. That seems to be a very critical issue, and I hope that in due course this House will be able to address it.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Low. It was not that he was slow on his feet; I was just a bit too fast on mine.

I return to the work of Beatrice Webb as she battled against the causes and impact of poverty. She was not running a charity, so she would have been caught by the myriad new requirements that this Bill sets out. She could then have set up a charity. I have set up a large number myself. It is not very difficult. Then she could have campaigned in the same way with no restrictions on the amount of money spent, on the market research done, on meetings, on press work or on the number of staff employed. She could even have concentrated her arguments in a number of key constituencies so long as she did not talk about voting this way or that way.

We have to think about whether we want the Stop the War coalition, pro-HS2, anti-HS2, pro-fracking, anti-fracking, pro-runways, anti-runways, pro-free schools, anti-free schools and other hard-working, well motivated groups to feel the need to register as charities so that they can campaign freely—free not just from double-regulation but from any regulation, because they would be caught only by existing electoral and charity law and not by the new restrictions imposed by this Bill.

I can see the advantages of that. Alcohol Concern, which I established 30 years ago, is a charity which campaigns against the current Government’s policies—not against the governing party—because the Government will not bring in minimum unit pricing or reduce drink-drive levels. This is completely within our charitable objectives. We could even campaign as a charity and put all our money in certain constituencies. As long as we do not say that this means voting this way or that way, it would be completely in line with our charitable objectives.

The Federation of Licensed Victuallers Associations, which is not a charity, would be very worried about the effect of lower drink-drive limits on its trade, but it would not be able to campaign against changing the drink-drive limit without being caught by the necessities of the Bill. That is similar to the discussion we heard earlier about hunting and the Countryside Alliance and the League Against Cruel Sports. While both are campaigning on a policy issue, one would be subject to all the regulations and the other would not because it is a charity—as long as it keeps to charity law.

The Electoral Commission has pointed out that exempting charities from the PPERA would mean there would be no restrictions on what they could spend in the run-up to the election, provided that they act within their charitable objectives, but that all organisations would be subject to the new Bill and the tighter restrictions on campaigning. The Electoral Commission thinks this could undermine confidence in PPERA while creating an incentive for campaigners to campaign via charitable channels.

In answer to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, I can think of a number of organisations that I have been involved with which use the most appropriate vehicle, shall we say, at different times. That is the reason, as we know, that the Electoral Commission does not support exempting charities. Interestingly, we have not heard from the Charity Commission.

The supporters of the amendment say that charities should not need dual regulation. I have received only two letters from charities even vaguely in favour of this amendment—one has already been referred to: the Directory of Social Change—not because they want special treatment but because they are against duplicated regulation. They were not against being covered by the Bill but felt that they should not be regulated by a separate organisation. In other words, regulation could be by the Charity Commission; the argument is not for special treatment but against duplicate registration.

That is one of the arguments put forward in favour of the amendment, but there would be still other organisations covered by it. We heard earlier from a noble Baroness, who is not in her place, who is very involved with the BMA. It is regulated as a trade union, so it would be dual-regulated because it would continue to be regulated by the certification officer and also by the Electoral Commission. If it is simply about having dual regulation, surely we must deal with the plethora of people who would be doubly regulated.

The Directory of Social Change, despite not wanting to have two regulators, supports this amendment and also shares the concerns about the negative effects on broader civic engagement and the right to campaign. If I have read its letter correctly, I think its call would be for other parts of the Bill to be amended. The only other charity that has written specifically on this is the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which would support Amendment 160, but only as a fallback, because it is seriously concerned about the implications for wider civil society beyond charities. It supports the NCVO and others who want the Bill amended, as we do.

Charities are not calling for this, although they are undoubtedly calling for change. We will clearly be interested in what the Minister says on this. In the mean time, I shall ask Peers on the Liberal Democrat Benches whose amendment this is why they appear so little concerned with the other groups. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said that there is no evidence that charities did anything wrong in the previous election, and there is no evidence of these other groups being a problem. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who is not in her place at the moment, made it very clear that she does not like a whole chunk, if not most, of Part 2. If other noble Lords on those Benches really dislike like this Bill and all its bureaucracy so much, would it not be better for them to use their considerable muscle and voting strength in this House to amend the Bill for all civil society groups, rather than leaving just some of them exposed to the nasty bits of red tape, bureaucracy, demoralisation and complications that were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips? Their voting strength in this House would be able to get rid of them for all groups. If this part of the Bill is bad for charities, it is bad for similar groups that do not happen to be charities, and we should see them all as one.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I thank everybody who has taken part in this debate. It has swayed to and fro in the best traditions and everybody has made useful points. I have not the time to cover all the offerings, and your Lordships would not want me to at 10.23 pm. However, one or two things I must just say.

The first is to take up the point my noble friend made at the end of his speech, concerning the role of the Charity Commission. My noble friend Lord Hodgson spoke very forcibly about the disparity between the theory of charity law and the actuality of oversight. I accept that, and there is no shadow of doubt in my mind but that if my amendment is accepted on Report, it must and can only be on the basis that the Charity Commission will do a more thorough job than it currently does. I fully accept that, but I am hopeful that that is something which would be very much in the Government’s mind, because if we take a third of a million charities out of the regulatory oversight of the Electoral Commission, we can make major savings, part of which can be deployed in beefing up the Charity Commission’s efforts.

Having said that—forgive me if I bang home the point that I have lived in this sector, so to speak, for 40 years—in my experience there is astonishingly little abuse of charity law. There is an astonishingly high level of public trust as well, and there is a deep revulsion in the sector of trying to play games with it, let alone corrupting it. I emphasise, however, that that does not take away from the point I started by making: there needs to be better enforcement.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, gave an example whereby, I think she said, you could have a biased charity that concentrated its efforts in certain constituencies in order to achieve a certain outcome. That would not be allowed under charity law. It is not that daft. It looks at the whole picture and the substance of what a charity does and if a charity pretended not to be engaged in partisan pursuits but actually was—by, for example, putting its effort only into constituencies where the candidate that it wanted to win was holding a view that it was pushing—that would be wrong and illegal. I am not saying that it would always be picked up by the Charity Commission, but people are on the qui vive these days. I think noble Lords will agree that complaints to the Charity Commission are made regularly and without inhibition.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

The point is not to support the candidate in order to get that candidate elected but to put pressure, usually, on a Minister to have those views heard, be it about drink-driving or something else. That is why, believe me, we do not do this stuff without the Charity Commission okaying it, because it is not to influence how people vote but to use the fact that the Minister is in that particular constituency to go there. It is not to get people to vote, so it is acceptable.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am sorry if I misunderstood. Perhaps we can talk about this outside the Chamber, because this is not the place or the time to go into it in any more detail. All I am saying, and I will assert it without equivocation, is that the law is clear. I say that it is clear, but the law is there and it is well used and old and practical. The Charity Commission needs more resources but the amount of abuse is minuscule in relation to the size of the sector and I remain utterly opposed to lumbering this sector, of all sectors, with double regulation.

The non-charitable NGO sector includes some wonderful organisations but also some very shady ones. There are, I am afraid, a number of non-charitable NGOs that are used for violent political purposes. Money is poured into them, either for commercial or extreme political purposes, and there is nothing to stop them, as things stand. We have quite different categories to deal with and that is why it is entirely right, sensible and practical to have separate categories in terms of regulation. To lumber the charity sector with double regulation should be the last of our intentions. That is my fundamental point and on that note I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.