The Future of the Civil Service
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the—mellow—noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, my PhD supervisor, for introducing such an erudite debate. I am somewhat intimidated by having to follow more than a dozen former Ministers, former Cabinet and Permanent Secretaries and Peers with experience inside Number 10, as well as two professors, one former First Civil Service Commissioner and the Government’s lead non-executive. We also have the benefit of the Truth to Power report, the Civil Service Reform Plan and its one-year update, reports from the Institute for Government, the IPPR, the Liaison Committee, the Public Accounts Committee and our own Constitution Committee, and the annual reports of the noble Lord, Lord Browne; not forgetting the FDA’s own Delivering for the Nation. All these indicate a mood for change.
Despite being neither a former Minister nor a former Permanent Secretary, I want to reflect a third approach, that of consumers of government—especially given that, as Truth to Power says,
“citizens as consumers have hugely increased their demands and expectations of what Government should be able to deliver”.
Indeed, it is for the final user or taxpayer—who funds government—that this relationship between politicians and the service must be world class. People are unhappy when “few ministers or officials” are,
“held accountable when things go wrong”—
“things” which affect their universal credit or other bits of their lives—or when they see their taxes frittered away on expensive mistakes, which does happen. I, too, spent Christmas reading The Blunders of our Governments, which documents not just ministerial errors and the astonishing waste of public money but the often faulty relationship between policy and delivery, as well as the need for less churn, more niche expertise and changes in accountability.
The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has done us a major service. First, he quoted the words of the Prime Minister, who, despite being head of the whole service, has said little on this—worse, his odd criticism, such as saying that the service is the enemy of enterprise, has hardly helped relations. Secondly, the noble Lord has, in his inimitable style, recalled “the lustrous quality” of our,
“non-politically partisan public service, transferable from one Government to the next, along with its perpetual duty of speaking truth unto power”.
Indeed, the role of politicians should not be overlooked, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and other noble Lords emphasised today. The service does not work in a vacuum but as part of what the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, calls, “the governing marriage” between temporary Ministers and permanent officials. Sadly, most of the bundle of reports concentrates only on the Civil Service, omitting what Ministers might do differently to make it more effective—whether in the complexity of laws or procedures, the lack of devolution or our constant demand for new skills to fulfil new tasks.
As has been acknowledged, our Civil Service is admired around the world. It is politically impartial, with core values of integrity, propriety and objectivity, and it has the ability to transfer its expertise and loyalty from one Government to the next. However, that does not mean that there is no need for change. In a fast-changing world, with new technologies and new forms of service delivery, the Civil Service itself wants to change, to meet the increasing demands of government and the higher expectations of the public. That means addressing skills gaps in procurement, accountability and performance management, the integration of corporate functions and better delivery of major projects. We need the best people to be recruited, trained and retained to deliver quality service and—yes—to be reflective of the population that they serve.
However, the Government’s progress report on the Civil Service capabilities plan gave it a red rating for lack of implementation, while the Jenkin committee—Jenkin junior—wrote of,
“increasing dysfunctionality in aspects of the Civil Service key skills”.
The Public Accounts Committee noted that commercial and contracting skills remain weak. There is a lack of leadership expertise, with only four of the 15 Permanent Secretaries of delivery departments having significant operational delivery or commercial experience. Processes for overseeing major projects lack teeth and are seemingly unable to stop ill conceived or poorly managed projects, while the MPA lacks power.
Some of the Government’s policies have merit, such as greater scrutiny of major projects, reduced turnover of senior responsible officers and integration of corporate functions. However, as the Minister for the Cabinet Office has admitted, the implementation of many of these reforms has been poor and slow to start. Meanwhile, the PAC claims:
“The existing accountability arrangements for permanent secretaries are inadequate”,
and that senior civil servants are not held accountable for poor performance, while good performance is not properly recognised.
There are challenges. Constancy of change is a feature of any large organisation, but the skills and attitudes of civil servants need to reflect the ongoing change challenge. There is a need to provide proper support for Ministers, including in their political role, from a high-functioning, responsive and sufficiently political office, while avoiding what the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, calls the “politicisation” of the senior Civil Service when aligned with greater political input into the choosing of Permanent Secretaries, and the noble Lord’s fear of turning Whitehall into Washington. These issues are too serious to be undermined by overt denigration of the service—by what Truth to Power describes as,
“the vehemence of Ministers’ criticism of the Civil Service”,
or by scapegoating a few officials rather than addressing shortcomings in systems and culture. Morale is key to a high-functioning service, and we damage that at our peril.
The plea for a parliamentary commission from the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, the chairs of 17 committees and the majority of noble Lords who have spoken today should be taken seriously. We remain open-minded, as we are still examining Civil Service reform as part of our policy review, while the timing of any such commission presents its own challenge. There are changes that need implementing in 2015 and we must be sure that any such commission would not distract from, or undermine, reform efforts either in this Parliament or the next. We have heard great words of wisdom today and we look forward to a similar response from the Minister.
Internet: Copycat Websites
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government Digital Service, by whom I was fully briefed for this Question, is actively working with other departments of government to see how far it can control this. Of course, not all of these sites are hosted within the UK. We are familiar with many overseas agencies that get into the ether and do this.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, in the dash to digital by default, will the Government remember that in addition to some people not even being connected to the internet, others are very unfamiliar with using it for business? They are vulnerable to these people taking advantage of them. Will the Government, therefore, in addition to monitoring this, ensure that there are easy routes to redress and compensation when such a service has been mis-sold?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, these scams are concentrated on the sort of services that people access only occasionally—to renew driving licences, passports, the European Health Insurance Card and those sorts of things. There are also phishing efforts in which sites that claim to be HMRC say that you are offered a refund—I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has fallen for that; he looks as though he might have done—and ask for your bank details. They then manage to gain access to your account.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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“Professional lobbyists taking up employment in Government
(1) Any professional lobbyist taking up a senior position in Government shall—
(a) have their appointment scrutinised by a Committee; and(b) have restrictions placed on their activities as set out in subsection (3).(2) “Senior position in Government” means a position as Senior Civil Servant or their equivalent.
(3) The Minister, after consultation with relevant stakeholders, may make regulations about the activities specified in subsection (1)(b).”
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, we return again to what my colleague has just described as a Bill with a long title but a very short content. The amendment stands in the names of my noble friend Lady Royall and me. Last week, an amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Rooker, called for the requirement under the Bill to publish meetings with lobbyists to be extended from Ministers of the Crown to the leader of the Opposition in the six months before an election. This is an interesting proposition, as it raises the question of those slightly outside the magic circle of Ministers and Permanent Secretaries, the lobbying of whom should be disclosed to the public.
However, the other side of that coin is the question of whether there are paid lobbyists—paid by industries to promote their interests—who have the ear of government in a particularly close way, but who would not be caught by the register rules, as they are not civil servants and they protest that when they do meet, for example, the Prime Minister, they are speaking not on behalf of those clients who pay them but about very different matters, such as how to beat the Labour Party, or, indeed—the Liberal Democrats should be warned—how to beat the Liberal Democrats. We therefore find that, for the strangest of reasons, meetings that the Prime Minister has with a very well paid lobbyist are not recorded, because, as it so happens, they are only to pore over opinion polls.
Furthermore, despite the Prime Minister’s promise to lead,
“the most transparent government ever”,
we understand that No. 10 has failed to reveal the identity of guests entertained at Chequers. We do not know whether these are lobbyists, mere donors to the party or ordinary friends. But what we do know is that Downing Street has traditionally published an annual list of guests at Chequers, but has not done so since July 2011.
In the context of this Bill, we would be interested to know how many times the lobbyist Lynton Crosby has been at Chequers. What sounds odd is that even after the Bill becomes law, Mr Crosby’s lobbying consultancy would have to disclose any such visits—and therefore publish more than the Prime Minister would have to about such conversations—because Mr Crosby would be defined by the Prime Minister just as a strategic political adviser. But how easy is it to make such distinctions, with the Bill as it stands?
Mr Crosby was hired in November 2012. That month his lobbying firm signed a contract with Philip Morris. In December, he allegedly chaired a meeting at which he advised tobacco companies about plain packaging. In January, he started work for the Conservative Party. In March, a senior Whitehall source told the BBC that Australian-style plain packaging would be introduced here. In July—surprise, surprise—the plan was dropped.
Similar questions have been raised about minimum unit pricing for alcohol. Of course, we have tried to find out the names of Mr Crosby’s clients, which would have had to be disclosed if the Government had produced this Bill rather sooner after their 2010 promise rather than now, as his lobbying company, being a consultancy, would have had to register and disclose its clients. As it is, Mr Shapps said on 17 July, it is a matter for Mr Crosby who his clients within the company are. That is because, as the Minister reiterated to me in a Written Answer on 29 July, Lynton Crosby was not employed by the Government—although, as we know, he was employed by a lobbying company, and by the Conservative Party.
In passing, we might note that although the Minister claims that Part 2 of the Bill is aimed at keeping big money out of politics, the Conservative Party can afford to pay Mr Crosby £500,000 to do his best to keep Mr Cameron in Downing Street. That sounds like big money to me.
Putting that to one side, this example—and there are others—raise two significant questions. One is about a possible conflict of interest caused by a lobbyist working on the Conservative Party leader’s political strategy, but there is also the wider point about the revolving door between government and the lobbying industry. We have just heard about the appointment of a former lobbyist, who also happened to be a Conservative campaigns officer, to oversee public appointments, which sounds to me like double jeopardy. The Civil Service Code states that Whitehall mandarins should be politically independent—a former Conservative worker does not look too independent. The lobbying transparency campaigner, Tamasin Cave, referring to this appointment, said that Ms Wyld had been a lobbyist. She went on to say:
“This job needs someone impartial. It does not bode well”.
Last July, the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee also looked at the issue from the other end: the revolving door between the Civil Service and the private sector. It urged the Government to adopt a joined-up approach to lobbying regulations and to consider changes to the ACOBA alongside lobbying regulations. All of this needs flushing out if the public are really to see who has the ear of government and whether the Bill’s objective of increasing transparency is to be achieved.
Our amendments tackle the issue of lobbyists coming into the system, either as civil servants or employed by a governing party, rather than the outward move, but both should be of concern in any Bill dealing with the openness and transparency of the lobbying industry. I beg to move.
Lord Swinfen (Con)
My Lords, I am not an expert on lobbying by any means, but I wonder whether lobbyists employed by opposition parties should also have their position made public. Opposition parties from time to time can form Governments after an election. The work of lobbyists in opposition is just as important as the work of lobbyists for those parties in government. The noble Baroness needs to redraft her amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I shall start by welcoming the at least partial support expressed by the Labour Front Bench for Part 1 of the Bill, and indeed the commendable sentiment that has been expressed for strengthening Part 1 further. I am sure that as we proceed, the same sort of constructive spirit for the Bill’s aims will be provided by the Labour Front Bench. The revolving door is an issue all the way across politics, which no Government have yet entirely managed to resolve. We recognise that people moving in and out of different private and public forms of life create some problems, and a number of things are now in place to cope with those who move from private industry into government and back again. It is not a new problem with this Government.
For Amendment 95 to cover all three parties, one would need to add,
“those who are employed in voluntary capacities”,
because my party would love to employ a number of these people but could not conceivably afford to pay them. Indeed, I am aware of a number of people associated with consultant lobbyist companies who have advised my party in the past. Perhaps that is an area that might also be considered.
I am conscious that this is very much about Lynton Crosby and Crosby Textor. In listening to the beginning of the speech of the noble Baroness, I felt that in some ways this was an amendment with a very long text but very little content, if I may slightly adapt what she said when starting out.
I note her comment on guests at Chequers and I will take that back. However, I googled Crosby Textor this morning and I can assure the noble Baroness that it would be caught by the new register, since it has offices in both Sydney and London, and would be forced to register and declare its clients under the new Part 1. That is part of what the Bill is about and Crosby Textor would therefore be entirely covered by it. The question of what happens when a member of a consulting company is employed under a contract part-time—as he is—by one of the political parties in government takes us close to the difficult area of how far political parties in government should be covered by this scheme. I have checked and I can assure the noble Baroness that he has not discussed the tobacco question with the Government. I realise that the tobacco question—I was not so aware of the alcohol question—is very sensitive in government. I merely say that Part 1 of the Bill would catch Crosby Textor. We would then know exactly who its clients were; that is part of the justification of Part 1.
Professional lobbyists taking up employment in government is a rather broader issue. We would of course need to know what sort of a committee would look at this. It would be easier to absorb it into the current arrangements for checking on people who move into government from the outside and, indeed, those who then leave government and go back into these sorts of activities, for which Whitehall already has arrangements. However, I think in some ways these two amendments are in order to make sure that Crosby Textor gets on to the agenda, and possibly into tomorrow’s “Today” programme. Having said that, I say: well played. I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, the amendment was not short on content and certainly not on intent. However, before I make one comment to the Minister, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, that my passing reference at the beginning was exactly the point that he raised. I did not reiterate what we did last week. It was about the leader of the Opposition in the run-up to an election possibly making the same declarations as we are now asking for from Ministers. I do not have full backing yet from the powers that be in the party, but we came as close as we could to a nod in that direction last week in a way that I think the Minister understands.
The Minister slightly misunderstood the point of the amendment. We know that Crosby Textor would be caught, which is why we were trying to get the information before the Bill became law because it was taking such a long time. The interest was, of course, that the Prime Minister would feel that he did not have to declare that because the person he is meeting at the moment is not a Permanent Secretary and therefore would not be covered in that way. The two really do need to dovetail together.
This is something that we will want to come back to on Report, maybe not exactly in this form. However, it will be important for the aim of the Government, which is to make sure that those who have the ear of the most senior people in government declare theirs. We will need to make sure that we have captured that in a suitable amendment. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords for what has been said so far. Obviously, we support the Motion but we consider that this is a decision for the House to take about how it scrutinises the Bill.
We welcome the acknowledgement, albeit somewhat late, of the mishandling—if I may call it that—of the Bill this far. When it was in the other place, the same comments were made and were brushed aside. They were made at Second Reading but it has taken until this morning, I think, to have at least an acknowledgement that further consideration with those people affected by the Bill is necessary.
I will not rehearse everything that has been said about the Bill to date, but “raising significant concern”, “rushed”, “unacceptable”, “unnecessary speed”, “abuse of parliamentary scrutiny”, “lack of due process” and “truncated timetable” are all phrases that have come across all our desks. There was no warning of this part of the Bill. There was no pre-legislative scrutiny. It is no wonder that the Constitution Committee was very critical of the way it was dealt with.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights raised a slightly different issue from the hurriedness. The lack of effective scrutiny, it thought, had left serious questions about challenges to freedom of association and speech, which needed greater consideration by lawyers as much as discussion with the third sector.
Of course, the recommendation of the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee was for a six-month pause so that serious work can be done, not simply in hearing the concerns but in responding to them. It would be worth keeping the words and for the Government to have a listening exercise if nothing changes at the end of it. What we need is much more of a commitment, not just to listen and engage, important though that is, but to act on what is heard.
There has been no indication that something other than the raising of the threshold is on offer. Not everyone has followed the detail of this Bill. Let us just say that it is one of the many asks that the third sector has but it is not the answer to the problems of the Bill. There is a democratic fear about Part 2—it is not the whole of the Bill—about the threat to freedom of assembly and free speech, which needs more than just consultation to be put at rest. It may be that there is not a problem but we need to be sure of that.
Nowhere is this issue more important than in Northern Ireland, a nation emerging from conflict, where civil society has had a prominent role. Indeed, NGOs’ participation in democratic processes is one of the key components of the peace process. The Assembly and civil society must be consulted—not merely, as the Government said yesterday in their response to the your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, that the Minister,
“wrote to the devolved administrations on the introduction of the Bill … to ensure they were aware of the proposals”.
That is not what we are looking for. That is not due consideration of their special circumstances, nor is the Government’s undertaking simply to provide,
“further clarification of the potential impacts”.
The third sector is not looking just for reassurance; it is looking for change. Amnesty International is concerned about the potential to undermine its vital campaigning on human rights. These are not the small charities that might now be exempted; they are the ones that are basic to our democratic engagement and discussion in this country. The Women’s Institute fears that its legitimate comment on policy could leave it,
“exposed to scrutiny for seemingly promoting a political party”.
We need to engage with the WI to see whether its concerns could be met by more fundamental change than is being suggested today.
Able though my colleagues on this side of the House are, I do not believe that they will be able to come up with amendments by 16 December that would answer those questions. I also point out that the week beginning 16 December is a short parliamentary week, and there may be people in this House who have made other plans for that week. Trying to engage with civil society in the period running up to Christmas and then to get the amendments written in time for Committee still seems a tall order under the offer that has been made.
We need to hear whether the fears of the third sector are founded or not. If they are, we need to respond. The third sector has organisational problems. It may seem simple to people with lots of accountants to change the way they account for staffing costs, travel costs, and all that. For any charity with a small back office, that is a big challenge and they need to be heard on that issue.
It may not have been the Government’s intent to wrap up charities and small organisations in the red tape that, elsewhere, they are taking off businesses. It may not have been their intent to frighten the third sector into thinking that their campaigning would be undermined, but that is the position at the moment. I fear that if we over-hurry this pause—if we make it just a breather, rather than a serious pause—it will not achieve what the Government want.
The NCVO has already heard of the offer being made, and said this afternoon that,
“one small change does not fix this bill, and it is important that any changes are considered as a package”.
In particular, in addition to a rise in thresholds, it is looking for the removal of constituency limits, the end-use of nil reports, the removal of staff costs, the removal of events and public rallies, change to the way coalitions are dealt with—not the one over there, the coalition of voluntary organisations—and a reduction of the regulated period to six months.
The Government may not accept that as a final package, but it is important that there is time to consider that and to ensure that a change in one part of the Bill does not leave effects elsewhere. Time spent now, before the Bill is set in stone, will help the Government to achieve their aims. We would like a pause as suggested—a longer one for the discussions. Having done that, we on this side of the House will do all we can through the offices of the usual channels to ensure that the Bill reaches the statute book in the timescale that the Government want. We can work to do that, but without a sensible pause and a proper committee to look at it and report back, and to allow the Government time to change the Bill, we will not achieve what all of us seek.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
My Lords, first, perhaps I may say how glad I am that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, tabled this Motion today. I pay tribute to him because he was willing to take the lead on this important issue and for all the hard work that he has done behind the scenes, keeping me and the commission in touch with what is going on. I also pay tribute to the Minister and the Leader of the House, who I know are genuinely anxious to get a real consensus on this issue.
The Minister has basically offered a five-week period of consultation. I remind your Lordships that the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee recommended a pause of six months. The commission believes that six months is unnecessary, but five weeks is a very short period indeed. I can say that the commission will do all it can to help the Government during the consultation period, but if it turns out that five weeks is not long enough to get the kind of agreement that we all want on this crucial issue, I remind the leadership of some new advice which has just come from the Electoral Commission, which states:
“Should Parliament decide that a period of consultation is desirable before the Bill makes further progress, we would recommend that the start of the regulated period for the 2015 general election be delayed by an appropriate period”.
It goes on to say that that would give it good time to draw up its advice and educate the charities. Therefore, if the Minister finds that this five-week period is not long enough, there is an alternative that would still enable the Bill to get through in time for the 2015 election: namely, to heed the advice of the Electoral Commission. Meanwhile, I repeat that the commission will do all it can to support the Minister in this consultation period.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I support Amendment 1, moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie—perhaps I should say the noble and wise Lord, Lord Hardie, given his masterly introduction. I wish to speak on the last amendment in this group—Amendment 143—in the names of my noble friend Lady Royall and myself, and also on Amendments 2, 7, 8, 11, 13, 16, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 47, and 99, together with various others, on which our names are joined with that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie.
However, Amendment 143 is perhaps the simplest and is the key. It would amend the title of Part 1 to read, “Registration of professional lobbyists”. Establishing a register only of consultants would add nothing to the existing non-statutory register. Worse, it would effectively end that voluntary register, its associated code of conduct and related disciplinary mechanism. As UKPAC says, the Bill risks creating a statutory register with minimal coverage while undermining a voluntary regime that lists several hundred employers such as agencies, in-house lobbyists, public bodies and charities, and more than 1,000 people employed in lobbying.
Indeed, the proposed register—a skeleton rather than a viable thing—would cover only 1% of lobbying meetings, yet would be a heavy financial burden on consultant firms because they would have to fund the whole operation of the registrar. As the noble Lord, Lord Norton, has said, the register would fail to increase transparency because it would not enable the public to see how outside bodies seek to influence the political system.
On the “Today” programme, which I assume we all listen to, Andrew Lansley said last week that the public should be able to see who is lobbying Ministers. I think we all agree, but the register will not tell you that if you saw only the list of clients and not the particular client on whose behalf even a consultant was meeting a Minister. The register would tell us nothing about the big six energy companies’ discussions with perhaps HMT or DECC officials. Indeed, we would learn about only their meetings with Ministers—and would learn that from the departmental diaries, not the lobbyists themselves.
Most seriously, the proposed register would exclude virtually all business lobbying, whether done by companies themselves or by their trade bodies. The Minister needs to tell the House whether that really is the intention. Does he really want a list that excludes the bulk of lobbying activity? Last year, BIS had 988 meetings with lobbyists, only two of which were with consultants. Under the Bill, only those two meetings would need to be entered on the register. Thus the register would capture fewer than 1% of ministerial meetings and do nothing to shed light on what goes on behind those closed doors in Whitehall.
Big government decisions often involve big business which—quite rightly and with no criticism—want to influence decisions that affect their bottom line. There is nothing wrong with Ministers, civil servants, Bill writers or anyone else meeting those who will be affected by legislation. In fact, had Ministers met those affected by Part 2 of the Bill, we might have saved ourselves half an hour earlier this afternoon and not have been presented with such a dog’s breakfast. More importantly, for the rest of us, for democracy and for good governance, we need to see who is lobbying Ministers and civil servants. Those who will not be covered, in addition to those mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, will include: the British Insurance Brokers’ Association, which recently produced a manifesto for insurance for 2014; the Building Societies Association, which has been lobbying on the Banking Reform Bill; the Mobile Operators Association, which has been lobbying about the electronic communications code; Philip Morris, which sought to delay the tobacco products directive; the National Federation of Occupational Pensioners, with the associated Keep Me Posted campaign; the Save Our Supplements campaign and Holland and Barrett, which makes supplements and spends money on reaching politicians; Fujitsu, which is keen to meet us, whether in Parliament or at party conferences; Forest, which argues for us to keep the freedom to kill ourselves with tobacco; One Hub or None, Heathrow’s campaign for expansion; BAE Systems, builders of killer planes and warships, which are, in its words, “defence solutions”; the CBI; the Nuclear Industry Association; Santander; Canon; and Siemens.
Noble Lords will recognise that list as containing just those whose material has passed over our desks in the past few months. There are also the pharmaceutical companies, and the drinks industries have been mentioned. They contrast with Alcohol Concern, which is too small to have in-house lobbying and thus has to rely on an agency for lobbying assistance. They all use in-house lobbyists and therefore will not have to register. The same is true of virtually every other manufacturer, service provider or audit firm which wants the ear of government. I am not against that dialogue; in fact, I rather favour Keep Me Posted, as my bills come by post so much more slowly than by e-mail.
I am delighted that we were lobbied about this Bill, but that is not the point. The question is: why should only lobbying consultancies, rather than those that do serious lobbying on behalf of their own company, have to register? That is not what was foreseen in the coalition agreement and it is not what the industry itself wants. The overwhelming feedback from the consultation last year was that the proposals lacked breadth and depth and would fail to collect meaningful and sufficient information.
Furthermore, requiring only those employed by a consultancy to register would mean that it would be cheaper for lobbyists to work directly for a company, if only part time. For example, they could perhaps work for 10 companies rather than run a consultancy with 10 clients. If a company wanted to have its dealings excluded from the register, it would only have to pull its hitherto outsourced person on to its own wages bill and then, as an in-house lobbyist, they would be below the radar.
It is not just business lobbyists who want to see a full register. Charities and trade unions, including Oxfam, which has been to see me, have told us that they are very content for their public affairs professionals to be included on a register and to disclose their lobbying meetings.
Therefore, we support Amendment 1 and the production of a proper, comprehensive—the word used by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth—and statutory register of all professionals engaged with government and Parliament. Democracy demands nothing less.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, unfortunately I was unable to attend the Second Reading of the Bill due to the fact that domestic committees of the House were meeting and I was otherwise engaged. However, I have read the whole of the Second Reading debate.
It is quite clear that the Government have not really put a case for what they are doing in this very limited form. One speech that struck me from reading the debate was that of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who suggested that a very different approach to the Bill could well be taken. I just wondered whether Ministers had considered the contents of his contribution. His is a sort of halfway-house proposal: it would dilute the value of the register but would ensure that the kind of information that we really need was available. Today, he slightly alluded to his case, and I believe that the questions he raised at Second Reading should be answered during the deliberations on the Bill. I cannot understand for the life of me what is driving the Government down this route, apart from some huge PR effort to convince the public that they are doing something about lobbying in line with their coalition agreement. However, their proposal does not meet the terms of what I understand was agreed.
I have a number of questions that I should like to ask, and I have tabled amendments of my own, to which we will come later. What is the Government’s latest estimate of the number of organisations and individuals that will register? Some work on that must have been done. I have seen some figures published but, in the light of the speeches at Second Reading showing up the deficiencies in the Bill, and recognising that many will not be required to register because they will not meet the criteria for registration—information which, prior to Second Reading, the Government may well not have considered—what is now their estimate of the number that will finally register?
I should like to know more about the discussions that took place between departmental officials and Ministers and the professional associations. Since the early 1970s, in one form or another—I shall give more detail later in the debate on the work that was done in the 1970s and 1980s in this area—a system has been in operation which provides far more information than the Government are seeking the lobbyists and lobbying organisations to provide. It has been suggested in this House and in correspondence that we have received that their efforts may no longer be necessary. Some of them may be inclined simply to discard the work that they have been doing over the years and rely on the Government’s far more limited source of information. Surely that would be totally counterproductive. I wonder whether Ministers or civil servants have been told what the intentions are. I think that the House is entitled to know what the professional organisations intend to do in the event that this register is set in place.
Finally, on in-house lobbyists and their exclusion, it is simply not credible to call a Bill the name given to this Bill when it excludes the vast majority of lobbyists in the United Kingdom. It is not credible; it is a joke. Inevitably, there will be some scandal which will draw attention to the deficiencies in the registration system that has been set up by the Government. It may be for a future Government to find themselves defending the indefensible. I hope that the Minister can answer some of my questions prior to my moving my amendments.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are more persuaded from other countries that have the light-touch system we are proposing that it is more effective at addressing the problem than the large, expensive and comprehensive system the Canadians have gone in for.
There are a large number of amendments in this group. I will try to address as many of the issues as I can.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, before the Minister goes on to the detail of those, I think he has not answered the point—it was made more at Second Reading—of why the existing publication could not simply deal with this. If any Minister meets a consultant lobbyist they name the organisation on behalf of which they have met that consultant and the purpose of it. I still do not understand why that would not meet the objectives there seem to be for the register.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, there was considerable concern while the previous Government were in office that consultant lobbyists were a powerful element in our political system, that we did not know who they represented and that it would be better if the public were informed who their clients were. The noble Baroness has, on a number of occasions, stressed the point that perhaps one should also add what subjects they are discussing with the Government. I am very happy to take that away and perhaps on a belt-and-braces principle that should be tied in. However, I do not think it takes away the issue that for transparency of the democratic process it is desirable to know who consultant lobbyists are representing and who therefore is paying them.
Perhaps I may move on to answer some of the questions. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, asks what our assessment is of the number of lobbying organisations that will be required to register. Our current estimate is that it will be somewhere in the order of 350. We have held a number of constructive meetings with representatives of the industry at which we discussed the voluntary register and the code of conduct, and we have talked with the three main industry bodies concerned. They were able to give a reassurance that many of the concerns regarding the application are being met by that.
I turn now to the details. As I said to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, if the tobacco industry lobbies on behalf of its own industry, we know what is going on. If it is a consultant lobbyist lobbying on behalf of the industry, that is a great deal less clear. That is the underlying distinction between a consultant lobbyist and a professional lobbyist. Because I am concerned with the EU balance of competences exercise, over the past nine months I have read a great deal of evidence produced by the Scotch Whisky Association. I know exactly where the association is coming from and what it is lobbying about. If it were a consultant lobbyist, that would be a different situation. That is the distinction we are making.
On the question of whether we extend this to professional lobbyists, I cannot see the justification for excluding charities from it. As a Minister, I have met a number of charity representatives who have lobbied us on policy issues. That is quite properly a part of what charities themselves do.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, in moving Amendment 5, tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Royall, I shall speak also to Amendment 93. I would expect a Bill on lobbying to do two things. First, it should show who is lobbying whom over what, which was the issue of the first two groups of amendments. Secondly, it should raise standards in the industry to help make it a profession, with all that that implies for ethics, training and good practice. As I made clear earlier, I am not against lobbying. Like many other noble Lords, I spent too many years seeking to influence civil servants and politicians, sometimes with success and sometimes with none, but always, I hope, by employing honest arguments and with the most open of motives and the cleanest of hands. For me, it is particularly sad that the golden opportunity for this Bill to introduce a requirement for registered lobbyists to abide by a code of conduct has been lost. A code is absolutely key if we wish to raise standards.
We are not arguing for a code to be spelt out in the Bill—far from it—but we are arguing that the registrar, after discussion with representatives of the industry, should be able to adopt or approve a code; and that, if it was shown that someone had breached it, that would lead to a sanction. It would signal to the industry how the registrar judges any misdemeanours. It would be a code rather like the one that noble Lords sign at the Table as we take the Oath, and anyone putting their name on the register would also have to sign up.
The Sheila McKechnie Foundation states that,
“an effective register would include an obligatory code of conduct for all registrants, along with clear sanctions for non-compliance or breaches”.
Indeed, we need to be able to prevent the worst offenders from continuing to practise by removing them from the register, but without a code and the power to judge someone in reference to it, how will we see offenders taken out of this industry?
Understandably, the Government do not want a statutory code written into the Bill. Nor do we, but neither that nor their response to the Select Committee report explains why they do not want to make it mandatory for the registrar to give approval to a code that she or he has drawn up or endorsed in consultation with the industry and other stakeholders. Just as the royal charter does not itself set up a press regulatory body, but simply ensures that whatever is established is up to standard, so the Bill should simply require the registrar to endorse and lay before Parliament the code against which she or he would judge the behaviour of anyone on the register. The code would set the standard for the behaviour of those who seek to influence the Government of this country. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Opposition’s proposed amendment would prohibit lobbying unless the person had signed up to the registrar’s code of conduct. Their new clause would require the registrar, after consultation with relevant stakeholders, to produce a code of conduct which would include a provision that any inappropriate relations between lobbyists and parliamentarians were strictly forbidden. Amendment 108, which has been grouped elsewhere, would enable the registrar to impose civil penalties for breaches of the code of conduct. The Government are not persuaded that a statutory code of conduct is appropriate, and I suggest that the proposed amendments are based on a miscomprehension of the role of codes, either statutory or voluntary, in the regulation of lobbying. The Opposition appear to suggest that such codes are in existence and are operating successfully in other jurisdictions. Perhaps I may draw their attention to international examples of statutory codes of conduct, of which there are very few.
The Australian statutory code of conduct establishes a statutory register of consultant lobbyists and prohibits the lobbying of government on behalf of a third party without registration. That is exactly what this Bill provides for and, if that is what the Opposition are seeking to achieve, the amendments are not needed. In Canada, the Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct promotes three principles—integrity and honesty, openness and professionalism—and requires that lobbyists act transparently, that they respect confidentiality, and that they avoid conflicts of interest. That code is not a statutory instrument and there is no sanction for non-compliance other than a report from the registrar outlining the lobbyist’s misdemeanour. That is appropriate, because determining non-compliance with these very broad principles is a challenging, uncertain and subjective process.
We have not been able to identify any international precedent for the type of code the Opposition propose. Indeed, even the overwhelmingly high-regulation system in the USA, which requires a 900-plus page handbook to aid compliance, does not incorporate a statutory code of conduct of this sort. Perhaps the fact that the Opposition have been able to propose just one provision for their code of conduct illustrates why such an approach has not been adopted elsewhere.
The Government recognise the industry’s efforts to improve lobbying practice by introducing its own codes of conduct and are confident that that will continue. Those codes promote the ethical behaviour that is essential to the integrity and reputation of the lobbying industry. The codes contain laudable principles and good practice guidance, but their translation into statute does not seem sensible or feasible.
Amendment 78, in the name of my noble friend Lord Tyler, would instead amend Clause 5(4) so that regulations could be made to enable lobbyists to include details in their information returns of the voluntary codes of conduct that they had subscribed to; but no other additional types of information unrelated to voluntary codes of conduct could be so specified. My noble friend appears to agree with the Government that a statutory code of conduct is not necessary and that the existing voluntary codes should be endorsed and promoted. I am happy to tell my noble friend that the Government are committed to ensuring that the statutory register complements the existing self-regulatory regime.
A specific reference on the statutory register to the voluntary code to which a lobbyist has subscribed is an interesting proposal that the Government are willing to consider further. However, we are not persuaded that the power under Clause 5(4) should be restricted so that it could be used to make regulations only in relation to voluntary codes, which is the—perhaps unintended—effect of my noble friend’s amendment. We will consider this further. Meanwhile, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment and my noble friend not to press his.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I fear that that reply was written before I made my speech. I made it very clear that I do not want a statutory code of conduct. The reply that the Minister gave was about why we should not have a statutory code of conduct: I agree, and we did not ask for it. What we are asking is for the registrar to endorse a code of conduct. I assume that it would be based either on the format of five principles that other professions use or maybe on the existing voluntary code. That would be a matter for the registrar, but I very clearly said that we did not want a statutory register.
I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, is in her seat as she will remember very well discussing whether the regulation of letting agents should be statutory or—as it is now—voluntary. The letting agents had a very good voluntary code but if you did not obey it and were taken to the ombudsman, you could simply say, “I will leave the code, walk off and not remain signed up to the voluntary code”. All the good boys were signed up to the code but—guess what—the cowboys were not. If anyone was caught breaking the code they just resigned. The noble Baroness did at one point ask me to stop thanking her for this but I will never stop doing so because, through her work, we agreed the amendment that makes it compulsory for letting agents to belong to an ombudsman scheme. As part of that, there will be a code, overseen by the ombudsman, by which will be judged any misbehaviour by letting agents.
Effectively, that is what we are asking for here. Once you have a register of consultants, they should have to sign up to some code of good practice or ethical principles against which it will be judged whether they should be taken off the register. I am not asking for a statutory code, although it was very nice to hear the Minister make a speech against it. What we want is, if you like, a blessing to the voluntary code that says more than simply, “Please read it”. If you are on a register, I imagine it would become quite a kitemark. People would say, “I am a registered consultant lobbyist” —or, if our amendment were passed, a proper lobbyist, not just a consultant. It would be a kitemark to be on the register. However, if it implies no requirement to keep to an ethical code or a code of good behaviour, the kitemark could itself be quite misleading.
We will definitely return to this and I hope that the Minister has heard what we are really asking for: not a statutory code but a requirement that the registrar should have a code that anyone on the register would have to sign up to. I will leave that until Report for the moment—whenever that will be—and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, Amendments 54 and 74 are in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Royall. We support an independent registrar, which means independent of the industry as well as working independently of the Government. However, the matters over which the registrar must judge, the standards that he or she sets and the objectives set for the office have an importance to Parliament and to our standards and expectations. We believe that that requires an organic link to Parliament, not just to the Government of the day.
We think it appropriate that that link is to the elected House, which by its nature is responsive to the outside electorate and their concerns and interests. We recommend that the Minister, in making the appointment, should consult the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the other place and that, in similar mode, the registrar should report back to that committee on an annual basis.
We recognise the strength of the other amendments in this group, and we trust that the Minister will similarly do so and agree to take these away and bring back his own amendments on Report. I beg to move.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, the principle in Amendment 74 of the registrar reporting is important. In my view, though, rather than reporting to a particular committee, it would be more appropriate to oblige the registrar to produce an annual report to Parliament itself. If it were going to be confined, I would not just confine it to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the other place; I hear what the noble Baroness says, but there would also be a case for the Constitution Committee of you Lordships’ House being included as well. My preference would be for a report to Parliament, but I wholly support the principle that there ought to be a report. As the noble Baroness said, bringing the registrar within the scope of Parliament is entirely appropriate.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am not going to give that commitment now because there are larger questions about how many public appointments should be overseen by Commons committees. That is a much broader issue than this appointment alone. I will take that back and consult with others but, as I said earlier, the Government are not currently persuaded of these amendments.
I return to the central database issue, which raises some large issues about the role of the registrar and whether or not ministerial appointments should be handed over, so to speak, for collation by an independent body associated with the Government. We have listened to those who have asked that the reports be available from one central location and have responded by migrating all meeting reports to gov.uk, where they can be readily accessed as both PDF and open-format CSV files. We have responded to those that suggested that the timeliness of reporting could be improved by committing to publishing all meeting information in the quarter immediately after that in which the meeting took place. I note the pressure to go further. The Government are committed to the principles of open government and we continue to investigate how we can further improve the value of the information that we make available to the public. However, we are not at present persuaded that we should be going as far as the noble Lord suggests.
Opposition Amendment 74 would require the registrar to submit an annual report to the PCRC on the operation of the register. Again, this is not a provision that I understand that the committee itself has sought—perhaps because it recognises that the registrar is already required by the drafting to submit their annual accounts to Parliament and that the committee will be perfectly entitled and able to call the registrar to provide evidence at any time. I would have thought that that would be enough to hold them to account.
The new clause of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, is by far the most ambitious amendment. It would require the Government to publish alongside any statement on a matter of policy, legislation or a contract or grant, records of any oral or written communication directed to a Minister, the Minister’s parliamentary private secretary or special adviser, and any departmental civil servants relating to that matter. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, provides exemptions from the requirement to publish for commercial or security-sensitive material. This is certainly an intriguing proposal but, I suggest, neither a feasible nor proportionate one. At a time when our focus should be on ensuring more efficient and effective government, a statutory requirement that every oral or written communication received by every civil servant, special adviser, PPS or Minister be recorded, collated and published in parallel with any relevant statement would appear ill advised. It would of course be an absolute goldmine for an academic researcher.
Not only would such a system impose an unwelcome bureaucratic burden on the public sector, it would likely impose information overload on the members of the public—perhaps even academic researchers. The volume of information that the Government would likely be required to publish in relation to a Budget Statement or a Queen’s Speech would be so overwhelming that any transparency value would be entirely undermined by the inaccessibility and quantity of the information. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who talked about “hiding in plain sight”. When there is too much information provided, it is sometimes hard to weed out what is crucial.
The Government’s objective is to provide the public with valuable information which they can utilise to scrutinise our actions and hold us to account. The focus should be on the value of information and the insight it can provide, not on the volume. The Government already publish unprecedented amounts of information about decision-making, and the register is intended to extend that transparency to those who seek to influence decision-makers. It is already standard practice that responses to government consultations are published in full and in summary, and if the public require further information about certain policies or decisions then they have a right to request that information using the Freedom of Information Act.
I recognise that the noble Lord is urging the Government to extend our information publication regime a good deal further. We will continue to consider how enhanced transparency can best be achieved. I suggest, however, that a statutory requirement of this nature is not the most appropriate manner in which to do so. I therefore resist that amendment, and urge the noble Baroness to withdraw it.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, this has turned into a more interesting and wide-ranging debate than we had anticipated. There are two parts to it. One is about this database. On the idea that there is too much for us and therefore the Government do not want to put it out there—they should try harder than that. The House knows I have a certain thing about alcohol misuse. I just want to know how many drinks companies lobbied the Government about tax before the Budget. It ought to be possible to know that. I do not want all the other submissions. Someone who is interested in the environment or any other issue will just be focused and want to drill down to one thing. If it is a good system, an awful lot of noise out there will not matter.
When I am not spending my time here at 7.30 pm I am quite often at the National Theatre. You can go there with a tiny card and you have ordered perhaps four different lots of tickets for different nights and different theatres. You put in your little card and you get them all back. Its computer system can do it very easily. I cannot believe that it is beyond the wit of man—even men—to produce a similar system for this database, which is currently completely unsearchable. It is not, in the words of the Minister readily available. I have tried to search it, although I did not try for quite as long as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—in future I will come to his office when I am trying to find this out. However, it is not searchable or rapid, and is therefore almost irrelevant, so late is it. I cannot see why it cannot be available the next day. If there was a will, there would certainly be a way.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
From time to time Parliament does change the structure and the nomenclature of its committees. I think the Government would be a little hesitant to write the current structure of committees into legislation.
Lord Norton of Louth
On that point, legislation does write in the name of committees or the equivalent, so it is quite possible to do that.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Not only does the noble Lord, Lord Norton, supply me with his wonderful Hull students to help me with my work, but he comes up with answers to my questions, for which I thank him.
What seems like a small amendment about writing the committee in is an important signal. I am sorry that we keep hearing the words “not persuaded” from that side. Having had the earlier discussion about Part 2 of the Bill, we very much hope that the Government will be persuaded by what they hear. I had hoped that some of that might have bled into Part 1 of the Bill and that the Government might have been persuaded by some of the things we said. However, we will leave it here, although we may want to come back to some of it at a later stage. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Hardie
I take the noble Lord’s point. I am not criticising his amendment; I am criticising the Bill. The Bill does not contain any right of appeal. My Amendment 89 introduces such a right for someone who is aggrieved by the registrar’s decision.
Not only does the Bill deprive someone of the right to a livelihood, perhaps, but Clause 12 creates an offence: it is a criminal offence to lobby if you are not on the register. Not only do you deprive someone of their livelihood but you subject them to the possibility of criminal proceedings and a fine. Clearly there ought to be a right of appeal. There is a tribunal in existence so there is no difficulty about that.
I have already referred to Amendment 103, which creates similar offences in relation to the register of lobbying activities, so I will say no more about that.
Amendment 109 relates to Clause 16, which concerns the ability of the registrar to impose civil penalties. The level of the penalty is fixed at £7,500. I have suggested that that should be reduced to £5,000. The civil penalty is an alternative to prosecution and, if you are prosecuted, the maximum summary fine in Scotland is £5,000 so I do not understand why the civil penalty is half as much again. There may be a reason for that; if there is, I would like the Minister to tell me; if there is not, there should be equivalence of penalties.
My final amendment is Amendment 110. It relates to Clause 18, which states:
“The Registrar may not impose a civil penalty on a person in respect of any conduct … at any time after criminal proceedings … have been instituted … and before they have been concluded, or … after the person has been convicted of an offence under this Part”.
My amendment introduces, after the word “convicted” in subsection (1)(b), the words “or acquitted”. Once we get to that stage, the individual has gone through a criminal trial and a court has decided that he or she is not guilty. Unless we include the words “or acquitted”, a court may have acquitted someone but the registrar could still impose a civil penalty of £5,000. Again, that is unjust. That is the reason for that amendment.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, in supporting Amendments 88 and 90, which stand in the name of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, I will speak in particular to Amendments 107 and 108, which are in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Royall.
The four amendments comprise the framework that would enable the register to be more than just a limp piece of paper. Taken together, they provide that if someone on the register breaches the code of conduct or the Bribery Act, or is found unfit to be registered as a lobbyist—for example, if they have brought Parliament into disrepute—the registrar would have the power either to remove them from the register or to impose an appropriate civil penalty. That is perhaps rather closer to what was suggested earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbots, which is what happens under what is now the Financial Conduct Authority’s list of recognised people. So this is an important combination of amendments.
Of course, we agree that someone should have the right of appeal to a tribunal, as with any such threat to the removal of one’s profession and employment. As the noble and learned Lord said, there is already a well established tribunal that deals with appeals from the pensions regulator and other similar bodies.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
Perhaps I may ask a question about the amendment. Is there some special significance to the word “breached”, as opposed to,
“convicted of an offence under”,
or is that just the drafting of the amendment?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I think that it is to cover breach of the code. The criminal term would not be appropriate for that. If the Government accept the amendments, I would be more than happy to accept any final tweaks, but the wording is designed to cover non-criminal matters such as breaches of the code of conduct.
In recognising and supporting the amendment dealing with an appeal, that is symbolic of our intention that lobbyists, like financial advisers, pension trustees, lawyers or accountants, should aspire to being members of a profession, with all the obligations of maintaining standards.
We know that the vast majority of lobbyists agree with that objective. They want their profession to be valued and acknowledged and therefore want us to ensure that anyone misleading the registrar or breaching the code should have no place on an approved register. We hope that the Government accept the intention behind the amendments and will respond accordingly. If not, we fear that there will be no mechanism other than sanctions for late filing to keep the register of lobbyists to a high standard.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, that seems unlikely, on the face of it, but I am very glad to go away and consult officials to make sure that there is not a lacuna here. I appreciate where the noble and learned Lord is coming from, with a genuine concern on this issue. If one were to accept some of his other amendments, the case for writing into the Bill the appeal to the tribunal would be stronger. If a person were to object, under our scheme, to the registrar’s decision they could advise him or her accordingly and reregister without difficulty. We do not therefore consider that appeals to the tribunal should be necessary in those circumstances.
The Opposition’s proposed amendments, Amendments 101, 105 and 106, appear designed to ensure that the provision of misleading information is captured by the offence outlined in Clause 12 and, as a consequence, by the civil penalty power provided for in Clause 14. I am advised that “incomplete or inaccurate register” also covers the question of “misleading”. I can therefore confirm that the provision of misleading information in any of these instances would be captured by the concept of,
“information which is inaccurate or incomplete in a material particular”,
as provided in subsections (2)(b), (3)(b) and (4)(b) of Clause 12.
The offence outlined in Clause 12 is designed to be applicable in both the civil and criminal systems. We anticipate that the provision of inaccurate or incomplete information due to administrative oversight will be sanctioned by the imposition of a civil penalty. If, however, inaccurate or incomplete information had been provided in an attempt to deliberately mislead, we could expect such non-compliance to be prosecuted in a criminal court.
The Opposition’s Amendment 108 would enable the registrar to impose civil penalties for breaches of the code of conduct. The establishment of sanctions, whether civil or criminal, requires detailed and measured consideration. The Opposition have been able to identify only one of the provisions to be included in the statutory register. I suggest that the provisions with which lobbyists would be required to comply should surely be identified before it was determined whether they should be liable to a civil penalty in the event of a breach.
Amendment 103, tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, would impose an offence on those who failed to submit lobbying activity reports as and when required. We recognise that this amendment is consequential to his other proposals so I will not address it further. His Amendment 109 would amend Clause 16(3) so that the maximum amount for a penalty notice would be reduced from £7,500 to £5,000. I note that his point of comparison is the Scottish civil penalty. In setting the maximum amount for a penalty notice at £7,500, the Government were mindful of comparable regulatory regimes, such as the fines imposed by the Companies Act in relation to the late filing of accounts, and we took that as our comparator. The Government are confident that the proposed limit of the civil penalty is thus an appropriate one and are not persuaded that it should be reduced, although of course the registrar is able to issue civil penalties of any amount up to £7,500, so not in every case would it be the amount.
The noble and learned Lord’s Amendment 110 would prevent the registrar from issuing a civil penalty to a person if that person had been acquitted of an offence under this part in relation to their conduct. We then get into interesting questions; as a non-lawyer, I am not entirely an expert on the difference between the evidence required to prove a criminal case and that which is required to produce a civil one. Perhaps we might consult on that off the Floor to resolve that very delicate distinction. Having answered some of those extremely interesting and detailed probing amendments, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Before that happens, may I just be assured that I have understood that even if someone is convicted under the Bribery Act in a criminal case, they could still stay on the register?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
The register is not intended to have sanctions on it, but let me take that away and come back. I appreciate that we are in an area here where the question is how much the register is intended to be one which you go on to if you are engaged in this activity, or whether the register should begin to develop a disciplinary dimension, which raises some of the questions that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, in particular has pursued.
Political Parties, Elections and Referendums (Civil Sanctions) (Amendment) Order 2013
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Maxton
I am quite happy to take that intervention. The benefits are twofold. First, you have an automatic register and do not have this problem of people committing offences by not registering. There would be a register, and you would have an ID card that included your address, which would therefore be on the register in each constituency.
Secondly, the benefit of voting electronically through some form of ID card is that you increase the number of people who vote because you make it possible across a whole range of outlets and places, such as supermarkets or wherever it might be. People can vote provided they can prove their identity. At the same time, that does away with the problem of fraud because you cannot vote unless you have an ID card or some form of fingerprint, eye scan or whatever recognition you might use. That will ensure that we have a system which stops fraud from taking place. It will not stop all fraud but it will dramatically reduce the amount of fraud that, supposedly, takes place in elections at present.
All I am asking is that the Minister goes away and least looks at this matter. If 2015 is too soon, it will certainly be quite possible to have the first electronic election in 2020.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
I thank the Minister for introducing this debate and my noble friend Lord Maxton, who introduced me to the Kindle. I remain for ever grateful that he kicked me into the century in which we actually live. In a previous debate, I said to the Minister that he would rue the day that his party insisted on getting rid of ID cards. He has yet to admit it but I will welcome it when he does repent in that way.
We welcome the first draft order, for which the Electoral Commission asked, as the Minister told us. It allows civil sanctions to be used against the relevant organisation, whether a political party or a third party, rather than simply the “responsible person”. However, it does rather beg the question of why, under the other bit of mischief that he is up to at the moment—the “Lobbying and Interference with Civil Society” Bill that he is steering through the House—the Minister is introducing criminal sanctions. I am not quite certain what the thinking is behind that. I am also not certain, under that Bill, to whom the criminal sanctions would apply. Would it be the “responsible person” or, as with this order at the moment, the body rather than the individual concerned? In other words, is it the hapless officer who happens to have spent £20 over the cap on travel costs, their boss or the trustees of the charity? It is interesting that the distinction being made in this order between the individual and the organisation is not as clear as in the other bit of mischief he is up to. It would therefore be useful if the Government could provide clarity as to who the responsible person is under that Bill, as otherwise there will be much anxiety in your Lordships’ House, many Members of which are trustees of charities.
We are content with the regulations dealing with the ballot paper and ask the Minister only two questions. First, will he confirm that political parties have been consulted on this and not simply the returning officers that he mentioned? Although I think he mentioned Scope, I do not think he mentioned organisations such as the RNIB, which deals not just with those with no sight but also with those with restricted sight, and organisations dealing with people with other physical difficulties who may have difficulty casting a vote. Have those organisations been consulted? Secondly, can he indicate the date when we can expect to see the Welsh version of the ballot paper? I know that he has got into hot water before over the difficulties of producing a Welsh version of a ballot paper in time, so it would be useful to know when the bilingual version will be available.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his brave attempt to introduce this bad little Bill and certainly look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Horam, who has been in both my party and that of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, but now resides on the Conservative Benches. I may end his career by saying that he gets 12 positive mentions in my book on the Labour Party in the 1970s.
Alas, the Bill will get no positive mentions in anyone’s memoirs. Three years ago, we were promised a statutory register of lobbyists. Instead, we have a skeleton register of only consultant lobbyists, exempting 80% of the industry. The word “transparency” in the title is a misnomer. It misses most lobbyists—HS2, Heathrow, the trade associations, the ABI, the BBA, British Gas, npower and the pharmaceutical, defence, tobacco and sugar manufacturers—as they all have in-house lobbyists; and it misses most of those being lobbied. It covers only Ministers and Permanent Secretaries, not senior civil servants, spads and chairs of Select Committees—the name Tim Yeo comes to mind—so defence firms can continue to lobby senior civil servants behind closed doors, untouched by the Bill.
The Bill contains no code of conduct, so any sanction would be only for non-filing of returns, not for unethical behaviour. Without a code and effective sanctions, the Bill will fail to drive up standards.
Furthermore, the Bill is just silly. Anyone who wants to use a lobbyist has only to employ that person directly rather than through a consultant, and then that person does not have to register. The leader of the Commons says that this is to know, when a Minister meets a lobby firm, who its clients are, but he could do that by a flick of the wrist. He simply has to tell Ministers, as they publish their diaries, to name not just the lobby firm but the client on whose behalf the meeting took place. He could do that by 10 o’clock tonight. Instead, as the CBI says,
“any register must go hand-in-hand with strengthening existing reporting of ministers’ and senior officials’ meetings”.
There is nothing in the Bill on that.
Perhaps most pernicious, the Bill hits the small body, not the big. The House knows that I had a certain interest in minimum alcohol pricing. Drinks companies can lobby via their own public affairs staff, but tiny Alcohol Concern, too small for an in-house lobbyist, must use an agency, which must then register. The same is true with plain packaging of cigarettes: Forest can lobby in secret, but should ASH want to use a PR firm, it would have to register and report. That is nonsense.
Just about everyone considers this to be a non-register and that it should instead include paid, professional lobbyists, not simply third-party consultants. As the Law Society of Scotland put it, to apply different rules to different levels of lobbyists may obscure transparency and give rise to confusion by the public, who are unlikely to differentiate between consultants and in-house lobbyists and, because it does not cover lobbying of MPs or civil servants below Permanent Secretaries, it would dilute the objective of true transparency. The Law Society of Scotland is hardly a suspicious, left-wing organisation.
Indeed, the register would list only a tiny proportion of those already on a voluntary register and undermine the good work of professional organisations, such as the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, which states that the Bill,
“shows a clear lack of understanding of what the practice of lobbying actually entails”,
and will leave out a majority of lobbyists. The Bill fails to support the existing PRCA industry code of ethical conduct and will tell us nothing about who is lobbying whom on what.
Turning to Part 2 of the Bill, there was no prior consultation with the Electoral Commission which will have to police it, or with the organisations concerned. The Electoral Commission, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, your Lordships’ Constitution Committee and the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission all criticise the rush, the absence of pre-legislative scrutiny and the potential impact on rights to freedoms of expression and of assembly. Is this to stop charities campaigning, because if so what is the mischief that it seeks to end? The chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee calls it a solution in search of a problem, for there is no evidence of any problem. Or is this simply about Mr Clegg, afraid of the NUS in Sheffield in 2015, given his broken promises on tuition fees? In that case, perhaps we can rename the Bill the “Sheffield Hallam Retention Bill”.
Or is it the British Legion that the Government have not forgiven for defeating their attempt to abolish the chief coroner? Maybe it is the Association of Medical Royal Colleges, which will no longer be able to print its manifestos in Welsh thanks to the ridiculously low limits. Given that the Electoral Commission says that policy campaigns could be covered, the Law Society is concerned that its comments on legal aid, access to justice and the Human Rights Act will be caught by the Bill. The BMA is similarly deeply concerned, as, should tobacco control become an electoral issue, its campaign could be caught, silencing serious public health arguments. Not for nothing has Tom Burke, chair of E3G called Part 2,
“misconceived in intent, carelessly drafted and being promoted with such indecent haste as to call into question the motives of its promoters”.
Our own Constitution Committee warns that it will affect the fundamental common law right to freedom of political expression, and the ability of people and organisations to engage with the Government and to participate in political and electoral campaigning.
A large number of faith-based bodies, including the Salvation Army, World Jewish Relief, the Methodist Conference, Islamic Relief and the Quakers wrote to the Prime Minister, not only about the rushed timetable but about their fears that it might,
“curtail our ability to express deeply-held beliefs in the political arena”,
as it,
“does not adequately safeguard the activities of religious organisations, and that there is a very real risk”,
to “non-biased political activity.”
Why is there all this additional red tape, and costs on charities? The Heavy Reporting Requirements will start in May 2014, and include weekly returns during the short campaign. This is hard enough for a political party with all the procedures set up to do this and challenging for a large charity with a big back-office function. It is impossible for charities with volunteer treasurers.
The Government, we thought, wanted to encourage the big society and active citizenship. Yet, as the Hansard Society has said, when public interest in politics is at its lowest point and fewer than 1% are members of a political party, this is hardly the time to throw an ambiguous rulebook at organisations whose activities might actually interest the public in the political process. The RSPB reckons that it is illogical to halve the threshold and caps at the same time as widening the activities that count towards them, and that this could seriously curtail legitimate charitable work. The National Trust fears that it could undermine its ability to perform its statutory role to promote the preservation of places of natural beauty and historic interest. It is concerned that this law could restrict the contribution that charities make to public policy debate. Oxfam, which would probably have to identify donors and the reason for their donation, says the Bill could have a severe impact on its work. The Newcastle Council for Voluntary Service fears the Bill is trying to gag it. It is involved in the Living Wage Campaign, studying the impact of government policy on local charities, and working with disability charities to minimise the impact of welfare reforms on users. All fall within its charitable objectives, yet all could fall subject to the Act.
The Bill’s uncertainty and its chilling effect will dampen the enthusiasm of local groups for campaigning since, as soon as they consider spending more than £2,000, or £5,000 in England—including voluntary and staff time, and travel—they will have to enter the nightmare of registration. Furthermore, any mistakes and we are talking criminal not civil sanctions, although whether this places trustees or staff at risk has yet to be clarified.
The Bill fails to live up to the aims of the Open Government Partnership, whose conference I understand that Francis Maude will chair next week. It is committed to freedoms of association and expression, and to the opening up and safeguarding of space for civil society to engage with government. This Bill does exactly the opposite. It seems designed to stifle engagement and make it harder for civil society to play a role.
Finally, what on earth is Part 3 about? It arrived with no prior consultation and following no complaints. The Leader of the Commons admitted that there is no evidence of inadequately kept trade unions records, so is this part simply trying to bankrupt unions by giving them an extra level of audit? This comes from the Government who are promoting a deregulation Bill. What have this Government got against working people and their representatives? They will do anything for business, announcing this month:
“Form filling for companies ditched in red tape cut”,
which a Minister trumpeted was about:
“Cutting unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape for businesses”.
But if there is any chance to clip the wings of employees’ representatives, they simply cannot resist. Perhaps the Minister can explain why, out of all the myriad professional, trade, social, legal, civil society, medical and other membership organisations, the unions alone are picked out by the Bill.
The Bill allows companies unfettered access to Ministers and Parliament but imposes restrictions and red tape on charities and unions. It has managed to unite the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Countryside Alliance, the National Secular Society, faith groups, Business for Britain, the Peter Tatchell Foundation, the Women’s Institute and the Woodland Trust. They are all in opposition. I congratulate the Government on that achievement.
Part 1 fails to deal with the lobbying problem, Part 2 deals with a non-existent problem and Part 3 deals with a made-up problem. The Government would be well advised to pause as recommended by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, by the churches and faith groups which wrote to the Prime Minister and by just about every commentator. They should think again, consult, listen and then come back with a much better Bill. If they fail to do so, we will work in Committee and on Report to make this Bill better and workable.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, this has been a vigorous debate with a wide range of opinions forcefully expressed around the House. First, the Government are listening and consulting, and we will continue to do so. We will take this carefully through Committee, and we are concerned to make sure that the Bill as it emerges from this House reassures the very evident concerns, particularly from the charity sector. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, rightly said that the charity sector perceives this as an attack. That is, by and large, a mistaken perception. However, of course we have to reassure people and make sure, as we take this Bill through the various stages, that we have a Bill that we are all happy with as it emerges from this House.
Let me take the three parts in order. First, on the lobbying issue, as a number of noble Lords said, lobbying is a legitimate activity. Indeed, it is central to any thriving democracy and is an almost universal activity. Almost every working day Parliament is being lobbied. Those who had offices on the West Front particularly enjoyed the London Gay Men’s Chorus lobbying us several nights in a row. We wished that they would come back more often. It was one of the most enjoyable bits of lobbying that we have had so far.
Part 1 is intended to focus on professional lobbyists, the skilled and the well paid, those who provide their services for hire. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, talked about lobbying companies which do not even declare their clients. That is precisely what Part 1 addresses to make sure that lobbying companies declare their clients. That is where we started out in our consultation in 2010-11. I regret to say that the various respondents to that consultation came back with a whole range of discordant and dissentious responses. The Government have decided to take the Australian approach to a lobbying register, which is to have a register of professional and consultant lobbyists, not a universal register.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Will the Minister accept that if a Minister meets lobbyists of that sort, although there may well be a list on a website with their 40 clients, it will not tell anybody which client that Minister was meeting? All it will say is that those are their 40 clients. Anyone will still be in the dark about which client had set up that meeting with the Minister.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I take the point that the noble Baroness makes. She has said to me off the Floor of the House that this ought to be reinforced by making sure that in the notes of the meeting there is a reference to the subject of the meeting so that those in the press and outside who want to understand what happened are informed which of the clients the meeting was about. This is therefore a step towards transparency. It does not claim to provide complete transparency on all contacts between outside proponents of particular policies and Ministers or officials. If we were to do that, we would find ourselves with a huge amount of information of the sort that the NSA loves to collect for the United States, but might not be beneficial to British politics. If we were to include all lobbyists, as some of the answers to the consultation wished, and included all charity lobbyists, I think that the answer from the charities sector would also be very negative. However, charities do have lobbyists. For example, Oxfam has people who actively lobby the public and the Government. Therefore, we have to be a little careful over how universal one needs to be. That is the importance of starting—perhaps others will want to go further—with a register of consultant lobbyists and of their major contact with the Government.
The noble Lord, Lord Norton, suggested that we should start at the other end by asking all officials and Ministers to register whom they have met. I see no reason why, in a sense, as transparency develops, the two should not come together. I have just filled in my quarterly return of whom I have met, including a number of people who could be described as lobbyists. Indeed, Saferworld was one of those that I reported on for obvious reasons: as I represent the Foreign Office, I talk to Saferworld and other such charities. That is part of what we already do.
The question of how far down the list one should go and whether it should include special advisers has also been raised. That clearly is a question to which we will return in Committee, and I look forward to that debate. However, I am conscious that the major concerns are on Part 2, to which I now turn.
I assure the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, that a Keeling schedule will be available well before Committee for everyone who wishes to look at it. I say with due confidence that, since he first asked me that question, I have discovered what a Keeling schedule is.
European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2013
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I welcome these regulations and particularly like the Minister’s optimism about planning for queues at European elections. Let us hope that that problem arises and we can show that this new robust system actually works. Somehow I suspect that it might not be the case but let us hope so. I should perhaps declare an interest in that I am a director of a company that, as a minor part of its business, prints ballot papers, including, probably, for the European elections.
I welcome all the regulations but just wanted to check something around equal treatment. I am particularly pleased that it is now easier for non-nationals of the UK and Ireland to put forward their candidacy, and that there are fewer barriers to that happening. However, I would like to understand whether and how Irish and Gibraltarian—and even UK—citizens are checked for potential disqualification. I can see that we are moving towards national authority where European states other than the UK and Republic of Ireland are concerned, but do we check disqualification for people from Gibraltar, the United Kingdom and Ireland?
The other matter on which I wanted to catch up is the date for the European elections, where a range of dates is set. Have the Government considered moving to a Sunday, like most of the rest of the European Union? That could be an experiment to see whether we could increase voting by holding the election at the weekend. Can the Minister also tell me whether next year’s local elections will go back to June, or the date for the European elections?
Finally, a much more strategic question: when do the Government intend to introduce open lists—as opposed to closed lists—for these elections, so that citizens can make real choices, rather than ones thrust upon them by a clique of political parties—of which, of course, we are all members and should therefore declare an interest.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, on this side of the House, we welcome the regulations, including the provision for telling those whose postal votes are rejected the reasons for such a rejection so that they can correct the mistake next time. We welcome the checks on postal votes. Along with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, we also welcome making it easier for people to stand for election in countries other than those where they are citizens.
Before going on to questions about the actual regulations, I draw the Committee’s attention to the fact—which has already been alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and by the Minister—that this election also covers the people of Gibraltar. With this in mind, we were concerned by the quite false suggestion made by the Minister’s colleague in the House on 10 October—whether on behalf of the Government or the Conservative candidates in the European elections we do not know. The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi said that,
“we are incredibly clear about the sovereignty and the sovereign position of the Gibraltarian people. It is nice to hear that the Opposition now share this view”.
My noble friend Lady Royall of Blaisdon remonstrated with this quite outrageous implication, saying,
“the Minister said that the Opposition now support the people of Gibraltar. I would like to make it clear, and have it on the record, that my party has always supported the citizens of Gibraltar and their self-determination”.
One might have thought that sufficient for the former chair of the Conservative Party, but she added insult to injury by saying:
“It is incredibly heartening to hear that. It therefore puts my mind at rest, certainly in relation to the potential sovereignty crisis”.—[Official Report, 10/10/13; cols. 177-78.]
I therefore ask the Minister, as he oversees all the rules and regulations, including these ones governing the European elections in Gibraltar, to ensure that the administration of the vote is carefully overseen by the Electoral Commission, so that it is fair to all candidates in the South West England constituency.
I turn to the question of the close of poll. Contrary to what the Minister’s then colleague, Miss Chloe Smith, said in introducing the regulations in the other House—words repeated today by the Minister—the Government did not listen to what Parliament said about the queue at 10 pm and being able to vote, and had to be forced to do so by a vote in this House. Sadly, the Government continue to fail to listen, including to the Electoral Commission, which has a certain professional expertise in these matters. They did not listen over that issue and they are not listening now over the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, where they failed to consult the Electoral Commission before dreaming up Part 2. They are still resisting a large number of concerns that the Electoral Commission has about it, in particular the demands on the commission to make new sorts of judgments and to register a swathe of new organisations and, in particular, its worry that it will not have the resources to do so satisfactorily.
However, this concerns the current regulations which, again, will require the Electoral Commission to produce guidance, particularly on the matter of the time when postal votes can be handed in. As the Minister knows, the commission continues to raise some important questions over that wording. Can he give us a reassurance that the commission will be able to manage all the new expectations being laid on it by the lobbying Bill, together with its work on these European elections, which are to run concurrently with the local elections?
I have two further minor points to raise. In the debate in the Commons, Mr Graham Stringer MP asked:
“Are the European regulations on personation the same as those that apply in our general elections? Is a record kept of ballot papers, as it is in general elections, if personation occurs?”.—[Official Report, Commons, Sixth Delegated Legislation Committee, 12/9/13; col 6.]
The Minister in another place promised him a written response. Unfortunately, I have not managed to locate it, but perhaps the noble Lord will be able to read the answer into the record today.
Finally, in earlier exchanges on other statutory instruments, I thought that every opportunity was going to be used to forewarn people about the forthcoming move to individual electoral registration. I was therefore very disappointed that in my own area, Camden, absolutely no mention of the move to IER is made on the latest registration form, which has been done in time for the European elections; nor, I am assured, do the forms for Harrow or Lambeth. Does the Minister know what action is being taken more generally to prepare for this somewhat hurried change? As he knows, the commencement order to bring IER into force is due to be made on 8 November. Can he confirm that that is still the date, especially as we have yet to see the details of the outcome of the live data-matching trials using DWP records, which took place over the summer? In some instances, they matched fewer than half of the records. We have not seen a list of the particular areas, but it may be that he has that information to hand. Perhaps he could also clarify how much work is due to be undertaken by electoral registration officers on IER at the same time as they are running the combined European and local elections. Most importantly, is he satisfied that they have the resources for both of these challenging tasks?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for that fighting speech which has enlivened our afternoon. I shall try to answer her questions as well as I can. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, asked me about open lists versus closed lists. It is probably fair to say that there is no common view within the coalition on this, nor is there between the Government and the Opposition, so it is a matter on which we hope there will continue to be some form of debate. It is certainly the case that next year the local elections will be held on the same day as the European elections, on 22 May, but will then return to their otherwise normal date the following year.
He also asked about moving polling to a Sunday. All sorts of suggestions have been made for encouraging people to vote and making it easier for them to do so, including possibly having two days of voting over a Saturday and a Sunday. The problem with many of them is that the additional costs in staffing terms would be quite considerable, and thus these suggestions have not yet gained the degree of traction that I suspect the noble Lord might like.
On the question of how far we are checking the qualifications of voters in Ireland and Gibraltar, I had better write to the noble Lord to make sure that I get the answer entirely right. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, proclaimed the depth of the Labour Party’s commitment to the sovereignty of Gibraltar. Perhaps I might be allowed to repeat something that I said some years ago when this question came up. Under the 30-year rule, papers were released on discussions within the then Conservative Government in 1971-72, when a spat with the Spanish over Gibraltar was in full spate. The Foreign Secretary scribbled on one paper that perhaps one ought to consider possible alternatives. One alternative came up from a relatively junior member of the Foreign Office, who suggested that one might perhaps think of assigning the governance of Gibraltar to the Knights of St John on Malta. A senior official scribbled: “Have you ever met the Knights of Malta? You might as well give the sovereignty of Gibraltar to the Young Liberals”. The reason I use this example is that I once intervened on a Question under the Labour Government and the Minister responsible for negotiating with the Spanish Government had been the national president of the Young Liberals in 1971-72. I pass that on as an anecdote for a pub quiz, if the noble Baroness wishes to take part in one. I was very disappointed that the noble Baroness did not ask me how many postal voters there were on Gibraltar for the most recent European elections. I could have assured her that it was probably fewer than 100. The entire electoral roll is about 20,000.
I take her point about the demands on the Electoral Commission. We will come back to that in the transparency of lobbying Bill, which I am sure we will all enjoy discussing from Second Reading on 22 or 23 October.
On the question of personation, I am assured that the rules for personation in European elections are the same as those that apply to UK parliamentary and other elections. The intention of the regulations is precisely to reconcile as far as possible the regulations for national parliamentary, local and European elections.
I take the noble Baroness’s point that there is no mention on the papers going out at the moment of the move towards individual electoral registration. Perhaps I may take that back and be in touch with her again, because I entirely agree that we need to make people think about the change as soon as possible, and must consider how best to alert people about our move to it. I admit that, as usual, the effective head of my household filled in our Wandsworth and Saltaire election forms again this year, and that I did not check what she did. Therefore, I cannot tell the noble Baroness whether either the Bradford or the Wandsworth electoral forms alerted us to individual electoral registration.
I hope that I have answered all the questions that were raised in the debate, and I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Civil Society
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, we are all grateful to my noble friend Lady Prosser for securing this important debate, because civil society matters, in communities, nationally and here in your Lordships’ House, where so many Members draw on their experiences in a range of non-governmental groupings. Such activity, whether in a tenants’ group, trade union, advice bureau, book club, ramblers’ association, parents’ council or faith community, provides the vitality of civil society.
As we heard, my noble friends Lady Gibson and Lady Prosser first earned their spurs by representing fellow workers, while other speakers helped carers, women, consumers, the old, animal lovers, children or families, far away from any governmental structures.
A healthy civil society produces a community that fosters empathy, trust and respect—the most important feature of a good society, according to a survey commissioned by the Webb Memorial Trust, of which I am vice-chair. Civil society is also about citizens having their own space to develop, free from interference by the state and often outside their work environment. It is a good in itself: it should not be part of—in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—the shrinking of the state. While it can deliver state-funded services, that should be because the Government recognise the importance of community-driven provision, not because they seek to parcel off parts of our National Health Service to the lowest bidder.
As my noble friend Lady Prosser reminds us, the Government have indeed used the words “the big society”, but it is damaging the voluntary, flexible and innovative sector that gives voice to the voiceless and empowers those who are often only at the receiving end of decisions. Governments can support voluntary organisations but they should not see their value simply as an agent for service delivery, particularly as an agent on the cheap.
The cuts in public services and the economic situation are increasing demands on the voluntary organisations, as we have heard, just when their income is falling through a 20% drop in individual donations and half of local authorities disproportionately cutting their voluntary sector funding, despite three-quarters of voters disapproving of such cuts.
The Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, who is not in his place, may believe that people go to food banks only because they are there but, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro corrected him a day later, people are driven to go. They do not choose to go—they have to go. He described food banks in the 21st century as a complete scandal.
We also face a problem with they way in which services are commissioned. It might suit government but not the voluntary sector, particularly the small charities that comprise 97% of the sector. They have had nothing but a negative experience of the commissioning process. Indeed, only one-quarter of small charities surveyed by the FSI feel that they can carry on bidding for local authority contracts. The issues have been well described today by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts. If the commissioners fail to respond to what he says, small charities will be excluded from service delivery.
It is not only small charities that the process fails. I am a patron of the Blenheim Trust, which works with alcohol and drug misusers, and I am now going to report its views on the procurement, tendering and commissioning process. As has already been mentioned, the cost for the bidders and commissioners is estimated at £300,000 per tender. That is money that is not going to beneficiaries. Contracts are often one-sided, allowing cancellation with three or six months’ notice. There are often minimum turnover requirements of £5 million or £10 million. These preclude small and medium charities or force them into not necessarily advisable mergers. Providers are forced to compete on price rather than on quality, with no reference to the skills of advisers.
This impacts detrimentally on services and undermines the morale among committed, experienced staff and volunteers. Significantly, we are seeing the demise of local third sector organisations that are attuned to their communities as they are replaced by either profit-driven or growth-driven organisations, as has been described by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby.
I rise to the right reverend Prelate’s defence because the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, referred to conversations in the Bishops’ Bar. I make clear to anyone listening that not only have I never seen a Bishop there but that it is a tea room rather than a bar.
The worry about smaller organisations goes beyond this House. Chris White, the Conservative MP, has criticised his own Government for locking out charities and social enterprises from winning government contracts due to the large size of those contracts.
While under any qualified provider voluntary organisers can bid for NHS contracts, private health companies have won nearly half the bids. As today’s report from the IFG, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, shows, private firms are gaming £100 billion of government services for their shareholders at the expense of the taxpayer. The IFG analysis of outsourcing programmes, such as those to help the unemployed back into work, found private firms creaming off easy cases where they could make profits while parking problematic ones. Furthermore, big outsourcing companies are monopolising services, making it harder for smaller companies or charities to compete. The report says:
“a number of large providers now deliver a wide range of services (commissioned by separate departments) in particular areas of the country. This allows these providers … to undercut competitors, making their services attractive to commissioners”.
The Cabinet Office response was that the Government were encouraging the voluntary sector to get involved in delivering services but, it seems to me, with little understanding that smaller, locally-based organizations are even less able to compete against these giants.
Charity leaders are frustrated and demoralized by being sidelined in the provision of services and are watching aghast as the Cabinet Office’s annual funds for the third sector are being cut by 75% since the Labour Government’s last year in office. The leaders know that their energy is going to be devoted to fundraising rather than responding to their users’ growing needs. If charities cannot deliver services, beneficiaries suffer. Sadly, there is a paradox that civil society flourishes best where it is least needed, and is weakest in areas where there are highest rates of poverty, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, described. In the north-east, six out of 10 charities have lost funding.
As the voluntary sector increasingly has to deliver public services, its role in the public eye changes. If it is seen as an arm of the state, civil society risks losing its independence and uniqueness; its ability to enrich lives through connections with others; the informal education of citizenship; the encouragement of plurality and diversity; pioneering ways of doing things; representing users of public services; and holding authorities to account. We must not risk losing these roles.
More than 100 years ago, Beatrice and Sidney Webb set out their belief that the state and civil society should play different but complementary roles. According to them, the proper role for government is to take care of basic needs, guarantee rights and security, ensure a minimum standard of life and provide education and preparation for work. The role of civil society is to operate above this basic minimum and to ensure that citizens participate as full members of society. I could not put it better. Civil society contributes to a healthy, vibrant democracy that neither stagnates nor grows arrogant. We need it and we need the Government to foster, not hamper, its future.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I would prefer to write to the noble Baroness rather than give her a half-informed answer now, if she will permit me. There are a number of social investment schemes under way but I do not have them entirely in order in my head at the moment.
We all share a commitment to a stronger civil society. I hope we all share a commitment to a stronger local civil society. I am very struck by the problems of large communities in some of our cities who feel themselves powerless but do not know what to do about it. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, that is part of what the big society initiative is really concerned with. It will take a long time. For example, in Harehills and Gipton in Leeds the local Methodist, Catholic and Anglican churches used to do an awful lot but almost no one goes to church any longer. Creating alternative social networks and a sense of local empowerment and local confidence is a huge challenge for all of us and the state, society and others have to work together on it.
I hope we are all committed to this. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and I recognise that this is a challenge that will face every Government in Britain for the next 20 years and more.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
There were some more questions about the commissioning of services. It would be really useful if the Minister would undertake to ask other departments, beyond the Cabinet Office, to look at the commissioning process to see whether it can be made better. I do not know what his dialogue with the other departments is but it would be really useful if he was able to play a co-ordinating role.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
There is now a commissioning academy. We are working with other departments. We are learning from experience how to work more effectively with local organisations where we can. The social value Act also helps us in that regard. I must not overrun my time; I give way to the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser.