Recall of MPs Bill
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Lord Campbell-Savours(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I am coming to the matter of days in a moment. It is right to reiterate what many people outside Parliament feel about when someone is judged to have done something that even their peers in the other place consider inappropriate behaviour. In most other walks of life, one would not automatically be able to continue in one’s job. Therefore, there should be a possibility for recall at that point.
The second point is whether the particular number of days, which is what we are discussing in this amendment, is the right one. A different proposal was made by the coalition Government at the beginning. It was debated in the other place, although it may not have been debated at great length, and it has certainly been debated here, in Committee and on Report. A judgment has always to be made.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I think that I heard my noble friend say that it was debated in the other place. I defy her to find anywhere in the Hansard report any more than a couple of sentences on the issue of 10 and 20 days.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My point is that it was debated there and the case was made for why it should change. The point I am trying to make is that the proposal for 20 days, 10 days, 15 days, five days or 30 days is a matter of judgment. There is no right or wrong answer. It is a judgment on what is the appropriate connection between a decision in the other place and its Standards Committee and the point at which that should trigger a recall petition. That is a difficult judgment and one that I say needs to be made by the House of Commons, which is where this decision was taken.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
As many noble Lords will know, I have helped defeat the Government and sent stuff back where I have believed that the other House was wrong and I wanted it to rethink. We have done that on a number of Bills. We have had victories. We have sent things back and occasionally there has been movement. It is always a judgment call. On this issue, however, my view is that we have the right figure. As I have said before in this House, it is a very delicate balance. What we do not want is such a low number—
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
She is a long way from sitting down by the sound of things.
Lord Campbell-Savours
She says she has the right figure. Let me put to her a scenario. Imagine a case of non-declaration of interests that is worthy of a penalty of more than 10 days but not 20 days. I can remember some pretty difficult cases of non-declaration of interests. Are we saying that in such a case we should invoke a procedure which could lead to a by-election that costs hundreds of thousands of pounds both to the political party and the local authorities, with all the inconvenience of bringing in vast numbers of party workers to defend the party interest, because of a case of non-declaration where the Member’s defence may be that they simply made a mistake but where the committee realises that it has to invoke a punishment of at least 10 days?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
The answer is yes. If the MP’s own colleagues—I do not want to use the word “peers”, as it is a bit confusing—believe that the issue is serious enough for a suspension of at least 10 days, they would do so, although I find it hard to believe that they would so for a mistake. That is what this Bill is all about. The trigger may be 10 days or my noble friend may be right and perhaps it should be 12 days or nine days—I do not know exactly because it is a judgment call—but this Bill is about saying that, where their fellow Members of Parliament consider that the issue is serious enough, that is the trigger for a recall.
It is also important that the figure is not so low that we undermine in any way either the sort of normal protest that could happen in the House of Commons or the mistake—although I doubt that it would apply for a mistake—or misdemeanour that so offends other MPs that they take the MP to the Standards Committee. The essence of the Bill is that a recall will be triggered when the suspension is for a certain length of time.
There is another, separate point. Whether the threshold is five, 10, 15 or indeed 40 days, there will always be the difficulty—as happens when magistrates hear cases—where the knowledge that the decision can trigger a by-election will add an extra dimension to the judgments that are taken. That applies both to magistrates in a court case, if it is about whether there should be a sentence of imprisonment rather than a fine, and to those dealing with these situations. That is tough. Decision-making is tough. I recognise that, but I do not think that the number of days minimises that effect.
We will deal later with a very helpful amendment from my noble friend about the Standards Committee, which I hope will address some of the challenges that will be before members of the Standards Committee. On this amendment, the decision has been taken by the other place and I think it is right. I hope that my noble friend will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I am sorry to part company from my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport, but I support Amendment 5. Perhaps it is a bit of a selfish reason as to why, which is that it helps facilitate the alternative approach that I put forward on Report. The amendment says that the committee should have,
“a number of members who are not Members of Parliament at least equal to the number of members of that Committee who are Members of Parliament”.
Of course, had the arrangement that I proposed on Report been in place, there would be more lay members of the committee than ordinary members. That falls precisely within the definition set out in this amendment, in that Ministers could actually introduce the scheme that I was suggesting in legislation—or indeed the House could, but it would need legislative support.
To remind Members of what that scheme was, essentially there would be 10 members of the committee, with seven lay and three elected. The three elected members would enjoy parliamentary privilege because they are elected. The seven lay members would be effectively advising the committee. They vote and make their recommendation, but it is for the three elected members to decide whether to reject or accept the recommendation of the lay members. The elected members essentially have charge—a responsibility for approving the recommendations so that they can be submitted to the full House of Commons. For that reason I accept the amendment. It takes us partially down the route that I want to go down, and I hope that the Government, at some stage in the future, will finally select that route.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, this has been an interesting debate—and not simply because it is an easier one to respond to. As I said when we discussed this subject in Committee, or possibly on Report, we strongly support having more lay members on the Standards Committee. We believe that it is crucial for that body to have the confidence of the public, so opening up its work to people who are not MPs is an excellent step towards gaining that confidence. In other areas of life—in the medical profession, the legal profession and other professions—outside independent members are now the norm in any disciplinary process. That gives confidence to patients and clients that someone other than the cohort of those whose behaviour is being judged is involved in the decisions. Indeed, I think I am right in saying that in most of those other professions there is now a lay chair of the relevant disciplinary body.
As my honourable friend on the Front Bench in the other place said, we want to see a,
“radical overhaul of the Committee. That would include the removal of the Government’s majority and an increase in the role and authority of its lay members. We propose that at least half the Committee should be lay members and that the Chair of the Committee should not be a Member of Parliament”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/10/14; col. 69.]
It is encouraging that today there has been backing from all sides of the House on the need to move forward in this respect. The Government may say that the Bill is not the appropriate place to make such a change—although I note the astute amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and others—but whether that is the case or not, we are sending an important message that all the political parties are determined to see the Standards Committee work effectively, fairly and transparently, and in a way that gives voters confidence in its work.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Lord Campbell-Savours(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, I want to speak for less than a minute; I spoke at some length on this matter in Committee. The Bill is deceiving the public. The public expect the matter of the registration of lobbyists to be dealt with in this legislation. However, Parliament is now considering a Bill which excludes the vast majority of people in the industry. I object and I hope that the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, is accepted by the House.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I also support Amendments 1 and 11. I hope that I will not also have to support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, as we hope that we will have made the changes that will make supporting it unnecessary. Amendment 1 also stands in the name of my noble friend Lady Royall and myself. It is already clear that establishing a register only of consultant firms would add nothing to the existing voluntary register. It would omit hundreds of employers—the in-house, public bodies, charities and, perhaps most importantly, trade associations—as well as more than 1,000 individuals who work in this industry.
We have heard the Government boast about being part of the Open Government Partnership, and Ministers say that the public should be able to see who is lobbying Ministers. However, as we know, the Bill will not do that. It will only tell us the companies for which, for example, Bell Pottinger has had direct contact with a Minister over the past quarter. It will not name the individual lobbyists concerned, nor will it identify the company on whose behalf that meeting took place. So if a lobbying company met a Minister, for example, on behalf of a defence company, we still would not know that. In the hypothetical Bell Pottinger case, it has, according to Marketing Week, some 900 clients; so we would only know that Bell Pottinger was meeting somebody on behalf of one of those 900 clients but not which one it was. If the Minister, instead of meeting a consultant, met the actual defence company itself, or its trade association, that would not appear on the register at all, because the lobbyists would be direct employees.
This is very different from the United States where, we understand, Mr Cameron’s election guru, Jim Messina, has just taken up a job with the American Gaming Association, which is about to lobby on online gambling. That will all be declared, but in the UK, there will be no record of such lobbying by organisations such as the Association of British Bookmakers, despite the public interest in knowing who is lobbying the Government, in this case, on gambling.
According to today’s Daily Mail, the Chancellor took the boss of one of the world’s biggest makers of betting machines on his trip to Beijing. That is something that the company would not have to declare because it would be doing that lobbying direct. It is interesting that the Rank Organisation discloses far more than the Bill actually asks. It has decided to set out the spending that it makes in its government and regulatory affairs work—for example, £115,000 to Luther Pendragon, Ernst & Young and FTI and another £88,000 in membership fees to three trade organisations: the Bingo Association, National Casino, and the Remote Gambling Association. However, none of those would be required under the Bill. So, congratulations to Rank but not to the Government.
Similarly, we would know nothing about meetings between the big six energy companies and HMT or DECC officials because they use their direct staff for that. Or consider the anti-electronic-cigarette lobby, largely funded, I understand, by the pharmaceutical industry, which produces nicotine replacement therapy and ideally would like e-cigarettes off the market. Johnson & Johnson, GSK and Novartis have teams dedicated to that lobbying work, and none of that would be known under the current provisions.
I am afraid that the Bill is rather a damp squib and, unless we amend it, it will exclude virtually all business lobbying, whether done by the companies themselves or by their trade bodies. Worse, even where one of the big agencies such as Weber Shandwick or Bell Pottinger register, we will still not have a list of their staff so that if one of their lobbyists met a Minister, we would be no more the wiser about who that lobbyists’ clients actually were.
In the debate on Part 2, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who is not currently in her place, warned us of the danger to our democracy of American-style lobbyists, and indeed her autobiography, which I recommend, draws on her wide experience of that side of the Atlantic. She talks of the powers of lobbyists there and the extraordinary influence of organisations such as the American Association of Retired Persons, the National Rifle Association and the American Israel Political Action Committee. As she and your Lordships’ House must know, though, none of those or their UK equivalents would have to be registered under the Bill—nor the British Insurance Brokers’ Association; the Building Society Association; Philip Morris; FOREST; the nuclear industry; One Hub or None, which is in favour of Heathrow’s expansion; the CBI; the TUC; or the drinks industry, despite 130-odd meetings with civil servants to resist minimum unit pricing.
What is the point of the Bill, particularly this clause, if it does nothing to shed light on what goes on behind closed doors in Whitehall? For the sake of democracy and good governance, we need to see who is lobbying whom and about what. The register should cover the act of lobbying—the status, I think the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, said—not the type of lobbyist, otherwise this is open to abuse. If an issue becomes very sensitive, you can simply have the lobbyists who have been working for an agency become directly in-house and put on the payroll of a particular company at that time, and then none of their activity will have to be registered. Or a small lobbyist could simply work part-time for 10 clients and be paid directly by them, and then we would know nothing about them.
A list of lobbying firms is not enough. That is not what was foreseen in the coalition agreement, it is not what the lobbyists themselves want and it is not what Unlock Democracy or Spinwatch want. The charities and trade unions have told us that they are very content for their public affairs professionals to be registered and to disclose their lobbying meetings. We strongly support Amendment 1 regarding the production of a proper, comprehensive and statutory register of all professions lobbying the Government. Democracy demands nothing less.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Lord Campbell-Savours(10 years, 5 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.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Lord Campbell-Savours(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Campbell-Savours
I am sorry to trouble my noble friend, but that is an incredibly low figure. Perhaps she will correct me, but if a majority of people on a 25 per cent poll voted, it would mean that only one in eight persons had actually voted for a change in the electoral system. Is that what my noble friend’s amendment means?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My noble friend is right: it is extremely modest. As he knows, I am a very modest person, asking for very modest amendments to the Minister’s very simple Bill. Other amendments have been tabled in the names of other noble Lords on both this side of the House and on the Cross Benches which are perhaps a little less modest than mine. The amendment is offered in the same spirit of generosity as when I did not divide the House on the issue of voting at the age of 16 and 17. I did not want to embarrass part of the coalition. It is tabled as a modest amendment to make it all the easier for the Government to accept it.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Does my noble friend recognise that, in the event that one in eight people vote to approve the question asked in the referendum, it would be extremely difficult for those of us in favour of electoral reform to justify a change in the electoral system ourselves? We would be placed in an utterly impossible position with such a low turnout and small number of votes cast in favour of the question.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I accept that the amendment is exceptionally modest. My fear is that, without even this as a backstop, we could risk having an even lower turnout and then be faced with what we do at that stage. Because this is an automatic trigger, it is not a referendum to advise the Government or Parliament about what they should do, but would automatically lead to that change. It is essential for there to be a threshold. Otherwise, we could be facing a low turnout and having to decide what to do about it. I am someone well used to dealing with risk management.