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

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Horam, on his maiden speech, which was an extremely useful contribution to this debate.

My comments will be directed mainly at Part 2. This Bill has been driven by two engines, self-absorption and self-regard—self-absorption because it wilfully misunderstands and ignores both the way in which campaigning works and its meaning to society, and self-regard because it assumes that government and party politicians are more important than public discussion. I fear that the Bill will put Westminster further into a bubble.

There is a huge difference in kind between lobbying carried out on behalf of commercial industry, which ought properly to be the subject of Part 1, and campaigning on issues of public concern without thought of financial gain, which becomes a target in Part 2. The Government need to recognise that the spectrum of charities, pressure groups, demonstrators and the like together represents one of the significant voices by which the public are heard. To curtail these activities, as many campaigning groups fear will happen, will curtail the people’s voice, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby has already suggested.

Politics does not stop at Westminster Bridge, yet with the Bill the Government are acting as though that were the case. Governments always say that ordinary people should be more involved in politics, but they already are—just not necessarily in party politics. As Justine Roberts of Mumsnet said, commenting at the launch of the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement, chaired by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries,

“ordinary people speaking up and getting involved in the political process makes for a healthier democracy”.

The Government need to recognise that most charities and campaigners are political—sometimes with a small “p”, but often with a large “P”, because party politics can be the means by which issues raised by charities are dealt with and sometimes resolved, which is what makes the critical wording,

“reasonably be regarded as intended to promote or procure electoral success”,

of parties or candidates so problematic for every charity.

It is a natural part of the process that all campaigning groups will wish to find supporters in Parliament who will promote their cause. However, the big difference between parties and their associated organisations on the one hand, and charities and campaigning organisations on the other, is that campaigning organisations follow the issues and support for the issues that they would wish to raise in Parliament, not the party. Incidentally, that is why the Cross-Benchers, who are independent of parties, play an important role in bringing so many of such issues to the attention of Parliament.

The ideal, of course, would be that support for a cause has cross-party support, although this is not always possible. The great majority of campaign groups will be rightly resentful of being tethered through registration to a party political post when in reality, in the longer term and in the broader context of a campaign group’s aims, this is invariably not the case. Friends of the Earth put this very well when they say,

“we never support one party or candidate over another, and never tell supporters or the public how we think they should vote. But we do say what we think about important environmental policies that politicians and political parties also have an opinion about”.

One of the problems with Part 2 of the Bill appears to be not just fears about whether you will be caught out by it, but the uncertainties about what it is intended to achieve. Big Brother Watch, English PEN and others have said that for many charities,

“self-censorship is an inevitable consequence of the bill as it stands”.

If the Bill goes through as it is, it will be destructive both for groups and for our democracy. A year is a hugely long time for campaigning organisations to be effectively out of action, when in the lead-up to an election precisely the opposite ought to be the case.

What about the role of the press during this period? Presumably it will then have a free hand in this regard, although to be consistent the Government ought to restrict the press as campaigning organisations as well. I am not in favour of that. In the lead-up to an election there should be a properly healthy public discussion of issues and policies, including the views of both a diverse press—ideally—and campaigning bodies, running alongside each other.

Campaigns develop and grow organically, often starting from small groups. For some organisations, artificially to stop campaigning for a year would be a body blow, because campaigns are built on momentum. Other campaigns are time-sensitive, and one can all too easily see the Government of the day pushing through contentious decisions during this period—for example, beginning construction work on a nuclear reactor—under the radar, as it were, without public discussion or protest.

There is a part of me which says, perhaps against my better instincts, “Bring on this silence for a year”—which is what will happen if the Bill passes as is. Perhaps we would see the emergence of quieter voices, more non-professionalised campaign groups staffed by volunteers operating at low cost—except that volunteers are to be counted towards costs, and it will be very difficult for any organisation to operate within the extremely low thresholds that the Bill sets. What we would more likely see is more direct action and more and more outrageous ways in which some groups will draw attention to themselves.

I cannot help but think of the group Femen, which we learnt last week is setting up a London branch. Without suggesting in any way that that or any other group has any intention of breaking the law, I suspect that such a group would never contemplate registering with the Electoral Commission. It would argue that to do so would be to defer to a patriarchal and authoritarian system. Many might think that it would have a point. The key point here is that no Government should try to put a lid on the public voice, which the charities and campaigning groups represent. Indeed, it is, in the long run, unrealistic to do so because you cannot put a lid on boiling water without the steam somehow, in the end, finding a way of escaping.

Many of the great social reforms of the past have come about thanks to the tireless work of people outside the mainstream, who felt that this was how they could best serve their country. Politics at Westminster is not a one-way street and campaigning organisations are an important part of the process. Indeed, their role within the political process is often underestimated by Governments and sometimes wholly ignored—I can think of one recent example during the passage of a Bill.

My strong preference would be to see this Bill paused. Part 2 should certainly be rejected because it is unnecessary and fundamentally misconceived. Any reform that the Government wish to undertake should be far more considered and consulted on.