Lobbying: Government Grant Agreements
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have considered the effect on scientific and medical research, the arts, campaigning organisations and other bodies of the anti-lobbying clause in government grant agreements to be introduced on 1 May as a condition of public funding.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Lord Bridges of Headley) (Con)
My Lords, grant recipients can continue to discuss the findings of publicly funded research with government or Parliament, whether that be by giving evidence or in an advisory capacity. The clause in question is about making sure that taxpayers’ money is spent as intended and not diverted from good causes to fund political campaigning and lobbying.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, does not the Minister believe that a healthy, open society not only allows but actively encourages the use of public money given out as grants to question the status quo, to challenge the Government over policy when felt necessary and, indeed, to make constructive recommendations for new policy? This is an essential aspect of the national public debate. This clause threatens that, will damage democracy and should be scrapped.
Lord Bridges of Headley
My Lords, I fear that there is a fundamental point of principle on which I cannot agree with the noble Earl, who I know holds passionate views on this subject. This is about making sure that the many billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money that go to grant recipients are spent on the original allocation of the grants and do not find their way into political lobbying and campaigning.
Succession to Peerages Bill [HL]
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, for the opportunity to discuss this issue. I have a hereditary title and I have a daughter who could inherit that title if the law were changed. I should also say that my wife, the journalist Victoria Lambert, is a co-founder, with Liza Campbell and Sarah Long, of the campaign group that wants to see gender discrimination removed from titles.
We now have women bishops. Since 2013 women, including Dame Ellen MacArthur, can be members of the Royal Yacht Squadron. From this year, women can be members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, and this year as well, women competed for the first time on the same day as men in the equivalent Oxford and Cambridge boat race. These changes will not apply to all women; they are niche changes, but nevertheless significant ones for the advancement of gender equality. So it should be with hereditary titles; women should have an entirely equal chance of inheriting a title.
There are those, of course, who do not believe in the hereditary system at all because of its innate unfairness and think that it should be swept away. Not all of those people will be anti-monarchists, and it is worth reflecting on the fact that the monarchy itself is simply a part—the top part, certainly, but a part of the wider system of hereditary titles. If hereditary titles are unfair, so is the monarchy. They are part of the very same system. As long as we have the monarchy—and it remains hugely popular—the system as a whole needs to be dealt with in the same way that the monarchy has very correctly been dealt with through the Succession to the Crown Act. Otherwise, the system remains inconsistent in terms of gender equality, which is unsatisfactory.
The titles themselves are not abstract. They are the property of the Crown. It needs to be more widely recognised that the great majority of these titles and offices, which are owned by the Crown, and for which it has responsibility, are gender-discriminatory. There are significant wider ramifications. One is that titles often go with other possessions which means that women can sometimes be excluded from the home they grew up in through the inheritance of a title by a stranger—a distant relative from the other side of the world—because there are no boys in the immediate family. That is not uncommon. Also, what should not be underestimated is the influence that this system has at all levels of society when women can still be left out of inheritance entirely because that is the way things have been done. Nor should we ignore what continuing influence such gender discrimination has abroad.
In terms of the Bill itself, it is worth noting that when we discussed this topic last at the Committee stage of the Equality (Titles) Bill, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, the year before last, with the will of all sides of the House behind us, we were heading at the time the Committee stage was halted towards a greatly simplified Bill that stated simply that the eldest child of either sex was the one who would inherit. In my view, that is the Bill that should go to the Commons, and which would stand the best chance of being passed. Clause 3(2) of this Bill, which still allows men to inherit before women, and is therefore gender-discriminatory, must go. Surely it contradicts current equality legislation.
There are those who say, “But what about the expectations of young men?”—to which the reply is, “What about the expectations of women?”. In contemporary times this cuts both ways. The hopes of young women are as valid as the hopes of young men. The previous Government said that this change would be,
“far more complicated to implement fairly”.
The answer to that is clear. If the Government can sort this out for the Royal Family, with all the international complications involved, a simple, effective Bill can do the same for the other titles which the Crown owns and has responsibility for.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, for bringing this issue to the House, if only to tease out the Government’s and, indeed, the Opposition’s, view on the issue.
It is obvious that the Bill will not affect the size of the House one way or the other, yet, of course, that is the big issue that concerns probably all noble Lords, as evidenced by the debate that will take place here on Tuesday. The increase in the size of your Lordships’ House to 826 gives great urgency to reducing the number of Members rather than suggesting ways of bringing in a new category of Peer. Indeed, as we know, the Prime Minister has already appointed in five years more than double the number of Peers that Labour did in 11 years, creating new Peers at a faster rate than any other Prime Minister since life peerages began. Therefore, it seems to me that the priority for the House is to look at size rather than this issue. That is partly for the sake of this House and how it works but also, I have to say, because of the anachronism of appointing Peers here not by virtue of their own experience and attributes but those of their fathers, grandfathers or even great-uncles. Therefore, ending the hereditary by-elections as any of the 92 places fall vacant should surely be a better way forward. The calls I have heard today for maintaining the status of titled families are ones I did not believe I would hear in the 21st century. But more than that, as has been said, the flaw of the Bill is that it stands feminism on its head. For the very pragmatic reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, gave, it does not get rid of primogeniture for hereditary titles but says only that, where there is no man, a woman will do.
Your Lordships will have noted that there is only one other woman speaking today, which I think says something about how our sisters in the rest of the House feel about this issue. Perhaps they are not present because they also regard this Bill as deeply anti-feminist. It is saying, “Let us have some more women in this House”, of which I approve, “not for what they have to offer, their experience, knowledge, ability, insights, professionalism or anything like that but because some male forebear either fought, bought—
The Earl of Clancarty
I accept entirely that hereditary peerages will be removed from this House. Sooner or later that will happen. However, this Bill has nothing to do with hereditary peerages in this House, as the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, said.
Baroness Flather
I know that I am the only other woman speaking, and, as I said, I am not even English, but the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, made the same points that I did. They did so very strongly and in some ways better than me.
Deregulation Bill
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I certainly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, to repeal this legislation and agree with everything he said. The point about those two sets of legislation, one old and one much more recent, is that they are blunt instruments that deliberately set out to penalise buskers and therefore—this is an important point—do not get to the bottom of what the problem or complaint against them might be, or whether there is one.
The licensing of buskers in London allowed by the second piece of legislation referenced in the amendment, Part V of the London Local Authorities Act 2000, is an extremely unsatisfactory solution all round, and the introduction of licences in Camden was a knee-jerk reaction to complaints. The licences are expensive and there is the threat of heavy penalties and the power forcibly to sell off instruments, but buskers move around the country and it should be a reasonable assumption that they can expect the same measure of treatment wherever they are, as there ought to be similar expectations of their behaviour wherever they are in the country.
Last year, in an article in the Guardian, Munira Mirza, deputy mayor of London for education and culture said:
“A myriad of regulations in different parts of the city are causing confusion. Some local authorities are imposing licensing fees which can make it prohibitive for many musicians … Busking is a crucial part of the music eco-system in the capital; a chance to develop and grow in front of the public”.
I hope that the Minister will agree that the solution to that is not catch-all legislation but guidelines produced on the ground as a result of sensitive investigations between buskers, councillors and local people. Jonny Walker, the busker who heads up the Keep Streets Live! campaign, has done a lot of work on that—successfully with Liverpool and he is now working with Canterbury and elsewhere.
The GLA is now producing its own guidelines, with input from Jonny Walker, and it would probably be helpful if the Minister, if he has not already had a preview, were to see the guidelines when they are ready. I say that in part because the proper overall solution is national guidelines, so that every busker and member of the public knows where they stand, wherever they are in the country.
Of course, buskers have responsibilities, just like any user of or participant in public space, but legislation already exists to deal with specifics—as the GLA guidelines make clear, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has described in detail. That is what should be used as back-up, not this heavy-handed legislation which goes in all guns blazing. The question of the quality of buskers should not be an issue. We have all heard some who are pretty dire and then we hear some who are amazing, and many who are in-between. The issue is, rather, about public space being used as it is intended to be used—which is, to spell it out, as public space—and spontaneous music should be a part of that.
In this context, I remind the House of the long debates it had a year ago on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Dear, to the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, which is now of course an Act. It carefully drew the line between nuisance and annoyance, with music made in streets and parks being cited as an example that is perhaps annoying to some, but not to all. I am not necessarily saying that that legislation is appropriate to be used for buskers either, if it becomes another knee-jerk threat that precedes the use of guidance. Public space is an important aspect of our democracy. How sensitively we negotiate that space is a mark of how democratic our solutions will be.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, there have been moments during the debates on this Deregulation Bill when I have been forced to ask the Government why on earth they are bothering to get rid of some bits and pieces when they will not have any effect at all. That is why I find myself particularly encouraged by the amendment here.
We can draw the sort of people who do not like busking very simply: they are general kill-joys. I have always thought that life is divided between those who are life enhancers and those who are life destroyers. One of the problems is that many life destroyers are worthy, honourable and decent members of society, but they are deeply boring and therefore entirely to be opposed. My problem with this amendment is that it does not go far enough. It is a disgrace that there are so many bits from Acts which can be used against buskers by local authorities and by the Metropolitan Police.
I draw my noble friend’s attention to the phrase “busking-related offences”. I have spent some time, since we last discussed this, trying to imagine an offence which was busking related and not an offence in any other way. I am quite an imaginative person and I do not have too pure a mind but, even putting those two things together, I have so far been unable to discover any offence which is both busking related and not covered by something else in the statute. To go back to “So who said it?”, I may now say something which many will object to, for it was said by the police —well, they would, would they not? The Metropolitan Police always have a reason for leaving any way which enables them to do what they want.
I spent hours and hours discussing the simple business of applying to the space outside your Lordships’ House the same rules as were applied by the House of Commons to the space outside it. I cannot tell your Lordships how much of that time was made up of people explaining why it was utterly impossible, and would probably cause the collapse of western civilisation, that the extent from one to the other should be done. I know that it has been a mere six or nine months since we passed that provision, but I have not noticed any real effect of the kind of major disaster since that small change. I feel that we are in the same position here. I do not know why we should have this. Indeed, because we have been over this before, in the previous debates I thought that there was no reasonable explanation as to why these two provisions should not be removed. I say to my noble friend—and he is indeed a friend—that, to dissuade us from this amendment, the following proof has to be shown.
First, it has to be shown that there is something in the presence of these provisions in the law which is unique. It should be different and cover something which nothing else covers. If we cannot prove that first thing, then of its nature the Deregulation Bill says that we should get rid of it. That is why we have a Deregulation Bill. It is what the Government have been wittering on about: how we have got to have deregulation because there are too many regulations. However, if this is a regulation that shall be kept, it must be seen to cover something which nothing else covers.
Secondly, it must be shown to cover it appropriately: in other words, not to give powers to the police, or to the miserable local authorities such as Camden, which will be misused either in an excess of energy, as certainly took place when people were bundled into a police van in Leicester Square, or by a determination to respond to any complaint, however pathetic, of the kind which explains Camden’s treatment of buskers. It has to be necessary and appropriate.
Lastly, it seems to me—and I hope that my noble friend will be able to explain this, too—that it has to be relevant to today. Many things which were appropriate to yesterday we would today find unacceptable. London is the greatest city in the world. It is the only “world city” and we are immensely lucky to live in this great city. We should be thrilled every day about London, but it is like that because of its variety and difference—its mix of different races and communities, and the like. It is the great triumph of immigration. When people talk about immigration, I tell them to come to London and see what immigration can do to a great city. It is a thrill to be here. In those circumstances, though, this great centre in the European Union—its capital, in many ways—needs as much busking as possible. There are some miserable places where more buskers would cheer us enormously. Anything that inhibits busking unnecessarily seems to be not of our day, and not of today’s London. The idea that buskers should find it more difficult in London than they do in Liverpool seems to be manifestly barmy.
I hope that my noble friend can rise to the occasion and, if he cannot answer those three things, say that he will take this away and get rid of the nonsense.
Equality (Titles) Bill [HL]
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, there is a problem with the noble Baroness’s proposition that a hereditary title is property. There is more than one respectable view on that, as I understand it, so it may or may not be property. Another way forward, of course, would be to seek some sort of derogation from the European Convention on Human Rights with regard to hereditary Peerages. The Spanish Government are faced with the same problem. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister has some information about how the Spanish Government are responding to this difficulty. They recently created a new hereditary marquis in Spain who turned out to be the coach of the football team. However, they then lost so he may be stripped of it after all.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I agree with the sentiments of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. We will come to the main discussion on this a little later. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for enabling us again to discuss gender equality in the peerage, and I congratulate the noble Lord on pushing the Bill further forward.
On these particular amendments I will be brief. I am not sure that at this stage we should be overtightening the Bill and prescribing so precisely what it contains in the title. In the way that it stands at present it contains peerages and baronetcies. In the next group we will be discussing other Crown offices and rights, so I do not think that we should yet be jumping to any conclusions about what necessarily will be covered in toto in the Bill.
It is probably no surprise to the House that I support Amendment 4. Irish peerages are an identifiable group under the current jurisdiction of the Crown and stem from a time before the current United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which of course excludes the Republic of Ireland. “Great Britain” therefore is a term which has a certain ambiguity attached to it. My own peerage, the Earldom of Clancarty, is Irish, though I sit in this House by virtue of a viscountcy which is an English title. It would be wise to include the reference to Ireland, just as England and Scotland have already been included.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, first, I apologise: I have actually got 16 people for lunch and am meant to be chairing a meeting down in Committee Room G, so I will be jumping in and out a bit.
Even if the Bill does not become law, people will look at it should they wish to produce an equality Bill on titles, so I want to point out some things which need to be considered when rewriting it. The easiest point at which to do this is probably on this amendment. I have some amendments in the second group but I think they are all generically the same—about how you define the titles, how you define a registered title and what gets caught up in that.
I have added my name to several amendments tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, because they are alternatives. With my amendment I have tried—particularly in Amendment 2 and some of the other consequential ones—to define the words “hereditary title” as being,
“hereditary peerage, baronetcy, or other heritable office of the Crown or State”.
That means that all the things we want to include are included in the words “hereditary title”, which means that you do not then need to amend the Long Title or so much of the Bill—you just need to take out the words “hereditary peerage or” and put in the words “hereditary title”.
The current definition of hereditary title, which comes right at the beginning of Clause 1, is too wide. It can catch up certain things that are not titles conferred by Her Majesty the Queen. All sorts of things could be caught up, for instance Scottish clan chiefships, which can devolve separately and differently, and which are regulated by the Court of the Lord Lyon. Therefore I thought it much easier to keep those out of it. In fact, many of the amendments in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, also intend to do the same thing. I thought that an easier way was to define it right at the beginning, so that the term “hereditary title” is restricted in its definition and does not inadvertently catch up all sorts of other honorifics, honorary titles and other things which may be hereditary, such as the hereditary keeper of the something or other, or the hereditary groom of the something or other, and so on. Those can all go on doing what they do, the major titles will be dealt with in the Bill, and then we can put in the equality provisions, to which I have other amendments and for which I will join other noble Lords.
That is why I prefer my Amendment 2, which is the main one, and the other bits, which basically bring it back to hereditary titles. That means that we can leave the term “hereditary title” in the long title of the Bill without having to change it, because it is dealt with immediately later on. I apologise again because I will have to pop in and out, and I will speak as briefly as possible.
The Earl of Clancarty
The Earl of Clancarty
My Lords, this group of amendments deals with the range or inclusiveness of titles, rights and offices to be considered as part of this Bill. We need to bear in mind the Equality Act 2006, which created a public duty on grounds of gender. Many hereditary titles are owned by the Crown; armorial rights are administered on behalf of the Crown by the College of Arms in England and Wales, for instance.
As regards my amendment, in Scotland coats of arms and the clans are under the official jurisdiction of the Court of the Lord Lyon. My understanding is that in England and Wales there are up to 100,000 holders of coats of arms. The College of Arms grants about 150 new ones each year, so we are talking about quite a sizeable group here. The most publicised grantee in recent years has been Michael Middleton, whose youngest child James can pass the coat of arms down to his children—in fact any son can do so—so they may proliferate through all the male lines, but the two daughters, the Duchess of Cambridge and Pippa Middleton cannot.
The Royal Family took a great step forward with gender-neutral succession to the Crown. It seems to me that any titles, rights or offices which attach themselves to the Crown should absolutely now be gender neutral so that royal succession is not an anomaly but part of a general rule of equality of the sexes. The Crown needs to be brought properly up to date in this respect in all its workings and manifestations. If we are to continue to have these living traditions given official sanction, they need to reflect female equality.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am conscious that, as a Private Member’s Bill, this should be kept simple and of defined extent. Much as I am tempted to go into the nature of arms and all the rules that apply, I have to admit that I know so little that I would not detain your Lordships long if I did. It would be wise to keep this out of a Private Member’s Bill, for the same reason that I am quite attracted by the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, should he choose to press it. It defines the Bill more closely and makes it clearer.
The Earl of Clancarty
This has been an interesting, short debate. I understand the mood of the House on this, so I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
The Earl of Clancarty
The Earl of Clancarty
My Lords, my interpretation of what we are doing with this Bill, or what we are supposed to be doing, is to make an unfair system significantly fairer, and this can be done in a straightforward manner. It is worth reiterating the assertion made by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, that there should not be gender discrimination in Britain full stop.
It is on this basis that I have tabled Amendment 10, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for supporting it as well as those which would remove the petitioning and special remainder clauses, Clauses 2, 3, 4 and 5. The noble Lord gives his apologies that he cannot be here today, as he is currently on his way to Hong Kong, otherwise he would have spoken in this debate. I am grateful also to the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, for supporting Amendment 10.
Clause 1, uncoupled from Clause 2, will mean simply that succession can and will take place by a living heir, regardless of gender, on the death of the present incumbent as soon as the Act comes into force. As the Campaign for Equality of Women in the Peerage has put it:
“It is not in a man’s gift to bestow equality on women”.
This should not be decided on the whim of a male incumbent or even around the dining-room table. No male incumbent should have the right to decide whether women will inherit, but this is exactly what will happen if the petitioning clauses stand.
I am sorry to say to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who is trying very hard to find a compromise solution, that there will be women who find this even more insulting to them than the status quo, because we would move from an institutionalised sexism—at least you know where you stand—to a personalised one. This is unacceptable.
There is a lot of talk about the expectations of young men, but is that more important than the hopes of young women? Even if the Bill passes in its present form, it will not prevent the current generation of elder daughters who are considering doing so from taking their cases to Strasbourg. The beauty of Parliament deciding in a properly cut and dried manner that when the Act comes into force, there will be gender equality full stop, is that there will be no further argument, uncertainty or litigation, which petitioning might otherwise promote.
In combination with the removal of Clause 2, the amendment ensures that succession may be at any age —again, irrespective of gender. I believe that that is widely supported. Clause 2 contains the stipulation that the woman has to be 21. It is simple. If the man can inherit from any age, the woman should, too. There is no other argument.
It is important to get the Bill right. This is its most crucial aspect. My approach makes the Bill fairer, much simpler and gives it a more realistic chance of getting through Parliament, which many would like. It should be a mandatory, not a permissive Bill. I hope that the Government will support that position. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, if the amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 12 by reason of pre-emption.
Amendment 11 (to Amendment 10)
The Earl of Clancarty
I am heartened by the support that Amendment 10 has had during this debate. I intend to return to it on Report, but for now I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Noble Lords
Equality (Titles) Bill [HL]
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for allowing us to speak on this matter today. I have two interests to declare. First, I have a daughter who could inherit a title if the law was changed; and, secondly, my wife, the journalist Victoria Lambert, is a leading light in the group largely but not wholly made up of women who are campaigning for equality for women in the peerage and the baronetcy. They have called themselves the Hares after the comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, in April during Third Reading of the Succession to the Crown Bill. He said:
“This Bill has also set running the hare of what happens to the hereditary peerage with regard to the succession arrangements for hereditary Peers”.—[Official Report, 22/4/13; col. 1229.]
He is right: it has.
It will not be a surprise to many of your Lordships to hear that I am no great fan of the aristocratic system, male primogeniture of course being a component of that. Part of me thinks that perhaps what is required is more fundamental social reform in the interests of a more classless society than we have at present. Of course, I am not alone in this House in thinking that, even perhaps among hereditary Peers. But, and this is a big but, as long as the Queen and the Royal Family command such a central role in our society—the last Ipsos MORI poll in November of last year gave the monarchy a 79% popularity rating—this is not going to happen since the Royal Family is the core of the aristocratic system.
The public do a very good job of mentally separating the Royal Family from the rest of the aristocracy but that is not the reality, something which constitutional experts and republicans equally recognise. That is why I support equality for women in the peerage, however much the peerage itself represents an inequality within wider society—and perhaps arguably now not even the main one.
I feel that there are two principal arguments to be made. The most powerful argument is, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has said, that there should not be gender discrimination in Britain, full stop. The Equality Act 2006 created a public duty to promote equality on the ground of gender. Modern British law states clearly that men and women are equal in every aspect of life. Male primogeniture is the cornerstone of old-fashioned patriarchy. No duke or earl should consider that he is a special case; we are not. Gender equality should mean that you have the potential to inherit from birth regardless of gender, and that that should automatically come into effect as soon as the Bill becomes an Act so that a living heir of whatever age may inherit without any permission being necessary. The Bill would not be retrospective, as I think we all agree that no current substantive titles should be dispossessed. In these respects, the Bill before us today is perhaps a little too modest and could be simpler, because contrary to what some people have said, in principle this is not a complex issue. A single blanket law to cover all families is what is required.
The second argument I would make is that if the aristocracy remains at least socially, and indeed still to some extent politically, a significant source of influence in this country, it should be reformed just as its core part has been. It may be argued that that has happened so that the Royal Family has been brought more into the 21st century, but it is also true that the Royal Family and the aristocratic system as a whole should together be the best model of behaviour possible, giving the right signal to those non-aristocratic families who still believe that the eldest males ought to inherit the estate, whatever size it may be. There is no doubt, even in these generally more enlightened times, that this is still so.
Only two of the 92 hereditary seats in this House are held by women, a significant argument of course for removing the hereditaries, which will happen, whether in the longer or shorter term. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that campaigners have calculated that with a change in the law, if you go forward just one generation, there would be 41 men to 51 women occupying hereditary seats, a considerably better ratio indeed than either House has at present, or indeed for the conceivable future, and an effect that no doubt would be replicated throughout the aristocracy as a whole.
If this Bill were to be refined further, I think the Hares’ recommendation that one should not reach back more than one generation—that is, to the generation before the deceased—to find the next heir is a very good one. In this, I perhaps differ rather from the opinion of the noble Viscount, Lord Simon. It is unacceptable that some distant relative should inherit a title and an estate which that person had perhaps hardly known about let alone visited, displacing close family, as has indeed happened. In the memorable words of campaigner Liza Campbell, “No more cousins from Pluto”.
It is in these various ways that this issue is of greater significance for the public than many people realise. A call for a change in the law has wide cross-party support in both Houses. In May, Mary Macleod MP introduced a ten-minute rule Bill in the other place to remove male primogeniture. It is an issue that is not going to go away, and the Government would be wise to deal with it. Indeed, it has this year already generated a huge amount of coverage in the press, on the radio and television both here and abroad, including front page coverage in the New York Times. The issue has been championed by the Independent, the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times.
A number of potential beneficiaries of this change in the law have now written to the Crown Office stating their intention to take their cases to Strasbourg. I think that the Government should accept the underlying principle of this Bill or bring in their own legislation. After all, it is simply logical that what the Government have done quite rightly with the Succession to the Crown Bill were to be extended to the rest of the same system of which the Royal Family is a part.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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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.