Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Lord Hardie Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, one of the aspects of the Bill that has received considerable attention and debate during our discussions, not only in your Lordships’ House but with campaign groups, relates to the registration thresholds, spending limits and constituency limits.
On registration thresholds, the point has been made repeatedly that small campaigners who do not incur much expenditure would be brought into the regulatory regime. This would, it has been claimed, impose undue administrative burdens on organisations that are not equipped to handle those responsibilities.
Noble Lords will recall that the Government have been considering this issue for some time. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire gave a commitment on the first day in Committee that the thresholds would be revised. Extensive debate in Committee followed, at which representations were made to either revert to the existing PPERA thresholds, or to raise them further. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hodgson and to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, for leading that highly useful debate.
The Government have considered this matter and the appropriate level for registration thresholds further. Amendment 46 proposes to raise the levels to £20,000 in England and £10,000 in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, has tabled an amendment proposing those levels be set at £20,000 for each constituent part of our United Kingdom. I simply observe that the Government’s amendment represents not only a substantial increase from the levels currently in the Bill, but reflects the original structure where the amounts were higher in England than in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, no doubt due to the fact that there is a substantially greater number of constituencies and voters in England than in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, this is still a significant increase not only for England, but for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and it doubles the current registration thresholds in PPERA.
These thresholds will effectively exclude from the controls those campaigners who incur only small amounts of money. They will be able to campaign as they currently do, secure in the knowledge that unless they spend a substantial amount of money on controlled expenditure, they will not be subject to any aspect of the regulatory regime.
Bearing in mind what not only noble Lords but people outside sometimes hear in general debates or see in e-mails, it is also important to point out that these are thresholds for registration. It has sometimes been represented that there are limits on what organisations can spend, but the thresholds for registration are consistent with our objective of promoting transparency and accountability. We are maintaining the constituency limit of £9,750 throughout the regulated period to prevent a third party focusing a significant amount of its spending power on a small part of the United Kingdom.
Amendment 46 also specifies that, where a third party spends £9,750 in a constituency, it must register with the Electoral Commission. This is to ensure that the offence of spending more than £9,750 in a constituency is fully effective. I know my noble friend Lord Tyler is particularly interested in that point. As constituency limits apply only in relation to regulated periods involving a parliamentary general election, so the constituency threshold will have effect only in relation to such periods. We recognise that the current draft does not accurately reflect this, and the Government will accordingly bring forward an amendment at Third Reading to correct that.
In contrast, my noble friend Lord Tyler has proposed that rather than require a constituency registration threshold of £9,750, the registration threshold should be only £5,000. Reintroducing a lower constituency threshold than £9,750, as proposed by my noble friend, would only reinsert an extra layer of bureaucracy and confusion, particularly as the Government have also tabled Amendment 53, which would remove a post-dissolution limit of £5,850. The government amendment means that campaigners may spend the entire £9,750 throughout the regulated period, or just in the last few weeks before the election. Having just one constituency limit will be a much more straightforward and easier regulation to follow.
Finally, on spending limits, campaigners and Members of your Lordships’ House have sought to retain third parties’ spending limits at either the existing PPERA amounts, or even beyond those. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, were clear on this point when we addressed this issue in Committee. The spending limits in the Bill for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have particularly concerned campaigners. It has been argued that third-party campaigning in any part of the UK generally has a fixed cost; leaflets, for example, cost the same whether printed in Wales or England, and billboards cost the same, whether they are placed in Scotland or Northern Ireland. As a result, the spending limits for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were felt to be disproportionately low. It is with that in mind that government Amendment 47 would uplift those limits by an extra £20,000 each. This would mean that there would be a spending limit of £55,400 in Scotland, £44,000 in Wales and £30,800 in Northern Ireland.
The Bill proposes spending limits for each of the parts of the UK which add up to £450,000. It is important to remind your Lordships that while these limits were initially to be over not quite a year—from the day after the European elections—if your Lordships approve our amendment which we will debate later, these will apply over the length of the reduced seven-and-a-half-month regulated period, which is also reflected in another government amendment. In fact, therefore, there is a larger amount in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland over a shorter period. Indeed, the amount for England is over a shorter period.
I have previously sought to explain that considerable amounts of campaigning can still be undertaken for that amount. In Committee, I gave the example of £390,000 buying a campaigner 40 million leaflets, a dozen front-page adverts in a national newspaper or even 780,000 telephone calls from a professional phone bank. I hope that noble Lords will agree that these government amendments as a whole will lead to a substantial increase in the registration thresholds and a significant uplift to the limits in the Bill for campaigning by third parties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
I note that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, has further amendments on spending limits. I will respond to them when I wind up. I beg to move.
Lord Hardie (CB)
My Lords, before speaking to the amendment in my name, I thank the Government and the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General for listening to the concerns from all sides of the House about the original proposal in the Bill to reduce the existing thresholds for registration as a recognised third party. The government amendment addresses these concerns and, rather than reducing the limits, they have accepted that the limits should be increased. It is appropriate that tribute is paid to the efforts made by the Government and the noble and learned Lord.
However, Amendment 46 does not address the anomaly that I mentioned in Committee, caused by having different registration thresholds for England and the rest of the United Kingdom. My amendment would remedy that by having the same registration thresholds throughout the United Kingdom. I noted that the Minister suggested that the distinction between England and the rest of the United Kingdom was the larger number of constituencies and voters. It is important to appreciate that there is a distinction that should be drawn between total expenditure by third parties in each constituent part of the United Kingdom, as against expenditure limits that determine whether the third party is required to register for recognition.
I accept that a distinction must be drawn between the various countries when one considers the total expenditure by a recognised third party in each country. That distinction reflects the number of parliamentary constituencies in each country and the greater number of voters in England than in any of the other three countries. That is the point that has been addressed since the 2000 Act, and is preserved in that Act, notwithstanding the amendments, in paragraph 3(2) of Schedule 10.
However, the threshold for registration is different. There is no justification for distinguishing between the different countries in this respect. The distinction was introduced in the 2000 Act, which followed the fifth report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life on the funding of political parties in the United Kingdom, which was presented to Parliament in October 1998. I referred to this in Committee and will not repeat these references. However, in Committee I explained that that report and the Government’s response to it never suggested any distinction between the different countries. There was a reference in a footnote which suggested that the reduced figure of £10,000 across the United Kingdom might be more significant in the three countries other than England, but it did not go as far as suggesting that there should be a difference.
I have been unable to find any subsequent explanation for halving the limit of £10,000 allowed for England in the other countries of the United Kingdom. I do not understand the need for a distinction when it comes to the threshold for registration. It is illogical and risks inhibiting local people from engaging in effective political debate about issues that are of concern in their constituency at a crucial time in the electoral process, by imposing upon them what my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries of Pentregarth described at Second Reading as a,
“bureaucratic burden on small charities or campaigning groups, especially during the actual election period”.—[Official Report, 22/10/2013; col. 914.]
For example, suppose that a local hospital is threatened with closure and a group of individuals in the constituency wish to make this an issue at the general election but stop short of fielding their own candidate. If some candidates in that election support the retention of the hospital while others do not, the expenditure by the local group will be controlled expenditure. If this occurs in England, the pressure group can spend £20,000 before the need for registration and the administrative burden that entails, but if it occurs in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, it can spend only £10,000. The expenses of running such a campaign in Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish constituencies will be similar to those in many English constituencies. Do the Government seriously suggest that the cost of transport to meetings or venues of meetings in every English constituency is double that in any constituency elsewhere? In his reply, will the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General explain the justification for this distinction?
My final point is that my amendment is not academic. Apart from being fair to all people across the United Kingdom who wish to campaign in the course of a general election about a matter of local importance to them, there is also a question of perhaps greater significance: that the consequences of not registering but exceeding the registration threshold are a criminal offence under Section 94 of the 2000 Act. Why should electors face prosecution in Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast for spending £6,000 on a campaign without registering as recognised third parties but have immunity in Newcastle for identical activity?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I do not think that there is an anomaly. One of the reasons for putting in the registration requirement was to try to address the kind of anomaly that my noble friend mentions. We share the same objective and if he thinks that there is a loophole there then I will certainly make sure that we look at that, because these provisions have been worked up over recent days. I think that it is okay, but it is probably quite good counsel that we should check to make sure that that is in fact the case.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, made his case for having similar registration thresholds in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as in England, and I can see some force in what he is saying. He says that he has not been able to divine why there has been a difference, which has been in place since the very outset. Since PPERA, a distinction has been made: it was £10,000 for England and £5,000 for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I will not allow myself the cheap debating point that that was what the noble and learned Lord proposed in Committee, but I think that his purpose behind that was to make sure that the Government considered the threshold properly.
It is interesting too—I will finish this point and then let the noble and learned Lord come in—that what is actually proposed by the Government is also the architecture proposed by the commission chaired by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth. The commission report proposes £20,000 for England and £10,000 for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Lord Hardie
I was going to say that I would not add such an adjective. The noble and learned Lord will remember that I tabled two amendments: the first was to preserve the status quo and the other was to seek an increase in the limits. As the noble and learned Lord has much more experience in political matters than I have, he will appreciate that it is useful to have a stop-gap in case the main objective is not achieved. In relation to the comment about the point made by my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries, the noble and learned Lord might remember that, in Committee, when the noble and right reverend Lord was speaking, having heard my suggestion that there should be uniformity for registration levels, he indicated that he thought that there was some force in that and that it had not been a point considered by the commission.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I was going to say that I was aware that the noble and learned Lord had also tabled an amendment in that group to raise the threshold to provide an equalisation—at, I think, £25,000 if my information serves me correctly.
It is a fair question as to why there is such a difference. I think one of the reasons, which I gave at the outset, is that there is a difference in the number of voters and number of constituencies. It is also the case that spending of less than £20,000 could have a more significant impact in, say, Northern Ireland, which is a very compact area with a very focused media. Spending of less than £20,000 could have a much more significant impact there than in England, and I suspect that the different political and media circumstances was one of the considerations as to why the difference came about in the first place.
There are one or two points made by the noble and learned Lord that I could not quite follow. He said that if there was a hospital closure in a particular constituency, a pressure group could spend up to £20,000 in England but just under £10,000 in Scotland. Of course, following on from the debate that we have just had about constituency limits, they would be restricted to £9,750 in Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland regarding the kind of example that he gave. He suggested—I apologise if I misheard him—that someone could be prosecuted for spending £6,000 in campaign expenditure in Edinburgh but not in, for example, Birmingham. I think that he will accept that, with a £10,000 threshold, that would not happen in either Birmingham or Edinburgh. I do not think that I misheard him, but sometimes people get that impression and suddenly there are concerns.
Lord Hardie
The noble and learned Lord is correct; it was a mistake on my part, I should have said £12,000. The point was that it is simply over the limit in Scotland but under the limit in England.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, we recognised the core expenditure that was needed in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in order to mount campaigns and that has been reflected by—for the first time, actually—making a distinction and giving an uplift for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland over and above the percentages that have otherwise been applied.
The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, proposes reverting to the total national spending limit of £988,500. As I have explained, the Government have brought forward amendments to increase spending limits for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but, as I explained in Committee, only a few political parties at the last general election spent more than £390,000—the total now would be £450,000—on the full range of activities that we now wish to extend to third parties. Only the Conservative Party, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats and UKIP spent more than £390,000 and, I assume, more than £450,000.
As my noble friend Lady Williams said, there are risks associated with allowing third parties to incur vast amounts of spending. Given that third parties campaign for or against electoral success of political parties, it is a very reasonable assumption that a relationship can and does develop between some third parties and political parties. This opens up the potential for supporters of political parties to demonstrate their backing by diverting their funding to an aligned third party and away from the political parties themselves, which have their own limits. I do not think it is right that, where limits are imposed on political parties, they can be circumvented in this way.
Even the limits that we have allow very extensive campaigns to be mounted. I do not wish to indulge in too much repetition, but £390,000—and of course it has gone up by £60,000—is 40 million leaflets, a dozen front-page adverts in a national newspaper, or 780,000 telephone calls from a professional phone bank. These are not insignificant campaigning activities and I therefore believe that the judgment that we reached in coming to these figures is the right one.
I therefore urge the House to support the Government’s amendments with regard to thresholds and I invite noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Lord Hardie Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Hardie
Lord Hardie (CB)
My Lords, this amendment seeks to extend the legislation requirements introduced by Clause 1 to all lobbyists who are engaged in that activity on a professional basis. If the amendment is agreed, incidental amendments will be required, but these can be included at Third Reading. I do not intend to rehearse my observations at Second Reading or in Committee but will set out my reasons for this amendment.
The Explanatory Notes to the Bill state that the main purpose of the provisions in the Bill on lobbying is to ensure that people know whose interests are being represented by consultant lobbyists who make representations to government. To that end, Clause 1 requires that those carrying on the business of consultant lobbyists must register. They cannot operate unless they are entered in the register. I agree that lobbying undertaken in an open, transparent and responsible manner is integral to our democratic system, but it should be regulated to ensure, as was said by the Minister at Second Reading, that we dispel any public perception that,
“certain powerful organisations and individuals could exert a disproportionate influence on government”.—[Official Report, 22/10/13; col. 893.]
The registration system proposed in the Bill will not dispel that public perception. It is limited in scope and is confined to those businesses above the VAT threshold which are involved in lobbying as consultants for others. It does not apply to lobbyists employed by those firms of consultant lobbyists, nor does it apply to national or multinational companies or organisations which seek to exert influence on the Government and choose to do so by using in-house lobbyists. The public want to know who is engaged in lobbying the Government and are not interested in whether the lobbying is undertaken by consultants or in-house lobbyists. In short, the decision to restrict registration to consultancies is fundamentally flawed.
The desire to include in the provisions in-house lobbyists is not academic. They represent about 80% of the lobbying industry. Moreover, the statutory register would replace the current voluntary register operated by the Public Relations Consultants Association, which is the professional body that represents United Kingdom PR consultants, in-house communication teams and individuals. Those who have chosen to register with PRCA include the largest consultancies in the industry as well as the in-house teams of various organisations. Registration in the voluntary register requires members to update their entries about staff and clients on a quarterly basis and to sign up to the PRCA’s code of ethical conduct, which is supported by rigorous disciplinary structures. It is appropriate that there should be a statutory register, assuming that it is supported by enforceable codes of conduct—a matter to which we may return in later amendments.
However, it is unlikely that the voluntary register will survive after the introduction of a statutory scheme and, in any event, it might be confusing and undesirable to have more than one register. The existing provisions would have the effect of removing from the public domain information that already exists about certain in-house lobbyists. Rather than concealing such information, it would be more appropriate to extend it to those lobbyists who have not already registered on a voluntary basis.
I invite your Lordships to support this amendment for a number of reasons. First, it will increase transparency of lobbying. Secondly, it will give the public greater confidence in the political system by affording them greater powers of scrutiny of lobbying activity than is offered by the Bill. Thirdly, it will ensure that they are not denied information about the activities carried out by the vast majority of lobbyists in this country represented by those employed by large national and multinational companies representing the energy sector, alcohol, tobacco and gaming industries and many other activities affecting people’s lives. It is only right that the public can judge the extent to which government policy has been influenced by lobbying activities and the extent of such activities. The consequences for the public are the same, whether lobbying is by a consultancy firm or by in-house lobbyists. Finally, this amendment will ensure that the benefits of the current voluntary system of registration are maintained and indeed enhanced. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I am grateful to my noble friend for asking that question. I have not said that we will publish the minutes of meetings; the example I gave showed that we would record the detailed nature of what the meeting was about. I hesitate to use the word “subject matter”, because until now that term has also covered “catch-up meetings” and “introductory meetings”. It is not anticipated that we would publish minutes of such meetings. If a meeting had taken place on fracking, I do not think that any clarification would be needed between the Minister and the company as to whether the meeting was about fracking. It is not proposed that minutes would be made available, but there may be other ways—under, say, freedom of information provisions—in which other information might become available. None the less, what we are committing to today takes our commitment as a Government that much further. Ours has been a listening response, and I believe that it will do far more for transparency than—
Lord Hardie
Can the Minister help me in the following regard? He relies upon the fact that a system of recording meetings has been introduced. That is, of course, very welcome. He gave the example of a meeting with Mr Clancy of the Law Society of Scotland—and I am sure that he and his officials are very diligent in recording such meetings. However, what if we have a Minister or officials who are not as diligent and who perhaps record it as a meeting with Mr Michael Clancy full stop and do not explain who he is? Clearly, if Mr Michael Clancy is a lobbyist and my amendment is accepted, the cross-reference of the register will identify who he is and what his interests are.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I hear the point that the noble and learned Lord is making. As I think my noble friend indicated, if the register is anything like the Canadian register you may have difficulty finding out who it is. However, more importantly, the transparency part of it comes in because of what Ministers would be obliged to put in their scheme. There is an ethics and propriety department in the Cabinet Office. I assure the noble and learned Lord and your Lordships’ House that when we submit our returns that department can get back to us. If we just put “Mr Michael Clancy” and there is no indication of who he is, we will be pushed to elaborate on that.
The noble Baroness said that, if a defence contractor was involved, we would not necessarily know that. In fact, under the publication scheme, the company’s name would have to be given. If that company was a defence contractor and the meeting was about the provisions of the defence Bill that is before your Lordships’ House, such information would be far more relevant, transparent and informative for the public than just giving the name of an employee of that particular company. Therefore, I ask the noble and learned Lord to consider whether his amendment advances transparency at all, given what I have indicated that the Government are willing to do, and whether it would lead to considerable uncertainty. Indeed, if it took the matter as far as the Canadian experience, it could, through an overload of information, be even less effective in promoting the transparency that we both wish to see.
Lord Hardie
I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions to this short debate and to those who have spoken in support of the amendment. As regards the noble and learned Lord’s criticism that the amendment does not include a definition of professional lobbyists, I would say two things. First, is not that definition self-evident from the words “professional lobbyists”? Is it not a similar situation to that of a solicitor who is a lawyer performing legal services as either an employer—a principal—or as an employee? Equally, is not a professional lobbyist someone who lobbies as part of his profession as either a principal or as an employee? As regards the noble and learned Lord’s difficulties with the definition, what efforts have the Government made since the very full debate we had in Committee to try to come up with a definition? If that is a difficulty for the Government and this amendment is carried, perhaps they could put in a definition, although I do not think that is necessary.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
The noble and learned Lord asks a fair question. The answer is that that is not the scheme that the Government have been following. We did not think that we needed to produce a definition of professional lobbyists. I ask him to reflect on the fact that if the managing director of a large drinks manufacturer were to meet the Secretary of State on a particular issue—for example, minimum unit pricing—I do not think that one would consider that person to be a lobbyist. Why should it matter that the name of a lower-ranking official in a company who lobbies on behalf of the company is in the public domain but not that of the managing director, when the information that the public want relates to the latter? I have said that we are willing to give that information, because a Minister would have to say that he had met the managing director of company X to discuss minimum unit pricing. Surely that is a much better route to transparency than putting the name of a much lower-ranking official than the managing director.
Lord Hardie
I take the noble and learned Lord’s point but it is not an alternative: it is not either disclosure by the Minister or registration. The transparency arises from the combination of the disclosure by the Minister and the registration, and the ability of the public to cross-reference the two to see precisely on whose behalf the lobbyist is speaking.
The noble and learned Lord also mentioned cost and referred to the Canadian system. He will be aware that the system has to be cost-neutral. The cost would be met by the various people who had to register. Of course, the larger number of entries in the register would—or should—offset the increased cost.
The professional body, the Public Relations Consultants Association, supports this amendment. Although it currently operates the voluntary register, it sees the benefit in having a statutory register provided that that register covers all in-house lobbyists as well. As I said earlier, some of the register already includes entries relating to in-house lobbyists. The noble and learned Lord also referred to charges, but there are already charges on the existing voluntary register. In all the circumstances, I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Hardie
Lord Hardie
My Lords, this amendment reflects a similar amendment to that which was debated in Committee, along with other amendments, including an amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. The Bill regulates lobbying activities only where the object of the lobbying is a Minister of the Crown, a Permanent Secretary, a Second Permanent Secretary or a person serving in the government offices listed in Part 3 of Schedule 1. Again, I do not intend to repeat what I said in Committee, but it is my respectful submission to your Lordships that the class is too restrictive, as was observed by many noble Lords both at Second Reading and in Committee. There seemed to be a general consensus across the Committee that the persons listed would not be the first port of call for lobbyists, who would probably concentrate on political advisers, Parliamentary Private Secretaries and more junior civil servants before approaching Permanent Secretaries, Second Permanent Secretaries and Ministers. Indeed, in the very helpful contribution made by my noble friend Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, who is not in his place, it appears unlikely that Permanent Secretaries will be lobbied if the noble Lord’s own considerable experience is taken into account.
The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, confirmed my own experience that Parliamentary Private Secretaries have direct access to Ministers and are involved in some meetings determining departmental and government policy. The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, observed in Committee:
“When this Bill was considered in the other place, the point was well made that it appears to have been written by people who do not understand lobbying”.—[Official Report, 5/11/13; col. 139.]
Lobbyists would focus on the channel for reaching the Minister and that channel would include a political adviser, a Parliamentary Private Secretary or civil servants below the level specified in the Bill. It is clear that the Bill will be of little effect if it confines communications to those currently specified in it and does not focus on those people more likely to be the object of lobbying activity. If lobbying is confined to the more effective targets and the Minister is not directly lobbied, there will be no requirement for registration, not even by the restrictive category of consultant lobbyist. Such a result is contrary to the stated desire and the desirable intention of transparency that underpins Part 1 of the Bill.
In his response in Committee the Minister—I am delighted to see him in his place after his illness—referred to the number of civil servants who would be affected if the scope of this provision were extended as proposed. As noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, observed in his intervention at col. 149, the number of such civil servants is irrelevant. What is at issue is the identification of the class of persons the lobbying of whom will require registration. That class has to be sufficiently wide to make lobbying transparent.
In view of the discussion in Committee, it is disappointing that the Government have not come forward with their own amendment to improve the Bill in this respect. The amendment in my name is an attempt to remedy that omission. Without this amendment, the Bill will fail in its objective of increasing the transparency of lobbying Government. It will further undermine public confidence in our political system because it will be seen as an example of Parliament either failing to understand the lobbying process or failing to take effective measures to address and identify a problem. I beg to move.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, Amendment 3, in my name and that of my noble friend, is grouped with the amendment just moved by the noble and learned Lord. As has already been made very clear this afternoon, the key issue is not the role, title or job description of the people who take part in the activity of lobbying but the activity itself. That is absolutely critical. I have a lot of sympathy with my noble friend Lord Norton, who, in his usual way, has put his finger right on that point. That is why I thought that it was extremely important to have the statement from my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness a few minutes ago about the nature, character, efficiency and accuracy of the register of meetings with those who are taking decisions, or making proposals to Parliament, on behalf of the Government.
I should say in parentheses, in welcoming back my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that way back at Second Reading, let alone in Committee, he expressed a lot of interest in the proposals that we were making from these Benches about improving the status of the record of meetings that was introduced for the first time—for which the Government should get credit—in the past few years. As I said in that earlier debate, I am not so worried about who the lobbyists are but am very worried that we know who they lobby, what they lobby about and when. The very full statement made by my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness a few minutes ago goes a very long way to meeting that anxiety. We have made it clear at every stage of the Bill that, for us, that is the core issue. The proactive publication of data on ministerial meetings by the Government makes a potentially huge difference. That is what transparency should be all about.
We also believe it is important that that record should indicate when the meeting with in-house lobbyists takes place. Whether they are the managing director of a whisky firm, or a lowly employee of any other firm, it is the subject matter of the meeting, when it happened and with whom that is of considerable importance. I agree with my noble and learned friend and I am delighted that the House agreed too, a few minutes ago, that simply extending the register into a sort of enormous directory, like a telephone directory, with every lobbyist in the land, whether from a church, charity or voluntary organisation, would not really seem to be anything more than disguising the wood for the trees.
Amendment 3 deals very specifically, and only, with the issue of special advisers. Many in your Lordships’ House have had enormous responsibility in the Civil Service. What is unusual about a special adviser is that he or she of course is not responsible to the head of the department: he or she is not a full-time employed member of the Civil Service, and their first loyalty and responsibility is to the political master for whom they work. The special adviser’s responsibility is to the Secretary of State, or other ministerial politician, and his or her relationship is with them. It is therefore our view that this is the one major exception that should be tackled, either in this Bill or in some other way, because these are special people—special advisers are, by definition, outwith the normal hierarchy of responsibility to the Permanent Secretary in the department.
The principle in the Bill is that if the consultant gains access to or influences a Minister on behalf of a client, the public should know who they and their clients are. However, anyone who has been in this building for any length of time or who has lobbied knows perfectly well that influencing a Minister does not necessarily mean seeing them yourself. There is sometimes an even better way: to meet the Minister’s special adviser. Spads have a rather unfair bad reputation in the press. Many will remember Clare Short’s description of them as living “in the dark”. I think that was about a particularly period in the previous Government, perhaps, and it may not be appropriate for all periods of recent history. That epithet then led to a thought-provoking analysis of the role of special advisers in a book of the same name by the respected academic Dr Andrew Blick. In my limited experience of being on the Government side of the House in the past three years and therefore having spads in my own party, it does not feel as though many now live in the dark. We see them all the time. They are helpful, they are influential; in many cases persuading a spad is the first step to persuading a Minister.
I know that this is also part of their job: to meet outside groups. It is very proper and very effective—a proper role that they should undertake. Perhaps it is a better one than a civil servant in the normal hierarchy. Ministers have only a certain amount of time and sometimes it is the right judgment to ask a senior adviser to see someone first, sound them out and explain the Government’s thinking—there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, these meetings with outside groups are important and details of them, like the ministerial meetings which were so fully referred to earlier, should be transparent.
The first step we could take today to make that point in this House is to say that in this Bill those consultants who lobby spads should have to register, just as if they were meeting Ministers. It would then follow, of course, that although this is outside the immediate scope of the Bill, for this to be meaningful spads would also need to publish all their meetings with all lobbyists, whether they be consultant lobbyists or in-house, just as Ministers do. I very much hope that when we look in detail at the record of meetings in future to see how these can be improved and made even more influential and transparent, my noble friends on the Front Bench will acknowledge that this would be an important step to take.
This is not in any way intended to malign spads or imply that anything they do is wrong. It is the opposite. It says that what they do is useful and, on many occasions, necessary, but keeping any aspect of it hidden feeds a largely unnecessary suspicion that they are up to no good. I referred at earlier stages of the Bill to the fact that two of the big lobbying scandals in this Parliament have involved close advisers to Ministers rather than Ministers themselves, and that resignations resulted.
For example, the Murdoch empire recognised these facts of life very early on. We should too. Both scandals would probably never have got to this stage had encounters between close ministerial advisers and outside groups been a matter of public record. It is therefore as much in the Government’s interests as in the public interest—surely the two should fit hand in glove anyway—for this information to be freely available. I quoted before and I shall quote again. The Prime Minister memorably said:
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant”.
I agree.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, the noble Baroness says that they are not asking to include all civil servants’ meetings with everyone, but the amendment does say all civil servants, although I admit that she says that it would cover any lobbyist who met civil servants. As for Ministers’ reporting regime, we have said that Ministers will report the people with whom they have had meetings whether they are lobbyists or non-lobbyists. To further subdivide that would be a considerable burden on 450,000 civil servants. I do not believe that it would add to the transparency that we have tried to enhance and improve by what we have already done as a Government, some of which has been unprecedented. I think that the noble and learned Lord is seeking to intervene.
Lord Hardie
I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord. The point that I am seeking to make in this amendment is that one has to go back to the definition in Clause 2. In the terms of that definition, it is people who fall within the category of persons carrying on the business of consultant lobbying who have to register under Clause 1. Clause 2(1)(a) states that they are required to register if, in short,
“in the course of a business and in return for payment, the person makes communications within subsection (3)”.
It is the communications that we are addressing. Subsection (3) states that the communications are,
“oral or written communications made personally to a Minister of the Crown or permanent secretary relating to”,
the various matters mentioned. I think that second Permanent Secretaries are on the list of people in the schedule.
The point of this amendment is to highlight that the narrow definition of people to whom communications are being made which require registration on the part of consultant lobbyists renders the whole concept of registration almost worthless because, as has been clear from the contributions across the House, these people are not just lobbying Ministers. To get round that, a lobbyist who lobbies a special adviser or a civil servant concerned with policy would not be required to register.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I think I understand the point that the noble and learned Lord is making about the requirement to register if you are making communications with these people. It may be that that would bring more names on to the register—I simply do not know—but to enhance transparency, the complement to such an extension would be the introduction of meeting reporting obligations on these public officials. Otherwise you have a list of names of consultant lobbyists and their clients but there is nothing there to which you can then relate them. It becomes fully meaningful only if you have that complementary extension of the scheme. On the amendment, I sought to make the point that that would be a huge burden and one that would not be consistent with efficiency in government; nor indeed would it be proportionate to improving transparency.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
On the second point, I was responding to the amendment as it is tabled, which does not narrow it down at all to senior civil servants—it applies to all civil servants. I am sure that bodies make arrangements with junior officials as well as with members of the senior Civil Service. On the issue of special advisers, I cannot elaborate on what I have already said.
Lord Hardie
I am grateful to noble Lords on all sides of the House for their support for the amendment. I realise that the noble Lords, Lord Tyler and Lord Turnbull, suggest that the matter should be confined to special advisers. However, as I said in Committee, when I was in practice at the Scottish Bar I was standing junior counsel to the City of Edinburgh district council, and then, latterly, senior counsel—and it was clear from my experience there that it was not the senior director of administration or the director of planning who was the subject of contact by people seeking to influence policy. The contact was with the local authority officials—in this context, the civil servants—who were concerned with the formulation of policy. It strikes me that to exclude the very policymakers, whether civil servants or special advisers, makes nonsense of the registration process. I therefore beg to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Hardie
Lord Hardie
My Lords, in moving this amendment, I declare an interest. As I explained in Committee, I am a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Taiwan and have received hospitality from that Government in the form of social events. Several years ago, I visited Taiwan on two occasions as a guest: the first was as part of a judicial delegation from Scotland and the second was as a lecturer at an international conference. As I advised the registrar of interests last week, I have now been invited to speak at another conference next month, and my expenses will be paid by the Taiwanese Government. It is a legal conference.
Paragraph 3 of Schedule 1 excludes from lobbying activities communications from an official or member of staff of a sovereign power. In Committee, I sought clarification on whether that included countries such as the Republic of China (Taiwan), which is not a member of the United Nations and with which we have no formal diplomatic relations, although we do have an office and a representative there and it has offices in this country. The Minister promised to write to me. I received a letter dated 7 January from the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General to the effect that communications from any foreign Government, irrespective of their country’s membership status with the United Nations or its diplomatic status with UK, would not meet the criteria for lobbying for profit in Clause 2.
In view of that response, it seemed that paragraph 3 of Schedule 1 was unnecessary, and I wrote accordingly to the noble and learned Lord. I received a reply dated 9 January, in which he confirmed that communications from foreign Governments,
“will not be captured by the definition of consultant lobbying outlined in clause 2”.
However, he added that paragraph 3 of Schedule 1,
“provides helpful clarity, especially to international colleagues, in relation to the application of the register and it is not our intention to remove it by amendment at Report stage”.
It seems to me that Clause 2 should be sufficient assurance to sovereign powers, and the addition of paragraph 3 may have the unintended consequence of causing concern for foreign states that are not sovereign powers. For that reason, the amendment seeks the removal of this paragraph.
In moving the amendment, I seek clarification from the noble and learned Lord as to what is meant by the term “sovereign power” in the Bill. Sovereignty would seem to me to include such issues as control over a geographical area whose citizens are governed by its rulers, whether they have been democratically elected or not. Taiwan is a democracy whose citizens enjoy universal suffrage from the age of 20. There are elections for the President and the legislature every four years. The President can hold office only for two successive terms. The Government pass legislation and govern their citizens, and Taiwan has diplomatic relations with a number of countries, including the United States of America. Does the noble and learned Lord accept that sovereignty does not depend upon membership of the United Nations or having diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom? In those circumstances, will he confirm that Taiwan would satisfy the test of sovereignty for the purpose of this provision? Even if Taiwan does satisfy that test, what about countries which do not? Which ones are they? Does the inclusion of sovereign states not cause concern for those countries which do not come within that category? I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, has moved an amendment which would delete paragraph 3 of Schedule 1 and, as such, remove the explicit exemption from the requirement to register for members of staff and officials of sovereign powers and international organisations.
As the noble and learned Lord very fairly explained in moving his amendment, we have been in correspondence over the past week on this matter. The Government believe that, by establishing a statutory register of consultant lobbyists, this part of the Bill aims to make clear whose interests are represented by consultant lobbyists when they meet Ministers and Permanent Secretaries. It is not our intention that the register should capture international or diplomatic communications by representatives of foreign Governments or authorities or of international organisations. Communications made by representatives of foreign Governments or authorities will not be captured by the definition of consultant lobbying, as the noble and learned Lord has said, as they will not meet the criteria outlined in Clause 2 and the associated schedule. Those include, among other things, that lobbying must be done,
“in the course of a business and in return for payment”,
and,
“on behalf of another person”.
However, out of an abundance of caution, the Bill also includes a specific exemption in paragraph 3 that explicitly excludes officials or members of staff of sovereign powers and international organisations from the requirement to register in respect of their communications to UK Ministers and Permanent Secretaries.
Noble Lords will recall that Schedule 1 provides a number of explicit exemptions that are designed to provide absolute clarity regarding the application of Part 1 provisions. Those exemptions include one specifically excluding parliamentarians from the scope of the register. Although the Government have been absolutely clear that communications made by parliamentarians to the Government will not be captured by the Clause 2 provision, I understand that, none the less, noble Lords and Members of the other place have been particularly grateful for the extra clarity and reiteration provided by paragraph 4. Paragraph 3 is intended to provide equivalent clarity to sovereign powers and international organisations and the Government are not persuaded that it should be removed.
The noble and learned Lord asked specific questions regarding Taiwan. I am sure that he and perhaps other Members of your Lordships’ House would agree that the Report stage of the transparency Bill is perhaps not the most appropriate forum in which to discuss matters of international diplomacy. Indeed, if the noble and learned Lord wishes to pursue the issue, he may wish to take it up with my colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In these circumstances, I ask him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Hardie
I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for putting those remarks on the record and, in the circumstances, I seek leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, as I understand the present arrangement—and I am only going by memory from what was said in Committee—the Public Relations Consultants Association already has a code of conduct. If it is correct that the professional organisations may over the longer term actually wind up—and in the period between Committee and Report we were led to believe that this is the case—then I presume that no code of conduct will necessarily apply. That is unless the Government introduce a model code on the basis that my noble friend on the Front Bench has just argued for. I asked the Minister in what circumstances an organisation that registered would not wish to introduce a code of conduct. I presume that during the consultation to which the Minister referred when he moved his amendment, they made clear what those circumstances would be. I wonder if we can be told what Ministers were told. There must be some explanation for why they resist. If there is an explanation—perhaps it is in the written brief or something—maybe we could see it prior to Third Reading. I simply cannot understand what they are objecting to, and we need to know during the course of the debate what it is.
Lord Hardie
Perhaps I can answer the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. In the debate about the first amendment today, I referred to how the PRCA requires people who sign up to the voluntary register to sign up to the code of conduct, which has strong enforcement of regulations or provisions. My point earlier was that if that disappears and there is to be a statutory register in place, it would be appropriate that we have something which is at least as good, not something that detracts from the current position.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I appreciate the welcome given to the government amendments by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and my noble friend Lord Tyler. As I indicated, we listened carefully to the debate in Committee. We have responded by tabling these amendments, which will require consultant lobbyists to state in their register entries whether they subscribe to a publicly available code of conduct in relation to their lobbying activity and, if so, where a copy of the code can be accessed.
The Opposition’s amendments, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, would require that lobbyists declare on their register entry which publicly available code of conduct they subscribe to, implicitly requiring such a subscription in order to register. The Government are not persuaded that the amendment is appropriate. Moreover, there is no provision that would require compliance with such codes or provide for enforcement.
The objective of the Part 1 provisions is to enhance transparency and scrutiny. We are not seeking to regulate behaviour. The noble Baroness mentioned the exchanges she had in Committee with my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire about lobbyists who breach the Bribery Act. Of course, breaches of the Bribery Act are punishable by unlimited fines and up to 10 years’ imprisonment, or both. The Government do not consider it appropriate for a Bill to contain separate sanctions in addition to those already included in the Bribery Act, which are clearly very substantial indeed. It is quite proper that the Bribery Act includes serious and proportionate sanctions but it would not be appropriate for the transparency Bill to duplicate those sanctions. The Government considered the option of including a penalty whereby a person could be removed from the register but concluded that imposing a limitless prohibition on someone conducting their profession was too extreme a penalty.
Requiring lobbyists to declare whether they subscribe to a code will expose those who do not abide by the ethical principles that are so essential to the integrity of the industry. It is not the Government’s intention, however, to introduce a high-regulation regime whereby the registrar is responsible for monitoring and enforcing subscription to, and compliance with, codes of conduct. The Opposition also suggest that the registrar should be responsible for publishing a code of conduct. As my noble friend indicated, that is premature. The Government’s amendments are intended to complement the existing self-regulatory regime, not to replace or undermine it.
To pick up the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, we do not anticipate that lobbying associations such as the PRCA, CIPR and APPC will withdraw their codes. Indeed, the industry has welcomed the link between its codes and the proposed register, which it recognises will enhance the existing self-regulatory regime. That was the feedback we got during the consultation. I heard the noble Lord’s inquiry but I am not aware that any explanation or example was given of circumstances in which a firm would not register. Rather, the industry anticipates that it will continue with its codes and that the proposed register—and the government amendment—will enhance the existing self-regulatory regime.
Lord Hardie
“(6A) A registered person who is aggrieved by the Registrar’s decision in terms of subsection (6) may appeal to the Tribunal against that decision.”
Lord Hardie
My Lords, this amendment seeks to give a right of appeal to someone whom the registrar has removed from the register. Clause 6(6) says:
“If the Registrar has reasonable grounds for believing that a registered person is not (or is no longer) a consultant lobbyist, the Registrar may decide that—
(a) the person’s entry should include a statement to that effect, or
(b) the person’s entry should be removed from the register”.
If the latter course is taken, the consequence is that the person—although of course we may be talking about a company—who is operating the business of a consultant lobbyist, once he has been removed from the register, can no longer operate as a consultant lobbyist. Clearly, that will have implications for not only the business itself but its employees.
Moreover, this measure has implications for the criminal law. Clause 12 provides that it is a criminal offence to act as a consultant lobbyist if you are not registered: once you are removed you can no longer act as a consultant lobbyist, but if you choose to do so it will be an offence. What is worse is that Clause 12(1) states:
“If a person carries on the business of consultant lobbying in breach of section 1(1) (lobbying whilst unregistered), an offence is committed by … the person”—
that is understandable, because the person will presumably know—
“and … any employee of the person who engages in lobbying in the course of that business”.
So if an employee of the company is not told that their registration has been removed, he or she will be guilty of an offence. It is strict liability; there is no statutory defence for the employee in that situation, so the consequences for the person and for the employees are quite significant. This decision to deregister a person is at the instigation of the registrar, if he has reasonable grounds for suspecting that they are no longer trading or what have you. There is no right of appeal against that. I am suggesting that there ought to be a right of appeal to the tribunal. There is a tribunal in existence in terms of the provision. If the employee accepts that he or she should be deregistered, there is no issue; but if he considers that the registrar has made a mistake, that would enable an aggrieved employee to have the right of appeal.
The Minister’s answer in Committee was that the registrar will act in a bona fide way and will not make mistakes. I am not questioning the bona fides of the registrar, but we all know that people make mistakes and there ought to be a remedy for someone in that position. In those circumstances I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord for his amendment. It might be helpful if in response I indicate the Government’s thinking on sanctions and appeals. When considering the most appropriate sanctions in respect of non-compliance with the register, Ministers did consider the option of removing a person from the register, thereby prohibiting them or the company from continuing to operate as a lobbyist. We concluded, however, that such a sanction would represent a disproportionate penalty as it would essentially take away their livelihood. There are very few industries where, unless one is imprisoned, one is prevented from carrying out one’s professional activities if one has made errors in the course of doing so, and the Government are not persuaded that the lobbying industry should be singled out for such treatment. The sanctions regime that we have designed is therefore a proportionate one, designed to provide appropriate deterrent against, and punishment for, non-compliance with the provisions of the register.
Clause 6(6) does, however—as the noble and learned Lord has pointed out—provide the registrar with the ability to remove a person from the register. That provision is not drafted as a sanction, but rather as an administrative housekeeping measure to enable the registrar to maintain the accessibility and relevance of the register. The registrar may, for example, wish to remove individuals who have retired, passed away, chosen a change of career, or who work for a company that has been wound up. The noble and learned Lord’s amendment would enable a person to appeal against the registrar’s decision to remove them from the register, as under Clause 6(6).
We do not envisage that the registrar would remove any person from the register unless they were confident that the person no longer engaged, or no longer wished to engage in future, in consultant lobbying. I take the noble and learned Lord’s point that there are potential criminal sanctions attached to it. Obviously, as a former distinguished Lord Advocate, he will know that there is a discretion. Indeed, Clause 12(9) indicates that proceedings for an offence under this part in England and Wales may be instituted only by, or with the consent of, the Director of Public Prosecutions, and in Northern Ireland by or with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland.
Therefore, if a person was to find that they had been wrongly removed, if they wished to object, they could immediately advise the registrar that they were still living, or that they had not given up consultant lobbying, and accordingly the registrar could reregister that person without the need for an appeal and without any difficulty. If they remained dissatisfied in spite of the fact that they could prove that they were still living and consulting, it would be possible to judicially review a decision, although that is very unlikely given the much simpler course of reregistering.
The important point is that this is not intended as a sanction or a penalty, but rather one of administration where the company or the individual is no longer believed to be performing the role of consultant lobbyist. Therefore in those circumstances, if a person becomes aware of that and wishes to challenge it, the best and most simple thing to do is to ask to be reregistered rather than to go to some expense in seeking an appeal to a tribunal.
I hope that the noble and learned Lord is reassured by that explanation. This provision is not intended as a sanction and I invite him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Hardie
I thank the noble and learned Lord for that explanation. I simply comment in passing that if it got the stage of having to have a judicial review, then that is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. But in all the circumstances I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Norton for moving his new clause, which 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 concerned with that matter. This is an issue in which my noble friend has long taken an interest. His amendment would also provide exemptions from the requirement to publish for commercial or security-sensitive material.
I do not think that this is a simple proposition, although I certainly think it is an intriguing one. However, at a time when we seek to ensure more efficient and effective government, one should pause to reflect that a statutory requirement that every oral or written communication received by every civil servant, special adviser, Parliamentary Private Secretary or Minister be recorded, collated and published in parallel with any relevant statement is not as easy and simple as was perhaps suggested.
Not only would the system impose a considerable bureaucratic burden on the public sector but one would wish to consider whether it would lead in turn to an information overload. Publishing information in relation to a very small public policy statement may well have some merit, but the volume of information that the Government would be likely to be required to publish in relation to, let us say, the Budget, the Autumn Statement or the Queen’s Speech could be so overwhelming that any transparency value would be undermined by the inaccessibility and quantity of the information.
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. As I have already indicated, this Government have taken exceptional steps to publicise 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 or in summary, and if the public require further information about certain policies or decisions, then they have the right to request that information under the Freedom of Information Act.
I recognise that my noble friend is urging the Government to extend or improve their information publication regime, and I know that this view is shared. However, I hope that the commitments to the improvement of transparency that I made on behalf of the Government during the debate on the first group of amendments will show that not only have we already taken unprecedented steps, but we are furthering them. I recognise and acknowledge that they fall short of what my noble friend is seeking, but I hope he will reflect that to publish the volume which he is suggesting—particularly in circumstances such as the Budget—might not enhance transparency, but could lead to an overload that might not assist those he seeks to help with his amendment. I hope that it will be acknowledged that the Government have already taken steps and are committed to more steps; and that what we are doing will increase the level of transparency more than any previous Administration have done. In these circumstances, I urge my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Hardie
My Lords, I seek a point of clarification. In light of the decision of the House to accept the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, on special advisers, will the Minister tell the House whether it is the Government’s position that, notwithstanding that decision, the Government have no intention of adding information relative to special advisers’ meetings with lobbyists when the Minister makes his or her return?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I stand by what I said when I replied to the question asked by my noble friend Lord Tyler in the first group of amendments. Obviously, the Government have not had an opportunity to discuss the matter, as I have been here since my noble friend’s amendment was passed. I have had no opportunity to discuss with ministerial colleagues and others how we will respond.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Lord Hardie Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Hardie
Lord Hardie (CB)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 166, I wish to speak also to Amendment 166B. At Second Reading, a number of noble Lords expressed concern about the changes to the existing limits on controlled expenditure that Clause 27 seeks to introduce. Justification for such a change is obviously necessary. The Explanatory Notes provide no assistance in understanding the rationale for this change. In his response at Second Reading the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, did not explain what problems had been caused by the existing limits. I am confident that if there was sound justification for reducing the expenditure limits based on past experience of the operation of Section 85 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 within its limited scope of activities, the Minister would have advised the House of that. That is particularly so where justification was sought by noble Lords, but none was forthcoming.
If there have been no problems, why reduce the limits which have been in existence for at least 13 years? Moreover, how can the Government justify reducing expenditure limits while at the same time increasing the range of qualifying activities? In his reply, will the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General please answer the following questions? First, what is the reason for Clause 27(1)? Secondly, what problems have been caused over the years by having the existing limits? Thirdly, in proposing to reduce the limits, what assessment did the Government make of the likely increase in expenditure caused by the extension of controlled activities introduced by Clause 26? If the noble and learned Lord has no answer that justifies this extreme provision, will he acknowledge the strength of feeling that exists that this clause is grossly unfair, is a disproportionate interference in the right to freedom of speech and political engagement, and is an obstruction to democracy?
Lord Hardie
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords in all parts of the House for speaking in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, suggested that the 2011 report was the more appropriate one. I went back to the 1998 report because that was the one which founded the 2000 Act, which set out the limits that we are discussing. On that basis, I went back to that report to find the justification for the legislation.
I hear what the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General has said in response. I am disappointed that despite his white hair he is not Father Christmas and will not give me the gift that I was seeking. But I look forward to the amendment on Report and hope that it sets appropriate levels, and may not be confined to the £2,000 and £5,000 levels, but will be above that, if the Government are truly listening to the concerns of the third sector. With these observations I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Hardie
Lord Hardie
My Lords, Amendment 169B also stands in my name.
The issues here are similar to those raised in the previous group of amendments, except that they apply to the total control of expenditure that may be incurred by a recognised third party in the various constituent countries of the United Kingdom. The current limits are contained in paragraph 3(2) of Schedule 10 to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act Act 2000. Clause 27(2)(a) proposes to alter these limits by substituting them for,
“2% of the maximum campaign expenditure limit in that part of the United Kingdom”.
The effect of that provision is that the relevant figures for the countries are: £319,000 for England, reduced from £793,000; £35,000 for Scotland, reduced from £108,000; £24,000 for Wales, reduced from £80,000; and £10,080 for Northern Ireland, reduced from £27,000. My concerns about these reductions are similar to those about the reductions in registration limits.
I will not repeat the figures, but I will ask the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General to justify the changes in this particular paragraph. The activities subject to control have been extended, yet it is proposed to reduce the total permissible expenditure. Moreover, the period covered is 12 months before an election. At Second Reading I drew attention to the following anomaly: in the context of Scotland, I doubted whether a campaign group could fund a national rally about an issue of importance to it, within a budget of £35,000. Even if it could, such a rally would exhaust its budget, leaving it unable to campaign effectively in any other way.
The unrealistic level of expenditure is highlighted when one has regard to the provisions in paragraph 5 of Schedule 10 to the 2000 Act about elections to the Scottish Parliament. The relevant figure for controlled expenditure is £75,800 and the relevant period is four months prior to the election. At the risk of showing my lack of the mathematical expertise that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, has, I say that a simple arithmetical approach of multiplying that figure by three would produce an equivalent annual figure of £227,400. But that, I acknowledge, is oversimplistic, as the greater part of any allowance will be expended in the last few months prior to an election. Accordingly, although probably still higher than the current annual figure of £108,000, the equivalent extrapolated figure would be approximate to it. If the proposed figure of £35,000, represented by the 2% introduced by Clause 27(2), is implemented, the discrepancy between the allowance for UK elections and elections to the Scottish Parliament is vast. Such a discrepancy for the same country in the same schedule to the 2000 Act demands an explanation and justification. In his reply will the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General provide the House with the required explanation and justification for this disparity?
The deletion of this subsection will restore the status quo as far as limits are concerned, although the burden on that expenditure will be greater if the definition of controlled expenditure is expanded as proposed. I invite your Lordships to conclude that the effect of Amendment 169 would be to restore some public confidence in the democratic process and to avoid the absurdity and likely confusion that will arise from such disparate figures in Scotland, where campaign groups will be subject to different regimes within the same geographical boundaries.
Amendment 169B was tabled in case the previous amendment was not accepted, and the Government remained determined to reduce the overall figures and could justify such a policy. This amendment is a proposed compromise. By increasing the percentage from 2% to 5% the figure for England is more approximate to the current figure, and might even be slightly higher; but the decreases for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are less dramatic. The equivalent figure in Scotland would be £87,500. I beg to move.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth
My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 169A. I would like to ask the Minister what the rationale was behind such a drastic reduction in the spending limits. For England it was a 60% reduction; for the other nations it was 70%. This is a vast reduction, for which no reason was given. The commission which I have the privilege of chairing simply wishes to revert to the original PPERA figures plus inflation. Those are written in the amendment, and would mean £1,125,000 for the year for England; the comparable figures for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales would be £155,000, £86,000 and £40,000. We are simply recommending the original PPERA figures plus inflation.
I will give one example of a big spending campaign which is concerned about the cap. In the 2010 general election, Hope not Hate registered £319,231 of spending in England with the Electoral Commission. It is a national grass-roots organisation that seeks to challenge and expose openly racist political parties, candidates and policies. It works on the assumption that there is a risk that far-right racist policies might be campaigned on vigorously at election time, and it wishes to oppose that with racially tolerant policies. For example, in an area like Barking and Dagenham in 2010 where it mobilised people, its spending included printing of leaflets and Hope not Hate newspapers, staff time to write campaign literature, media coverage costs, communicating the campaign to supporters, and its battle bus bill. Of course, an organisation such as this, quite properly, needs to register and needs to be totally transparent in what it does, but the spending limits proposed in the Bill would severely reduce what that organisation would be able to do. It spent in 2010 £319,231, which is above the limit in the Bill. There is clearly a strong case for reverting not only to PPERA but to PPERA plus inflation on the cap.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I think I indicated that even with the reduced limits, on the list I have before me there were only two organisations that went above them, one being UNISON and the other being Vote for a Change Ltd, and neither of those got anywhere near the limits set out in PPERA. Even with the reduced limits, most organisations would not get anywhere near them. I take the point made about staffing made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. Even a political party, the Green Party, which fought a fully fledged election campaign, admittedly not in every constituency but one that registered in the national campaign, did not reach the reduced limit. In trying to strike these balances, these limits are not unreasonable.
Lord Hardie
I am grateful to noble Lords on all sides of the Committee for participating in the debate. I hear what the Minister has said about what the effect of these limits would have been had they been applied to the last election and I want to reflect on that. I note also that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, referred to the experience of the last general election.
I think that the noble and learned Lord also acknowledged that much of the difficulty might be removed if staff costs were taken out of the equation. Certainly that is a point the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, raised just now. I wish to reflect on these matters before Report, but in the meantime I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, because constituency-based limits seem to be even more inappropriate than some of the other sanctions we have been discussing when related to non-party charities and other organisations working in the criminal justice system, as the noble and right reverend Lord pointed out—and I have referred to these organisations already—I would like to preface my contention that Clause 28, which was so admirably described by the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, should not stand part of the Bill in its present form.
On Monday, we took almost six and a half hours to complete four groups of amendments in Committee, which not only confirmed what many other noble Lords have felt since it appeared—namely, that this is a thoroughly bad Bill—but caused me to reflect on its actual aim. My reflections were stimulated by the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who suggested that its purpose was to prevent money taking over politics as it is doing in the United States.
On rereading Part 1, which is all about professional or consultant lobbyists, the scales fell from my eyes. The noble Baroness’s description of young people being trained to lobby by the Tea Party called to mind a conversation on the steps of Washington Cathedral one Sunday in September 1973 when I was accompanying my then boss, the Chief of the General Staff, to Matins during an official visit to the American army. A delightful elderly ex-ambassador to South Vietnam whom we met earlier in the visit said to him, “The trouble with this country is that it’s governed by whizz-kids, and the trouble with whizz-kids is that they haven’t got time to listen. You see, I’d told them that the Watergate building was in the Foggy Bottom district of Washington, and if they’d only called it the Foggy Bottom incident nobody would have taken them seriously”.
Then it dawned on me. Looking around Whitehall, I am struck by the numbers of whizz-kids advising every ministerial office. I understand that this is soon to be increased by 10 more per Secretary of State. They are not civil servants but whizz-kids: clever young people employed because they are uninhibited by practical experience. They are not afraid to put forward blue-skies theories, many of which I suspect that the more experienced Ministers would confine to the waste-paper basket.
The Bill is nothing more than a whizz-kid panic attack, brought on by the spectre of hordes of Tea Party-trained consultants flooding across the Atlantic and rotting up the 2015 election. Having panicked, they then tried to prove their virility by dreaming up preventive measures, which in their headlong rush they tried to process without submitting them to the normal procedures which, as we know, rubbished them once they saw them. This House too was swept along by this rush, until on Monday the voice of experience had a chance to make itself heard. I hope that on looking through Hansard their bosses will have realised that something is wrong and the whizz-kids need to be told to calm down. These hordes are not going to stream across the Atlantic, and even if they did we already have mechanisms in place that can cope with them.
Our political system, including our electoral system, may be at risk, in which case we may need to take remedial action. However, let us watch what happens in the 2015 election to see what action may need to be taken. Having made so much noise about the big society, the very last thing the Government ought to do is risk alienating voters by threatening the contribution of the voluntary sector, which is one the UK’s jewels. Rather than risk doing any more damage to ourselves and our reputation, surely we should now withdraw the Bill until we know whether we need such an instrument after 2015. I wonder whether any other noble Lords share the pious hopes of an old general.
I turn now to Clause 28. Again, we have had no examples from the Government of where disproportionate expenditure in one constituency has had an undue influence on the outcome of an election. Non-party organisations and charities, particularly those which work in the criminal justice system, are not organised into political constituencies. I cannot imagine how it is possible to divide their activities and apportion them to what is going on in constituencies, as my noble and right reverend friend pointed out. For example, consider the Shannon Trust, which provides the Toe by Toe reading programme in every prison in the country. Would it have to report how it is campaigning for funds in each of the constituencies which are involved in an election?
As has been pointed out, the Electoral Commission said that controls may be unenforceable within the regulated period, given the difficulty of obtaining robust evidence to determine and sanction breaches. If all of that is so abundantly clear to anyone looking at the whole system, why on earth are we presented with what the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, so rightly called gobbledegook which I defy anyone to understand?
Lord Hardie
My Lords, I rise as a fairly junior judge, and I also have pious hopes about the future of the Bill. My name is among those who oppose Clause 28 standing part of the Bill. I associate myself with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries of Pentregarth and my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham. I will not repeat what they have said. Much of what I wanted to say has already been said, but I want to concentrate on two things.
Lord Hardie (CB)
I did not say that. I was not anticipating 650 enforcement officers. I was suggesting that if there was to be contemporaneous enforcement of this provision, it would be necessary to monitor each of the 650 constituencies, and for the appropriate enforcement officer, who might be covering several constituencies, to take action.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I accept that clarification and apologise if I misrepresented the noble and learned Lord. As I think my noble friend Lord Horam indicated, the current political parties expenditure rules are not always the easiest to enforce. Very often the best enforcers are the opposition—because, as those of us who have had active experience of political campaigns know, if there is any hint that somewhere or other there has been jiggery-pokery or money spent that should not have been, the candidates on the receiving end will be very quick to alert the regulatory authorities to what has gone on.
The same applies to the question that was raised, quite fairly, about how expenditure could be attributed to a constituency. We believe that it would be in line with the current guidance that attributes spending between different parts of the United Kingdom. Where spending in constituency A has a minor effect in constituency B, the entire spending amount should be allocated to the constituency that it was aimed at. For example, if a third party advertised in a local paper in constituency A that just happened to be distributed in a small part of constituency B, the entire amount should be allocated to constituency A.
That was really brought home to me when the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, asked, “How would we allocate the timing of the activities of a battle bus?”. I say this with no criticism whatever, but those who have not been involved in party election campaigning do not understand the difficulties that are sometimes experienced by those who have to act as election agents in allocating and working out expenditure returns for those who are involved in it. The noble Baroness wishes to intervene but I am just going to give an example. In 1979, my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood, then David Steel, the leader of the Liberal Party, probably introduced the battle bus to British politics. Immediately after that election in May 1979, I was adopted as the Liberal European candidate for the south of Scotland, which included the constituency of Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles. I had as my election agent the agent for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles, who had been David Steel’s election agent in the general election that immediately preceded it. He went by the wonderful name of Riddle Dumble, and, as my election agent, he told me, “I’ve got this nightmare of trying to do David’s election expenses return; I have to sit down and allocate the amount of time that his battle bus was in the constituency, and what part of it represented constituency campaigning and what was part of the national campaign”. This is not something that is new.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
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Lord Tyler
I am very grateful to the Minister but also to others who contributed because, if we have done nothing else in recent minutes, we have demonstrated that there is a basic misunderstanding of the current law. It is therefore not surprising that many organisations outwith Parliament, large and small, have been confused by this issue. We should be absolutely clear, and my noble and learned friend’s latter remarks underline this, that if we are not very careful, if it were removed completely from the current 2000 Act by this Bill, this could result in those who have a direct interest in avoidance using this as a cunning plan to get around the constraints of the current law. I have read the Hansard from the time and this was anticipated as a potentially dangerous loophole in the debates in 2000 that led to the PPERA Act, and it would be totally wrong to just tear it up and throw it out.
Incidentally, in that connection, there have been comments about the role of the Electoral Commission. As I have frequently reminded your Lordships, I have a role as a member of the cross-party informal advisory group to the commission. I think that the commission should be taken to task for not identifying that this was a problem over 13 years of experience. It is unfortunate that in that respect it did not recommend to the previous Government and to Parliament that this needed to be looked at, whatever future legislation was going to try and tackle it.
It is clear from the contributions right around the House that many here who have contact with small organisations and charities know that in the past there has been a chilling effect, to use that expression, on those who wish to work in a collaborative way, which, for the reasons that have been explained so well by my noble friend Lady Tyler, needs careful attention. We need to try to avoid the existing distortions that have been identified as having been there for some time, although obviously are now more pressing, given the other changes in the Bill.
Obviously I, too, hope that between now and Report the promised discussions will result in a fairer, more rational approach for those who wish to campaign in an election together. I therefore hope that in the next two or three weeks we will see a practical solution. A number of ideas have been put forward to the Minister and I have every confidence, given what he has just said, that the Government will look at them very carefully. In the mean time—
Lord Hardie (CB)
Can I just clarify the noble Lord’s comments about the Electoral Commission, as I did not fully understand them. The criticism of the commission for not identifying this problem—was it that it ought to have identified it before the 2000 Act or between the Act and now? It was set up, as I understand it, by the 2000 Act so it could not have done it in anticipation of that.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I am so sorry if I did not make that clear. Since the 2000 Act it has become increasingly evident that this was having an effect and discouraging a number of organisations from working together. This has come to a head now but the principle was explicit in PPERA in 2000 and it is unfortunate that the commission allowed some discussion to continue at a low level but was never in a position to nor felt able to recommend to government and to Parliament that this matter needed close attention.
Lord Hardie
“Publication of guidelines for third parties regarding regulation of expenditure
(1) As soon as is reasonably practicable after the passing of this Act, the Electoral Commission shall publish guidelines to assist third parties to determine what procedures are necessary for them to ensure compliance with the provisions of this Act.
(2) The provisions of this Act regulating expenditure by third parties shall not come into effect until three months have elapsed after the publication of the guidelines mentioned in subsection (1).
(3) In the event that the effect of subsections (1) and (2) is that the period remaining prior to the 2015 general election is less than the relevant period, the limits on expenditure by third parties will be reduced to the relevant proportion of the maximum permitted expenditure.
(4) In subsection (3) the “relevant proportion” means the proportion of the maximum permitted expenditure represented by where A is the number of days remaining after the expiry of the three month period specified in subsection (2) until the date of the poll for the 2015 general election and B is 365.”
Lord Hardie
My Lords, I will speak also to Amendment 170K. Both amendments introduce new clauses into the Bill. Amendment 170J introduces a requirement on the Electoral Commission to publish guidelines for the assistance of third parties to ensure that they comply with the provisions of the Bill, when it is enacted. I understand that it would be normal for the commission to provide such guidance, but subsection (1) of the proposed new clause requires publication to be:
“As soon as is reasonably practicable after the passing of this Act”.
That provision recognises that the commission may not be able to prepare such guidance until the final version of the legislation is known.
Unlike many pieces of legislation where one might be able to prepare guidelines in anticipation of enactment, the Bill has a number of issues of uncertainty. There remains a considerable amount of uncertainty about the final provisions of the Bill in view of the extent of the opposition to different clauses and the commitment by the Government—which is welcome—to come back on Report with amendments. The Government’s response to the report from the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement is also awaited. Until all of that is known it would not be sensible to embark on preparing guidelines because one might ultimately be dealing with different provisions. It would be a waste of resources to commence work until the picture was much clearer.
Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause thereafter allows a period of three months after the publication of the guidance to enable recognised third parties to put in place procedures necessary to ensure that they comply with the Act’s provisions. It is clear from the discussion in Committee that there will undoubtedly be a bureaucratic burden on third parties. Once the guidelines are known, the procedures might well involve the recruitment and training of staff. It will certainly involve administrative procedures, including measures for recording and monitoring expenditure on a constituency basis—if the constituency provisions come in—and it will involve procedures for making returns, including weekly ones, as mentioned by my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries of Pentregarth.
We should not underestimate the huge bureaucratic burden imposed on small organisations by this legislation. It is appropriate that, if this legislation is to work, they should be given a reasonable period to make arrangements to enable them to comply, particularly as a failure to comply will expose them to criminal conviction and sanction.
I recognise that by furthering this approach, one might well be encroaching into the year before the election. Subsections (3) and (4) of the proposed new clause are my attempt to address that difficulty. They provide, in that eventuality, for the regulated period to be reduced below the 365 days before the next election. Their effect is to reduce the period and to reduce the maximum amount of allowable expenditure in proportion to the amount of the year that is left.
The provisions of my proposed new clause are fair and reasonable. They will not prevent the Bill, when enacted, having effect prior to the next election, if that is the will of Parliament. However, I recognise, having regard to other possible approaches, that the new clause will be unnecessary if the relevant period is reduced to, say, six months, which other noble Lords suggested. However, it is lodged in anticipation that the period will remain at one year.
The second proposed new clause is in Amendment 170K. It would ensure that the Government recognise—as I am sure that they do—the significant additional burden that the Bill would impose upon the Electoral Commission. This is reflected in the various new provisions, requiring guidance, monitoring and enforcement, particularly if the commission has to monitor and enforce contemporaneously the provisions on constituency expenditure. I referred to my concerns about that when opposing the Question that Clause 28 should stand part of the Bill, and I do not intend to repeat them here.
In addition to those concerns, I anticipate that if we are in the realms of monitoring constituency expenditure and taking contemporaneous action, and stopping campaign groups or whatever from doing particular things in the course of an election, there will be a great increase in the work of the courts in the form of judicial review. Some campaign groups will just not accept the decision of the commission and will challenge its action. Has provision been made for that eventuality by the Government in making some allowance for the commission to resist such actions, should they arise?
There will be an added burden on the commission’s resources due to the time constraints occasioned by the history of the Bill. Many noble Lords expressed concern about this at Second Reading. Again, it is unnecessary to repeat those concerns today. Suffice it to say that the limited consultation and the short period of time available before the general election, coupled with the 365-day relevant period, combine to impose additional pressures on the commission’s staff to produce guidelines that will be effective within a very short timescale.
Of necessity, that will involve the commission in expenditure that could have been avoided, or at least reduced, if the Government had followed a different course. The commission should not bear that cost or the additional cost of monitoring and enforcement. This clause seeks to ensure that they do not do so. There is no point in passing the Bill if the Government will not give a commitment to provide adequate resources to those who are charged with the responsibility of regulating and enforcing the regime that the Bill introduces. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Obviously, if Parliament wishes that to be the case and the measure is included in the Bill, we would have a different proposition, and we would want to reflect whether that was one which the Government would wish to support. Notwithstanding whether or not the measure is in the Bill, the respective commissions will no doubt hear the concerns that have been expressed and the legitimate expectation as regards their response in respect of these matters.
As I said, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred to resources. It is important to recognise the position of the Electoral Commission. It is an independent body established by Parliament and is overseen by the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, which oversees the Electoral Commission’s annual estimates. I checked during the debate and I am not aware of it having asked for more resources in respect of this legislation. However, if the commission requires extra resources to perform this or any other duties, including producing this guidance, it would be for the Speaker’s Committee to come to a view on the resourcing of the Electoral Commission in the light of its roles and responsibilities. I think that there is agreement across the Chamber on the importance of proper guidance and clarity. I hope that this debate has been helpful in communicating that message to those who have responsibility for that. I therefore invite the noble and learned Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Hardie
I have certainly found the debate helpful. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, for their contributions. I should say to the noble Baroness that, as a lawyer who has benefited in the past from gaps in legislation, it may seem a bit churlish of me to deprive the modern generation of that. However, I agree with her that we in this House should do what we can to avoid gaps arising of which people can take advantage because of the uncertainty that causes for others. I thank the Minister for his response. I note that the Electoral Commission will produce guidance. I had not appreciated the niceties about funding, but I am grateful to him for those comments. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
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Lord Hardie
Lord Hardie (CB)
My Lords, in speaking to this amendment, I will also speak to Amendments 159E, 159F, 160D, 160E and 160F. As this is the first time for me to speak about this part of the Bill, I should declare an interest as honorary president of Capability Scotland, a charity that is concerned with provision of services and support for multiple-handicapped people.
Controlled expenditure requires two elements. The first is that the activity resulting in the expenditure must be within the definition of what is controlled. Secondly, the expenditure must reasonably be regarded as intended to promote the electoral success of one or more registered parties or candidates within certain categories. Section 85 of the 2000 Act is restrictive in its scope. It confines controlled expenditure to the production or publication of election material made available to the public or sections of the public. In that situation it would be relatively easy to assess objectively whether the intention of the published material was to promote the electoral success of individuals or registered parties. However, Clause 26(2) of the Bill extends the meaning and scope of controlled expenditure by expanding the activities from the mere production and publication of election material to include the various activities listed in Part 1 of new Schedule 8A to the 2000 Act added by Clause 26(2)(a) and Schedule 3. These activities include market research, public meetings, rallies and media events.
Many organisations with a legitimate interest in the democratic process indulge in such activities at different times. For example, charities and others may be involved in campaigns throughout the year, highlighting the plight of those in our society who are poor, homeless or otherwise disadvantaged, including the disabled. These campaigns might intensify at Christmas and throughout the winter months when the consequences of having no shelter or hot food are more acute. At other times, they may concentrate on the inability of the poorer members of society to afford heat, light or other basic essentials. These activities are not associated with elections and they are not confined to the year immediately preceding an election.
A campaign to make poverty history in our society might suggest various solutions directed at unemployment, the level of wages and benefits, the price of energy or other measures. It might involve organising public rallies and media events. If such a campaign started before the commencement of the regulated period before an election, expenditure could be incurred with impunity, but one might expect such a campaign to continue during the regulated period in the lead-up to an election. If that happened, different issues would arise.
If the organisers considered that there was a risk that their activities might be interpreted as having an intention to favour a candidate or a party at the forthcoming election, they would be obliged to incur the cost of the administrative burden imposed by the Act of having systems and personnel in place to comply with the Act and make the return. If they genuinely believed that they were not covered by the Act, but ultimately found out they were wrong, as I will explain later, they would face prosecution and a criminal penalty.
Similar consequences would apply to local campaign groups concerned about a local issue, such as the threatened closure of their hospital, the route of HS2 through the constituency, fracking or the existence or otherwise of wind farms. If no party or candidate had policies about such matters, the local campaign group, or the charity, as the case may be, could spend money without fear of contravening the rules about controlled expenditure, but what if—and this is a point that was raised on the previous amendment—a candidate with such policies emerged after the start of the regulated period or an existing candidate adopted them in the course of his campaign? The intention of the campaign by the local group or charity would not have altered, but the organisers would risk prosecution if after that time they continued to incur expenditure without complying with the provisions about controlled expenditure, the reason for that risk being that it might be argued that a subsidiary intention of the campaign was to procure the electoral success of the candidate who had adopted it, even if he or she were not mentioned. While such an intention may not be the aim of the organisers of the campaign, and might not even be in their contemplation, it may be a consequence of their campaign. In that situation, if an objective evaluation of the case resulted in the conclusion that such an outcome could reasonably be regarded as a subsidiary intention of the campaign, the consequence would be a criminal conviction and a financial penalty for those responsible for the campaign.
The risk of such consequences might well induce organisers of a campaign to abandon it in the regulated period prior to an election. That cannot be desirable. We should encourage participation in the democratic process, particularly in the period immediately prior to an election. We should not threaten with prosecution campaigners who are genuinely concerned about social, local or other issues of genuine concern to the electorate.
I accept, of course, that there have to be some controls but where the scope of controlled activity is being extended as widely as in this case, the control should be proportionate and we should make some allowance for the genuine subjective intention of campaigners. We can achieve that balance by restricting controls and consequential offences to expenditure where the principal purpose of the expenditure is to achieve electoral success for candidates or parties. This is the aim of my Amendments 159A, 159E, 159F, 160E and 160F.
If the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General does not favour this solution, perhaps a more acceptable one would be to introduce a statutory defence to any criminal offence, similar to my Amendment 160D. If that route were preferred, I accept that it would necessary to redraft the clause as it currently includes a reference to the principal amendment. Without such a defence, we risk criminalising campaigners who are genuinely concerned about issues that matter to the electorate and do not seek to promote the electoral success of a candidate or candidates or a political party or parties. I beg to move.
Lord Walton of Detchant (CB)
My Lords, this amendment and the subsequent ones, such as that carefully drafted by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, give me the opportunity of raising an issue of concern to a number of charities. Much has been said about the role of charities in respect of lobbying activities and a number of reassuring comments have been made during early stages of this Bill. However, I am particularly concerned about the activities of all-party groups within Parliament. Many of these groups are in the medical research field and are serviced and provided with financial, secretarial and other support by charities. They are dependent on this to a considerable extent. Of course, one would say at once that if they are all-party groups and their membership includes Members of the Commons and of this House from all parties, surely they cannot be construed as lobbying in search of electoral success. That is an entirely reasonable conclusion to draw. However, there is always a possibility that a particular all-party group may be so dominated by members of one political party that its attitude to an approaching election could change quite significantly.
I want to give noble Lords an example. I speak as the life president of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign. I served on an inquiry by the All-Party Group on Muscular Dystrophy, which conducted a lengthy inquiry over a 12-month period, rather like an inquiry by one of your Lordships’ Select Committees. It took a great deal of written evidence and held public meetings to which a number of witnesses were called. The Muscular Dystrophy Campaign covered the costs, including the expenses of those giving evidence. We discovered in that inquiry that boys with the most severe form, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, who, when I started work in that field in 1950, were dying, often grossly deformed, in their teens, were now, with greatly improved care, living into their 30s and some even into their 40s in places such as Newcastle, Oxford, Queens Square in London, Oswestry and a number of other centres, with wonderful rehabilitation and respiratory support.
However, that inquiry demonstrated that in the south-west many of them were still dying in their teens. That was also true in the north-west. When we produced this report, which went to all the major health bodies across the country, and it went to the South West Strategic Health Authority, the executive director, Sir Ian Carruthers, was so shocked that it immediately put another £1 million into care for patients with muscular dystrophy and other neuromuscular diseases in that area. Mike Farrar, then the chief executive of the North West Strategic Health Authority, said that anything Ian Carruthers could do, it could do better, so it put money into those services in that area.
That was clearly lobbying with a view to improving services and influencing the activity of health service organisations. There are a number of people working on that and many other charities to do with things like stroke, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, and another inquiry into Parkinson’s disease has just been conducted, demonstrating a similar unevenness of standards of care across the country. The question is whether the all-party groups serviced by these charities are at risk under the Bill. It is crucial that we have an answer from the Minister about this. Many of the charities which service the all-party groups have expressed serious concern that their activities might be adversely influenced by the provisions of the Bill.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I find it difficult to see how an all-party group, supported by all parties, would fall foul of something, because by its very nature that would be difficult. The noble Baroness raises a point that was at the core of the points made by my noble friend Lord Tyler about when there is a change in a particular policy. This brings us to an important issue about what should be in the Bill and what should be left to guidance. This point was also made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, who asked about groups changing their policy position in the middle of the controlled period.
Lord Hardie
I was not speaking about a group changing its position but about a group remaining constant and a candidate then adopting the campaign. I accept that retrospectively the expenditure is protected, but what about prospectively? What about future expenditure?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I apologise; I misrepresented the point. What happens if the group maintains its campaign and one party suddenly comes on board and, presumably, one party breaks rank and retreats? The Electoral Commission’s guidance is clear that if a party or candidate subsequently adopts a campaigning organisation’s policy, it will not be caught unless the campaigning organisation draws attention to the fact or increases its campaigning as a result. In addition, a group must be reasonably regarded as intending to procure electoral success. If at the time a party or candidate does not have a policy on the subject of the organisation’s campaign, it is very difficult to see how it could be seen to be promoting that candidate or the party. Indeed, it would seem to be impossible to objectively argue that a policy campaign by a third party could be intended to favour a party or candidates if those parties’ or candidates’ views on the policy were unknown at the time.
A question was also asked about the scorecard count. A third party setting out a scorecard 11 months before an election could reasonably be regarded as trying to get parties to change their policy, not necessarily to promote electoral success. However, a third party publishing a scorecard a week before election day might be regarded as promoting the electoral success of a party or candidate.
The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, put his finger on it by saying that many of the groups he has talked to would rather that this was in legislation. On the scorecard issue, I sought to show that there were shades of this. It can sometimes be very difficult if you try to pin it down too much in legislation. Often when we legislate with specific examples—I have heard this on other subjects in your Lordships’ House—we can do more damage and cause more uncertainty by what is left out than by what is there. It does not allow the flexibility to take full circumstances into account.
What has been raised is a perfectly legitimate point for this Committee to express views on. We as a Government should consider whether it is better to have these things set out in statute, subject to the misgivings that I have expressed about inflexibility—once it is there, it takes primary legislation to repeal it—or whether it is better to allow that position to be determined by guidance.
The next paragraph in the report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life states:
“That said, we acknowledge, of course, that in some cases it will be hard to determine whether the advertising and other propaganda undertaken by an individual or organisation other than a political party is or is not intended to affect an election outcome. Ultimately it will be up to the courts to decide in such cases, but one role we envisage for the Electoral Commission”—
which did not exist when this was written—
“is in giving authoritative but not legally binding advice on such matters”.
It would appear that those who set all this in motion some 15 years ago saw giving guidance as a proper role for the Electoral Commission. As I indicated in my opening remarks on the previous amendment, we engage with the Electoral Commission and believe that it would be helpful to have draft guidance available. I also accept—this is something that we want to reflect on—the views that have been expressed in the House that some of this would be better put in primary legislation. That said, as I indicated, there are drawbacks with that as well.
I hope that in that spirit I can invite the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Hardie
I thank noble Lords on all sides of the House for participating in this full and interesting debate. It is quite clear that there is a certain consensus that it is essential we get the balance right in the Act, avoid unintended consequences and clear up grey areas. I note from the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General that the Government will consider the extent to which the legislation should be amended. In light of that, I will reflect on everything that has been said today. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
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Lord Hardie (CB)
My Lords, I seek clarification from the noble Lord, who is recognised as an expert in the field of charitable law. One concern that has been expressed to me is that, if charities are exempt from these provisions, there may be a means for others to use charities to avoid the measures. Could the noble Lord address that concern, which others may have? If people could be reassured on that matter, we would be with the noble Lord.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, for raising that issue. It is one of two issues used by the Harries commission to justify its recommendation to keep charities in the net. But it simply does not stack up in any way. Would the noble and learned Lord give an example of where he thinks the problem that he has enunciated would be found?
Lord Hardie
Simply, a concern has been expressed. As the noble Lord has observed, it is referred to in the report. The noble Lord may wish to have time to reflect on the matter and come back. To my mind, if that concern could be answered, I would be reassured.