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

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I begin with an apology to my noble friend on the Front Bench and to the House for having been unable to be present for the first few minutes of his opening speech. I hope that the House will forgive me if I pray in aid that it is not every day that you introduce your own wife to your Lordships’ House, and that the family photographs in the Robing Room took rather longer than was anticipated. I apologise for any discourtesy to the House.

I turn to the Bill. Like many other noble Lords who have spoken, I share the view that it is an unfortunate but undeniable fact that public trust in our great institutions, particularly our political institutions, has declined in recent years. We can speculate about the reasons for this. Some say that in some cases it is exaggerated by journalistic supposition and not always based on fact. Others say there is an increasing public appetite for conspiracy theories. Last but perhaps not least, there is the increasing unreadiness of people to accept the inevitable unfairnesses in life, seeing them instead as the product of a system that is biased against them. Whatever the causes, the decline is there, and this is the challenge that we now face.

Other noble Lords have used the phrase, “sunshine is the best disinfectant”, and I share that view. A Bill that includes “transparency of lobbying” has my instinctive sympathy and support. Moving on from that very general statement, and changing my metaphor, if I may, we have to ask whether it does what it says on the tin. This is an area where I and a lot of other noble Lords have some questions.

When I have been considering the Bill, I have been applying a series of yardsticks by which I adjudge its efficacy: its comprehensiveness, its comprehensibility, its consistency and its proportionality. First, by “comprehensiveness” I mean: do the provisions of the Bill catch a sufficiency of the target group? If not, we all know how quickly organisations can and will reconfigure themselves to get around statutory provisions. Secondly, the Bill will sweep up a range of organisations hitherto unaffected. By “comprehensibility”, I mean: will such organisations, especially small ones, be able readily to understand what is required of them without devoting a fantastic amount of management time and/or professional fees and advice to their interpretation? Thirdly, a number of bodies will be concerned with enforcing this legislation. They include, obviously, the new registrar of lobbyists, the Electoral Commission and the Charity Commission. By “consistency”, I mean: will all the policies of the bodies be joined up? In other words, will they be consistent one with another? Fourthly, by “proportionate”, I mean: can we avoid the creation of yet another huge bureaucratic process-driven machine, so that while boxes are ticked judgment is forgotten?

I need to remind the House that I have undertaken two inquiries into the charity and voluntary sector for the Government, focusing, inter alia, on the regulatory burdens that have affected that sector, and that until about 12 months ago I was president of the NCVO, so it will not surprise your Lordships that most of my comments are focused on Part 2. Before I turn to that part, however, I would like to raise a couple of points in relation to Part 1. I note many of the concerns that other noble Lords have raised about the competence of this measure and its inability to catch a sufficiency of the target population, and no doubt we shall explore this in Committee.

I want to raise a point about the position of the registrar. The registrar will surely have an important, indeed key, role to play in this new system. From the legislation it seems to me that he will be its linchpin, and it will be very important that he carries out his task properly if we are to move towards restoring public trust. This may require him from time to time to take actions that are disobliging, certainly to lobbyists but sometimes to the Government of the day, of whatever colour it may be. Indeed, some may argue that if he was not occasionally disobliging, he probably would not be doing his job very well. Yet when you look at Schedule 2, you see that his position is very weak indeed: he may be dismissed by the Minister on the grounds that he is unable, unwilling or unfit. That seems to be a pretty peremptory way to be able to treat this official, particularly when you compare it with the protection that appears to be given to members of the Charity Commission, let alone that afforded to members of the Electoral Commission. I would appreciate a few comments from the Minister on that point.

I turn to Part 2. Early in the proceedings on the Bill in another place, we received some pretty heated comments from charities and voluntary organisations about the impact of Part 2, suggesting, sometimes in terms, that it represents the end of the world as we know it. This is some of the substance that illuminated the background remarks by my noble friend Lord Tyler. Recent comments seem to have been more moderate in tone, and I welcome that because in my view merely to have passed a public benefit test does not excuse an organisation from the need for some level of scrutiny—rather the reverse, since charitable status carries with it many privileges, not least an element of subsidy from the taxpayer through gift aid.

I, for the reason mentioned above—my work with the sector—am a passionate supporter of the charity sector and all that it stands for. However, it needs to keep its credentials burnished bright, particularly in the eyes of the general public. Its reputation remains high among the general public, but we are all aware of how quickly reputations can be lost and of how, once lost, they are extremely hard to recover. The glory of the sector is that it is of all political parties but of none. That must be a distinction that we should try to preserve as we consider the provisions of the Bill.

Having said that, the sector has some very reasonable concerns about aspects of Part 2. Many noble Lords have talked about the confusing nature of Clause 26 on controlled expenditure. Noble Lords raised the particular issue that the cost of volunteer time is included. My noble friend Lord Phillips got up and said that he would shoot this canard; I am not quite sure if you can shoot one, but he dealt with it very effectively by quoting from the PPER Act. I hope that he is right. He is a very eminent charity lawyer, while I am not a lawyer at all. However, reading Schedule 3 to the Bill, which amends qualifying expenses, in connection with that section of the briefing from the Electoral Commission which is entitled:

“What the changes mean for campaigners’ plans”,

I feel a scintilla of doubt. I will be delighted to be put right and to be told that I have got it completely wrong, but I seem to feel the ground shifting under me slightly. Therefore, this and other questions raise the issue of the comprehensibility test. We need to spend quite a bit of time in Committee getting the Government to explain in detail the practical implications of what is intended here.

When he comes to wind up, my noble friend may be inclined to say that a great deal of guidance is already available. Of course, that is absolutely for sure. CC9, which I believe the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred to, which is the Charity Commission guidance, Charities, Elections and Referendums, runs to 35 pages, with a three-page addendum published in January 2011. The Electoral Commission’s guidance for non-party campaigners runs to eight pages, with a further eight-page addendum. To put it no higher, there are four documents and if noble Lords read them—and I am sure that many noble Lords have done so—they are not easy to synthesise. At their heart is the problem of differentiating between policy work and campaigning, and the different interpretations put upon those two very important words by the two different bodies, the Electoral Commission and the Charity Commission.

That takes me to the point about consistency. We need to find some joined-up thinking between the Government’s lawyers, those of the Electoral Commission and those of the Charity Commission. Perhaps at least a proportion of the steam could be taken out of these issues if some joint guidance could be agreed between the two commissions and published. I do not underestimate the difficulties of getting the two commissions to collaborate—I have been trying for some three years to get Companies House and the Charity Commission to agree a common standard form for charitable companies. To describe my progress as “glacial” would be altogether too rapid a description. However, my noble friend would do a great deal to reassure people if those two bodies could be brought together and made to produce something that made sense and which did not require charities to produce two separate sets of guidance and pull them together.

Finally, I turn briefly to proportionality. I share the view that the reduction of limits is unreasonable, particularly that to £2,000. The £2,000 limit, applied to Wales, is a figure that would exclude almost any activity. The hire of a hall, some staff costs and publicity could go over the limit. In his very interesting remarks, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby talked about the importance of local campaigns. This is where that particular low level will be most keenly felt. I invite my noble friend to reflect on how we would deal with Kidderminster Hospital. That was a single issue, fought in a single constituency; how would it be dealt with under these provisions, and what would be the impact? I am not quite sure what it would be, but I am sure that it would have some important things, and maybe some challenges, for the people of Kidderminster, who passionately want their hospital preserved, and that these regulations might make that much more difficult.

There is some important work to be done on coalitions of charities working together and the way that they have to report separately. It is incredibly bureaucratic and burdensome for every charity member of a coalition to have to report about all the other members of that coalition, not only every quarter but every week during an election campaign. Can we not find some way to create a coalition leader that could undertake this work on its behalf?

I have overrun my time. To conclude, I do not doubt that there are important issues and challenges here, and the Bill seeks to address them. However, we will have a lot of work to do in Committee and thereafter if we are to avoid the rather dismal outcome predicted in that leader in the Financial Times on 9 September, entitled:

“A rushed bill will deliver bad law”.