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

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes]

That is why my assumption is that, although the Government might not respond directly by accepting the new clause, colleagues on the Front Bench will be able to answer the point made by the Electoral Commission, as there is obviously regular engagement between the Government and the commission. I hope those on the Front Bench will be positive about that point.

It is clear, as my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) said earlier, that new clause 3 is not supported by the Electoral Commission. For want of other guidance, the Electoral Commission is always the best place to go to for a steer on the appropriate response, so I will not support the new clause.

My concern is that the Government should give time for Committees to report and for their deliberations to be considered and that, when the Electoral Commission expressly supports the Government’s proposals or proposed changes, the Government should be responsive.

Let me make a general point about the timetable. Obviously, the Bill took a huge amount of time in gestation and was then born very quickly—it shot out of the cot, or cradle, or wherever it had been kept—

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

That is often the way.

[Simon Hughes]

Yes, it is. The Bill was held in dock for a long time, but then somebody suddenly pressed the button and out it came. I do not think that anyone can complain that there has not been enough time in Committee or on Report; the complaint is that, as people know, we have not had the pre-legislative scrutiny that all Bills ideally should have. I know that the Leader of the House would accept that in principle.

We are in the second day on Report and we must have Third Reading, so we cannot now do all the revision and careful scrutiny that we would like to. That is probably true across the House. I am in favour of many of the Bill’s principles, so I do not have issues with some of the changes, but I hope that the Government will ensure that there is the time for that careful consideration and to listen to the voices before the Bill goes from this place to the House of Lords.

A commission has been set up, prompted by the voluntary sector, to be chaired by the Lord Bishop of Oxford, who is a Member of the House of Lords. It is considering these issues and will have a valuable contribution to make, provided it can report soon. I hope, too, that the Government will take seriously what it says.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lansley]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I thank Members from both sides of the House for their contribution to the debate. We have been busily engaged in considering the Bill on Second Reading, in Committee and on Report on either side of the summer and conference recesses and during the September sitting. The contributions of Members have exposed the issues and enabled the debate to take place.

As on Second Reading, I thank the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee for its scrutiny. I met the Committee on the morning of the Second Reading debate and my colleagues met it before that. The Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), made manifest his irritation with the amount of time that was available for that scrutiny on several occasions. However, I thank him and his colleagues for their participation.

With regard to our debates yesterday and today, I wrote to the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights on Monday to explain in detail why I believe the Bill to be compatible with the European convention on human rights. I look forward to the Committee’s report. My colleagues and I will take full account of its conclusions, which I hope it will reach soon.

I thank my good friend and colleague, the Deputy Leader of the House. I also thank the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), who has responsibility for employee relations. Owing to the length of today’s debates, she has not been able to explain part 3 as fully as she would have wished. I am extremely grateful to the former Minister with responsibility for political and constitutional reform, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith). I am also grateful to the officials who have supported the ministerial team and to parliamentary counsel for all their work on the Bill.

I do not want this moment to pass without expressing my thanks to the kaleidoscope of talent—I use those words advisedly—that has participated in the debate from the Opposition Front Bench. I know that in order to try to construct an Opposition they found it interesting to see how our team was constructed. The shadow Leader of the House and the hon. Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) and for Caerphilly (Wayne David) all contributed to our consideration of the Bill. They were an Opposition in search of an argument and they did their best.

The Government made a commitment that we would be the most open Government ever and that we would promote transparency in public life. We have sought to improve public confidence in our political system. We have been the first Government to publish details of the meetings that Ministers and permanent secretaries have had with external organisations. We have published details of our relationships with media editors and the like. We have published details of hospitality, departmental business plans and procurement processes. There is a wide range of raw data that people can assess for themselves. We have always sought to take transparency further.

The purpose of the Bill is to achieve transparency by fulfilling our coalition commitment to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists so that the public know who lobbyists represent when they meet decision makers, and by making it clearer where and how money is being spent by third parties at elections to influence the outcomes of those elections. We are also seeking transparency by giving the public, and members of trade unions, the confidence that they know who their members are. Together, those measures will increase transparency in the political system.

[Jonathan Edwards]

rose—

[Jonathan Edwards]

On Second Reading I listed a number of lobbying scandals that have decimated and dominated politics in this place for far too long: donations for dinners, cash for honours, cash for questions, a ministerial cab for hire. Which of those scandals will the Bill stop in future?

[Mr Lansley]

The character of each of those scandals is of a particular kind. We are setting out to ensure that relationships between lobbyists and key decision makers in Government are more transparent in future, so that those who impact on our political system do so in the glare of public life. For most of the things the hon. Gentleman describes, people were trying to seek influence covertly, and in some cases were completely contrary to the law and the codes of conduct of this House and elsewhere, or of government. We must expose those relationships everywhere, where we can, and when people breach the code, we will deal with it.

The Bill has been widely debated in the House and beyond, and I thank Members for sharing their views, because healthy debate is a cornerstone of our democracy. The measures in the Bill have also been misrepresented, and during the passage of the Bill we have fully exposed where those misrepresentations lie. The hon. Member for Nottingham North explained on many occasions in the course of his 190 minutes of offerings that there had not been sufficient scrutiny of the Bill. I gently say to him, however, that one does not take the moral high ground over lack of scrutiny by taking up more time than is needed to explain the issues. [Interruption.] Actually, I think there are relatively few issues, and we have exposed them clearly and answered them fully. I encourage Members in the other place to read the debates. They will see that, as the Bill completed its passage through this House, those issues have been answered, and by virtue of the amendments tabled the Bill has been improved. As is always the case, all is capable of improvement.

[Simon Hughes]

There can be no serious objection to parts 1 and 3 of the Bill, but there are clearly continuing concerns about part 2. The Leader of the House has committed to considering the report by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee when it is published, but will he confirm the undertaking that he and his colleagues will work to ensure that the misrepresentations are dealt with, and that the concerns—and some uncertainties—can be discussed with Ministers, the voluntary sector and others, including the Electoral Commission, in the days ahead?

[Mr Lansley]

I hope I will be clear, just as I thought my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House was clear during discussions on part 2 of the Bill. We had a number of meetings with a range of organisations, and we listened carefully to points raised in this House and by those organisations. I met the National Council for Voluntary Organisations before Committee stage, and I was clear that we would make changes to the definition of expenditure for electoral purposes, to remove what it regarded as the risks and uncertainty associated with those definitions. It was not our intention to change in substance the test for what constitutes expenditure for electoral purposes, albeit that we intend—rightly, I think—to introduce greater transparency by including the range of controlled activities in a way consistent with recommendations by the Electoral Commission in its regulatory review.

It is important for us to have a registration threshold, so that those who want to spend a significant amount of money to influence electoral outcomes do so openly. They will not be prevented from doing that, but they will have to do it in a transparent way. It is important to get big money out of trying to influence electoral outcomes. It is therefore important to bring down the threshold, and for it to be disaggregated so that it cannot be spent disproportionately in individual constituencies or small geographic areas.

We did not want to change the test, in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, that only expenditure that could reasonably be regarded as intended to procure or promote the electoral success of a party or candidate should be controlled expenditure. That will still be true. In fact, it will be even more narrowly true, because we have taken out the strand relating to enhancing the standing of political parties at relevant elections, as it was capable of being used to create uncertainty.

Members have quoted from the letter by Sir Stuart Etherington, the chief executive of NVCO. I urge them to read it carefully. It says that there is uncertainty associated with the definition in the 2000 Act, and that that continues to be the case. It is the job of the Electoral Commission—taking the test we have here, which is as clear as we could make it—to inform organisations through the guidance it produces. We stand ready to work with the Electoral Commission. It is an independent organisation and it is for it to decide how it goes about that task, but we could not have made it any clearer.

[Lady Hermon]

The Leader of the House is being most generous in taking interventions. May I ask him to address one particular issue that pertains to Northern Ireland? He emphasised the need for transparency and the need to know who influences elections, and I think we all agree that that is important. However, the Government have agreed that the anonymity of donations to political parties in Northern Ireland will continue. That can no longer be justified on security grounds, because Northern Ireland has successfully hosted, without incident, the G8 summit in Fermanagh and the world police and fire games. How does he square those two things?

[Mr Lansley]

Each has its own particular characteristics and the Speaker will forgive me if I do not respond to that point, as I think it is outwith the terms of the Bill. We do not intend to change that. We are introducing transparency relating to expenditure by third parties seeking to influence the outcome of elections. The Bill has no impact on the donations that individuals or organisations make to political parties, or on how political parties spend money at elections.

We were not able, on Report, to discuss the final group of amendments on part 3 of the Bill. We continue to value the important role trade unions play in public life. We recognise that their influence extends beyond their own members, which is why it is important for members, employers and the public to have confidence that unions know who their members are. The Bill is in no sense an attack on trade unions. That is not correct. The measures are not designed to make it harder for unions to operate. I will be clear: the Bill will not prevent unions from taking industrial action; it will not require unions to collect more data; and nor will it place membership data in the hands of employers. Instead, it provides the public with reassurance that trade unions are fulfilling the duties to which they are already bound. Part 3 of the Bill strengthens requirements in existing legislation to ensure that unions can demonstrate that they keep an up-to-date and accurate membership register.

Part 1 will create transparency with regard to who is lobbying whom in relation to key decision makers. The Labour party, and last year’s report by the Select Committee on the earlier consultation, seeks a different Bill—one that creates a large-scale bureaucracy listing everybody who engages in any kind of lobbying activity. We have looked at that approach, and, frankly, it is not remotely justified. Transparency is the way forward: transparency in lobbying and in third-party campaigning. When people set out to influence the electoral outcomes, they must do so in a transparent way.

Charities, voluntary organisations and third parties who want to campaign on policies and issues will continue to be free to do so, as long as they do not step over the line and set out to influence electoral outcomes directly. There will be transparency in how trade unions represent their members, because they will know who their members are. These are the ways we will provide reassurance in the political system and enhance confidence through transparency and accountability. I commend the Bill to the House.