Cyber Democratic Influence

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Collins of Highbury

Monday 11th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, the Russian intelligence service effort to target Members of the Commons and this House, civil servants, journalists and NGOs is an attack not just on individuals but on British democracy, and I am sure Members across the House will join me in condemning it in the strongest possible terms. My right honourable friend David Lammy reminded the other place that next year will see elections not only in Britain but in the United States, India and the European Union, with more than 70 elections scheduled in 40 countries across the world.

Trust and confidence in our system of democracy will be undermined if we are unable to ensure it is free from such interference. Leo Doherty, the Minister, said that the Statement was made now

“to ensure that its full deterrent effect is properly timed”,

and he reminded the House that

“our duty is to remain ever vigilant”.

Can the Minister tell us how the Government are working with other countries that share our democratic values to monitor interference and co-ordinate a response to any attempts to influence our democratic processes?

In response to Labour’s call for a joint cell between the Home Office and the Foreign Office to speed up decision-making, the Minister in the other place said that he was confident that the Defending Democracy Taskforce, led by the Security Minister, represented a robust and cross-departmental response. However, he did acknowledge that on the wider picture of disinformation, we needed to

“up our game to counter disinformation, call Russia out and better resource and energise our own security posture in the cyber domain”.

The use of artificial intelligence and deepfakes to seed false narratives, spread lies and foment divisions through mainstream and social media is an increasing threat, as identified in the other place. Leo Doherty talked of

“an enhanced degree of resource, organisation and political will”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/12/23; cols. 491-2.]

Can the Minster give us a little more detail on how this will be done?

Parliament has been united against Putin’s imperial aggression in Ukraine. The Opposition and the Government have been as one, and unity is a source of strength and pride. In the face of these threats, this House must remain united. Let me assure the House tonight that the Labour Party will work in partnership and full co-operation with the Government and all relevant authorities to take the necessary steps to address this threat and protect the integrity of our political process from hostile interference.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I share the sentiment that we all need to work together in defending democracy. I thank the Government for the Statement, but this is not a surprise, as we have known for some years that people in Russia—in previous years in Ukraine—and Belarus have been doing their best to hack into British politics to spread disinformation and to influence what is going on. We also know about the Chinese attempts to do the same.

This is all part of the transformation of election campaigning since the digital revolution and social media have become so important. I look back to the first election in which I took part, in 1966, when achieving an article by my party leader in the News of the World was by far the most important thing I did in four weeks. We are now in an utterly different world. Perhaps I should add that this was partly because the article appeared against a half-page picture of the President of Indonesia’s fourth wife, who was extremely attractive. At least people will have read “Jo Grimond” in the headline.

I emphasise here wider issues about shared interests and how the Government and other parties should be encouraged to work together. At present, there is, if you look at all the opinion polls, a very low level of public trust in Westminster politics and the lowest level of trust in government as such. That suggests that the Government and other parties should be as transparent as possible about what is being done and as cross-party and non-partisan as possible.

I note that the Electoral Integrity Programme is part of DLUHC. That seems to me odd. It ought to be part of a stronger Electoral Commission. I regret that the Bill—now an Act—last year weakened the Electoral Commission, because this is central to our democracy. We need to have integrity which is guaranteed by a cross-party and non-party institution. Similarly, on a slightly different collection of issues, the Defending Democracy Taskforce was introduced very much as a government initiative without engaging much with the opposition parties. I suggest that, in reassuring the wider public and civil society and rebuilding the public trust which has been lost, some mechanism involving other parties and cross-party organisations with government activity in this field would be useful. It is not for the Executive to defend integrity and democracy—after all, sometimes it is the Executive who undermine democracy; it is for Parliament, the courts and other independent agencies.

I want to make a second wider point. We should not ignore attempts at foreign interference in our democratic processes by non-state actors, as well as state actors. The Minister in the other place, in replying to one of the questions, said:

“I am pleased that in our domestic legislation we have the ability to ensure that countries with malign intent do not use think-tanks or other fronts to influence domestic political discourse in a way that is contrary to the health of our democracy”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/12/23; col. 492.]

I agree with that, and I am concerned that there are now a number of extremely well-funded, very right-wing American organisations, on the edge of being anti-democratic, which are doing their best to interfere in British politics and which are putting funds into party factions, into conferences that take place in London and into think tanks. This is non-transparent and, I suggest, ought to be included in the integrity issue of foreign money flowing into British politics.

We have all witnessed the deterioration of American political campaigning and debate in recent years. We have a shared interest in preventing the UK following down that road. That needs to be part of how we prevent that happening, with conspiracy theories creeping into this country and so on. Free and fair elections depend on free and open debate, in which respect for facts and evidence is shared on all sides—a quality that has now been almost entirely lost in American campaigning. We need to make sure it is not lost here.

Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (Amendment of List of Responders) Order 2023

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Collins of Highbury

Monday 23rd January 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for this. This comes in the midst of strong negative comments across the House about the way in which Ministers are now handling too many SIs and too much delegated legislation. This seems to be a model of how it should work, and I compliment the Minister.

I am most acutely interested in the flood prevention area. As the “Saltaire” in my title suggests, we live on—happily, above—the River Aire. Indeed, the weekend before last, we walked down to see just how high the river had got. We well remember when, four winters ago, it was higher than it had been for over a century. All of us in Yorkshire who live below the Pennines are now conscious of the increasing flood risk which we all face and how much of a problem this becomes in terms of the multiagency response when floods happen. Happily, we are not in the Yorkshire coal-mining area, and lead mining is more of a legacy problem in the Dales, but I am conscious that in the acute wet weather last summer, there were potholes in the limestone region which filled up with water for the first time in nearly a century. Clearly, we are in exceptional circumstances and the potential for danger, loss of life and loss of property is now higher than it has been.

I have a few brief questions. In the consultation, were other agencies considered for addition to the list of category 2 responders? How good are the links between Defra as responsible for the countryside, the Environment Agency as responsible for drainage and the various LRFs and others concerned with flood risk? We are all aware, particularly those of us who live in the shadow of the hills, that how you look after catchment areas relates very clearly to the degree of flood risk that is involved. As the climate changes, that is something that needs broader attention at local, regional and national level. Are the Government happy that local resilience forums work well? The Minister will also have noticed the growing chorus of unease about the overcentralisation of England and the weakening power and finances of local authorities and local agencies. Local resilience forums are very important in areas such as this—these are people who know the ground; they know where the coal mines were and where the other local hazards are—and I hope that they work well.

Finally, my noble friend Lady Brinton raised electricity supply as one of the factors in dealing with disasters. I am conscious that we are moving in a direction in which electricity will increasingly become the only source of power supply for a growing number of homes. As it happens, at present my wife is in dispute with BT, which is trying to remove our landline and give us phone access only by broadband. That means that when and if there is an electricity problem, we are likely to run out of juice with which to make phone calls fairly rapidly. That is an extra hazard that we are moving into because one of the utilities wants to get rid of the costs of maintaining landlines. I hope that the Cabinet Office has also considered this as an important risk factor in case of emergency.

Having said all that, I welcome this order and I repeat: this is a model SI in the way it is being scrutinised—unlike many others.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I too welcome the Minister’s introduction to the SI. Certainly, it is one of the least controversial ones that I have ever dealt with, so I will not labour the point too much.

I would like the Minister to comment on how well the CCA five-yearly review works. Bearing in mind that, on Radio 4, the Environment Agency’s comments on the risk of river flooding were so closely aligned to the Meteorological Office’s warnings, I wonder what difference this statutory obligation will make. Will it have added value? The two things here that have come out of the review are so logical that one wonders why this was not done before. Will the department add other elements of the review? Are there elements that will still require action?

Certainly, there can be no reason for not adding these two bodies as category 2 responders; I am sure that both are currently working to provide information and support. The Minister said that they will not perform additional duties; they are already performing the duties, so there will be no additional cost, but I would like to know how this statutory responsibility will add to the benefit of their work.

With those few comments, I support the order and wish it well.

Cabinet Manual: Revision (Constitution Committee Report)

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Collins of Highbury

Friday 16th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the committee for what I was going to call its timely report, but of course it has been published for some time now. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lady Drake for her excellent introduction to what is a relatively short and concise report. Its recommendations are pretty concise too. The fundamental question to which I hope the Minister will be able to reply is the one on timetable and consultation; he has already conceded that there will be a revision.

As the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, correctly said, one of the problems is this “from time to time revision”. But we now have the relevant technology, and in the previous debate we talked about how technology can be used for efficient government. One way to do that, as it is a manual and not a code, would be to revise it on a weekly basis, which could be done. There is no need for a delay, especially as it does not need the sort of approval that a code might need.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, said, the manual is a survey map of existing codes and laws. I too welcome back the noble Lord; I am pleased to see him here. One of his excellent skills was being able to sit down with me and make sure I gave him all the secret information I could from my conversations in the party and within politics; he is very good at that.

We have talked about the connections of codes, the Nolan principles and why they were developed, and where boundaries are drawn. I was struck by the reference made by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, to “good chaps” government. As a historian, where do you learn most about what happened? I do not think you learn from codes, laws and manuals. As the noble Lord knows, we learn the most from the published diaries of politicians. I have mentioned on previous occasions that I am currently ploughing my way through three volumes of Chips Channon’s diaries. If anyone wants to know about hypocrisy in Parliament and among politicians, they should certainly read that. Having failed to do so on previous occasions, I pay tribute to Simon Heffer, who has done an amazing job of editing those diaries, making sure that for all the nasty references there are good footnotes. One amazing thing is that I have been able to speak to many noble Lords in this House about what was said about their families.

It comes back to the fact that our system of government has become far more transparent, and the transparency that we now have places a bigger obligation on us to abide by codes of practice. In the past, the things that Chips Channon talked about would never have been published, especially as most of the media that people read at that time was controlled by six of the politicians who were in this House. It is an amazing thing that we now have to face up to; that transparency places an obligation on us all.

I like the idea the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, had for an oath. We would expect every Prime Minister to abide by certain standards—it is a given—especially the Nolan principles. An oath places greater transparency on the person; the public would know that certain behaviour is not acceptable and that that person is breaking it. One of the issues of a written manual is the point that the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, mentioned: when does a precedent become a convention? That is a difficult one. I was listening to a Radio 4 programme “Archive on 4” about when an original phrase becomes a cliché. The issue is when it is repeated, and that is what we have to expect. Some of the best speeches are now clichés if they are repeated often enough.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, talked about stable government and coalitions. In Chips Channon’s diaries you learn a lot about the coalitions in our political process, which are not coalitions formed from different parties. The biggest coalitions we have in our political system are political parties themselves—which is why we have many of the problems. One of the tensions in our parliamentary democracy—I suppose I am entitled to say this—is that the political parties have to learn the lesson about the temptation to engage with their party memberships on how they elect their leaders. It imposes all kinds of problems on our parliamentary democracy in terms of collective responsibility. I said in an earlier debate that I was old-fashioned new Labour. Some things we have to learn from. I do not suppose that the Conservative Party will be too tempted to turn to its party membership again to elect a Prime Minister. Of course, that is what we are doing when we elect leaders of our political parties.

To return to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, on coalitions, one of the problems with coalitions is that with a single-party coalition at least we know who takes responsibility when things go wrong but with multi-party coalitions parties never want to take responsibility when things go wrong. I certainly found that with the Liberal Democrats, but I am sure the Minister will remind us of that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Yes, certainly.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

In conclusion, this is a good, straightforward report, which requires a straightforward response. One thing about the standards of Prime Ministers is the question of the independent ethics adviser, which I know the Minister has responded to. In a previous debate, we had a long debate with his ministerial colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, about the problems of recruitment in the public sector. This is certainly one post which seems to have a big problem with recruitment. Why has it taken so long? It is a very important part of the range of codes and responsibilities. Issues are now not being addressed by an ethics adviser—who should have been appointed—but we are getting to the stage of employing casual labour, as it were, to do the job. If there is a specific complaint, they bring in someone to deal with it. Surely that cannot be right. We need somebody who can be properly held accountable. I hope that the Minister will respond not only on the timetable on the Cabinet Manual but on the timetable for appointing an ethics adviser to the Prime Minister. We have waited too long for that.

Public Services: Workforce (Public Services Committee Report)

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Collins of Highbury

Friday 16th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the committee for its excellent report. It and its recommendations show the value of cross-party working. I also thank my noble friend Lady Armstrong for her excellent introduction, despite her suffering from a cold. She made all the key arguments extremely well and I am grateful for that introduction.

To emphasise cross-party consensus, I must start by saying that I really enjoyed my noble friend Lord Liddle’s contribution. Like him, I increasingly become more like an old-fashioned new Labour person.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

More?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

Well, how could I change? I will continue that theme as I go through my contribution.

This report on the future of the public services workforce highlights something that we have all experienced, as I am sure everyone has, whether in failing to get a GP appointment or when visiting a relative in a care home: the “vicious circle” that the committee described of increased demand, an ageing population, staff shortages, low morale, and recruitment issues. The Government’s response is, as the committee puts it,

“at far too small a scale.”

The committee argues that its recommendations would

“make a substantial difference, and secure a more sustainable … workforce for the future.”

There is cross-party consensus on that, which is reflected in the Government’s response to the report. Unlike with many of the reports that I read from this House, the Government accepted all the recommendations. As my noble friend highlighted, there is a lack of any sense of urgency and, perhaps more importantly, of a cross-cutting strategy. I repeat the point made by my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley: as well as the Government accepting the recommendations, we need a clear plan for implementation. The Government mention in their response their commitment to

“engagement with service users and people with lived experience”.

That is absolutely vital.

The Government also stated, in terms of the committee’s recommendations, that it recognised the importance of having efficient and effective technology in the delivery of high-quality public services. The interesting thing, which I will come back to, is that it is not only technology to deliver at the front end of those services, it is how the Government should use technology to make plans for that delivery. One of the things to stress, and I am sure all noble Lords in the debate have had difficulty trying, is that no one action will resolve these issues. That is why the emphasis needs to be put on co-ordination and cross-cutting proposals.

Perhaps even more importantly, I suggest to the Minister that there should be a cross-cutting department with powers to intervene and that can set strategy. I assume that the Cabinet Office currently fulfils that role, but I am not sure that it has sufficient powers within all government departments. The committee did recognise that the Government do not have reliable data on the public service workforce and projections for future demand. It is really important in her response that the Minister is clear about how the Cabinet Office highlights not only best practice—which it did in its response—but how it can promote best practice on developing and sharing workforce data at all levels, both locally and nationally.

Many noble Lords have focused on the area of developing training programmes in partnership with service users so that they reflect service users’ needs and ensure that the workforce is better prepared. One of the things that came out of the debate, which the Minister could reflect on, is, as the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, said, the issue of civil society. I did notice there was a slight change in tone in his voice when the noble Lord mentioned the words “trade unions”, as if they were a shocking part of civil society. Historically, though, they have been the key providers of services, particularly before the establishment of the National Health Service and national insurance. When I first started in the trade union movement, many of the people I worked with had been part of the support in providing national insurance benefits. Certainly, Ernest Bevin was very keen on developing health services for his members prior to the NHS.

The role of civil society is very important in terms of the preparation for work, and also in that changing world we now live in where work is no longer a career and a job is no longer for life. It is that lifelong learning that I think this Government have failed to properly address. It was an absolute shame that the Government withdrew support for TUC unionlearn and the ability of unions to encourage people to retrain and work with employers. That is something that could be better addressed.

I also know, from having met the Minister in her previous incarnation, that she knows the benefit of unions working in partnership with employers. One of the best examples of a partnership agreement was of course at Tesco, where both sides, instead of negotiating over differences, were part of a partnership agreement that focused on the success of the enterprise for the benefit of employees and employers. One of the key elements of that partnership agreement was handling that position of massive turnover but also looking at how you can help people train within the company and also for careers outside the company. There are many other examples of where that has been really important. I hope the Minister can address those issues.

One of the things that struck me in the report highlighted the Prison and Probation Service. We are now facing a situation in which there is huge demand in the Prison Service but also a huge turnover. I declare an interest: my father was a prison officer for many years before he died. I remember very clearly the sense of vocation within that service. Most of the prison officers I met as a child were extremely concerned about the welfare of prisoners. They were involved in training prisoners and supporting them as they came out of prison. I do not see that any more. There is a lack of investment in training in prisons, which has affected the sense of vocation that many prison officers had.

I had a large number of questions about the implementation of some of these recommendations, but I think the thrust of contributions from across the Floor stressed the importance of a co-ordinated approach and planning. Let us see that strategy and have a debate about a clear strategy. I welcome the report of the committee.

Elections Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Collins of Highbury

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I will try to be brief. The Labour Party has supported and continues to support lowering the voting age. I would just say to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, that the last time we were in government and lowered the voting age, we lost the subsequent election. That was in 1970.

On civic education, in many of my contributions, I have mentioned the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, and his committee’s report. It is excellent and worth rereading. He is absolutely right about the Government’s failure to respond properly to it. But citizenship education in schools and lowering the voting age are not mutually exclusive. Speaking from personal experience, I joined the Labour Party in 1970, partly because we had organised a mock election in my school. As a consequence of standing as a Labour candidate in that mock election, I went out and campaigned for Harold Wilson, even though I did not have the right to vote. I joined the Labour Party at the age of 15—noble Lords can now calculate how old I am.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Too young for the Lords!

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

Well, there you go. I am still below the average age—just. The important point is that they are not mutually exclusive. This is about how we encourage people to participate in democracy and, as the noble Lord said, participation is not simply about voting. We want people to properly engage in civic society. That includes other groups which campaign and organise, because that is what influences our politics. Young people are certainly doing that, which is why we are very strongly in favour of this.

Of course, we have the evidence. Scotland and Wales now have a lower voting age, but they are not the only places. The Isle of Man and Jersey have it, as do Guernsey, Brazil and Austria, and it applies to some elections in Germany, Malta and Norway. There is strong evidence of how it can encourage participation and build this in, because when people start voting at a young age, they continue to vote. That is a really important point.

Picking up the point that I think the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made, the noble Baroness, Lady Davidson of Lundin Links, changed her mind through her experience in the referendum campaign. I read an article that she wrote for the Tory Reform Group as a consequence of that experience in 2016. She said:

“Those in favour of the status quo argue that while the referendum offered a clear, unambiguous choice, parliamentary elections present a more muddied, multi-layered decision which require a more mature electorate.


But having watched and debated in front of 16 and 17-year-olds throughout the referendum, I have found myself unable to agree. My position has changed. We deem 16-year-olds adult enough to join the army, to have sex, get married, leave home and work full-time. The evidence of the referendum suggests that, clearly, they are old enough to vote too.”


I agree with her. We should do this.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I fear I cannot accept these amendments, although, having been mildly disobliging on the previous group about those against first past the post, I will open with an area of agreement. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, my noble friend Lord Lexden and the party opposite that we must do more—as much as we can—to engage young people in civic education and understanding what it is to be a future citizen. We are also having other discussions on trying, we hope, to persuade more young people to vote. There is strong agreement there.

We cannot accept these amendments because the Government, having reflected on the matter, simply do not believe that a reduction to 16 is the correct course. My noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts made a very strong speech on this. There are many difficult questions, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, about what constitutes full adulthood, which society has to wrestle with. We think, in common with most countries in the world—although not, I acknowledge, the devolved Administrations in Scotland and Wales—that the current position is correct.

We made that very clear to the electorate; we were not trying to hide it, because it was and is a subject of discussion between the parties. We have been criticised for our manifesto not being clear, but it was absolutely clear on this point:

“We will maintain the voting age at 18—the age at which one gains full citizenship.”


That was very explicitly stated. You may not agree with that, but it is the position. I hope the Committee will respect that. Eighteen is widely recognised in the vast majority of democratic countries as the right age at which to enfranchise young people.

There are difficulties. For example, the very radical proposal by the Liberal Democrats to legalise cannabis was not for people below 18 because they were not mature before that age. In 2010, the party opposite raised the age for using sunbeds to 18. Other examples have been given on some more fundamental and difficult questions of peace and war. With respect to the arguments I have heard, the Government believe that the settled, present position is correct, in common with most other democratic countries.

My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond’s amendment seeks to lower the voting age to 16 and 17 year-olds by linking the franchise to taxation. I fear I must disappoint him; taxation has never been the basis of democratic representation in this country. For example, an American citizen of voting age who works and pays taxes in the United Kingdom does not have the right to vote in parliamentary elections simply by virtue of tax. However, a British citizen of voting age who pays no income tax, such as a student, rightly retains the right to vote, as do those earning less than the tax-free allowance. In council tax there is a class S exemption—I think it is called that; it was in my day—for households of 16 and 17 year-olds precisely so that they should not pay council tax. The mixing of taxation and voting rights raises difficult problems. It would also potentially disfranchise people who could, for a range of reasons, be unable to work or find work or who may be working but not earning enough to pay taxes.

With respect to those who have a different opinion, the Government have reflected on this. Engagement is important; I was very proud when I was leader of a local authority—I know many other local authorities do the same—of the UK Youth Parliament and youth engagement through schools. I have similar recollections to the noble Lord opposite. These things are important. Let us work together across parties to try to do that, but I cannot recommend that the House adopts this principle in the Bill. I forecast to the Committee that, if it were proposed, because it was a manifesto commitment by the Government to maintain the present position, it would not find favour in the other place. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

Elections Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Collins of Highbury

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Tuesday 15th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the scars are still on my back from having taken the transparency of lobbying Bill, now an Act, through this House. I remind the Minister that we paused it when we ran into waves of criticism from all sides and arguments that we had not entirely got our own arguments in line. It was not quite as messy as this Bill, but we did at least manage to sort out something which did not displease everyone too much.

I have read the very useful report by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, which I compliment him on. It does its best to strike the balance between a number of very difficult and different priorities. All of us who have been involved in politics know that there are many civil society organisations. Some are easily politically neutral—as the Church is, most of the time—while others are inherently a bit on the right. Those of us who are old enough to have fought campaigns that the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children was active in will remember how vigorous, to say the least, it could be in its campaigns and how biased it was. Development NGOs and poverty NGOs, being in favour of greater public sector spending and greater equality, tend naturally to be more on the left. The balance between advocacy and electoral campaigning, as the noble Lord has said, is a difficult one, which we must all strike. In debating this issue with some of the organisations concerned, there were those who felt that they were entitled to campaign entirely as they liked because they were morally right and therefore should not in any sense be controlled in an election campaign.

I agree strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, that 120 days is much better than 365 days. We no longer know when the election will be. It is one of the many bits of incoherence of this Government that putting through the abolition of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act in the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill has not sorted out entirely the knock-on effects of that for this Bill. If I recall correctly, in his report, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, said that looking back on how various NGOs and civil society groups have spent on their advocacy and campaigning, the spending does come very much in the last few weeks and months before the election, rather than being spread evenly over the previous year.

Therefore, I strongly support Amendment 39 and hope that the Minister will accept that this is a reasonable adjustment in the Bill which the Government could accept, and which makes life simpler for those civil society groups which we all want to see engaging in campaigns and public debate. This tidying up would be a help to all concerned.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for introducing these amendments at this stage. I know that we will have further debates but, like him, I think it is really important to set this in context. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Lister for doing so. She has an incredible record of promoting civil society and action groups focused on particular issues. I know from my own experience that civil society activity is really important; one of the most important groups I have participated in is one that my party, the Conservative Party and other political parties were a bit uncomfortable dealing with—LGBT rights. It took a civil society, cross-party campaign to change things and influence manifestos.

I said at Second Reading that a thriving democracy is not limited to Parliaments and parliamentarians. Countries that fail to protect their citizens force civil society to stand up for them and defend human rights. That is really important. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, and my noble friend, who was more explicit, talked about that chilling effect. That is what we must look at. Perhaps it is even an unintended consequence. However, it is a simple fact that we do not know the date of the general election; it is in the gift of the Prime Minister to set, and sometimes it can be a long campaign and sometimes it can be short. We do not want those civil society organisations campaigning throughout a five-year period, raising issues such as child poverty, to stand back because they fear that they might be caught in this regulated period.

I agree with my noble friend that the simplest solution is to say that the regulated period should start when a general election officially starts, but I will compromise with the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, on four months. Importantly, in some of his later amendments we will come to issues such as defining what might reasonably be regarded as campaigning, which he rightly raised. I agree about a code of practice being brought before Parliament.

Even if the Minister cannot accept these amendments today—I have no doubt that he cannot—I hope he will take away that this will have an impact on civil society that will impact negatively on our democratic activity. I hope the Government will listen to both the noble Lord and my noble friend Lady Lister.

Elections Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Collins of Highbury

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Tuesday 15th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

We need not discuss the various alternative forms of voter registration. “Not necessarily” is the easy answer.

The second principle I want to focus on, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Stunell, is that there should as far as possible be a level playing field. We have seen what happened as that disappeared with the lifting of funding restrictions in the United States. The quality of American campaigning and the level of trust in American democracy have gone down, and that is partly because of the sheer weight of money that now deforms American politics. We have it here. I read in the Sunday Times the weekend before last that in the last three months of 2019, Ben Elliot, the chairman of the Conservative Party, raised just over £37 million for the Conservative Party, more than it was able to spend legally in the course of the campaign, and that it represented two-thirds of the money raised by all registered parties in that period. That takes the whole idea of a level playing field for democracy into deep and difficult trouble, and it strengthens the case for making sure that the regulation of expenditure, which is what Part 4 is about, is kept tight, clear and simple.

The third principle that I hope the Minister will agree on is that funding and expenditure should be as transparent as possible, both by registered parties and, as we shall come on to, by third parties, and that this clause does not help in that regard.

Clause 18 weakens regulation. It complicates and confuses it. I think we have seen from Second Reading and from our first day in Committee that noble Lords throughout the House generally agree on the need to strengthen regulation and the Electoral Commission. For these reasons, I suggest to the Minister that the clause as drafted and as intended does not match the Bill.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I come back to the comment I made on the earlier group of amendments: what is broken? What is this clause trying to put right, and does it solve it? I think we have heard from the debate on it that it does not really address the issue. Whatever happened in Thanet—and there may be other instances that were not subject to court cases—it has certainly gone through a proper legal process. As we have heard, both the Supreme Court and the Electoral Commission have addressed that issue.

I regret that we have moved away from the requirement that fundamental changes be subject to consent across all parties. That has been an important element of maintaining our democracy. Of course, the Trade Union Act was the first part of that attack by the Conservative Party on one party, which broke that consensus on funding.

As I have said before, the Conservative Party likes a debate about spending limits— “We can have a limit here, and the national limit and so on”—but the real debate is not about spending but about income. When David Cameron was Prime Minister and we have had discussions about it, we have seen that it is the income side of our politics that brings it into disrepute. Very rarely is it the spending side. The income side is about who has given the money, how much they are giving and what they expect for it. Taking big money out of politics is the issue. I say to the Conservative Party that its time will come, because when it is in opposition there will be a strong focus on the income side of this debate, and it will not like the result. It will not be able to rely on a large number of very wealthy people; it will have to rely on a larger number of low-income people, because I strongly believe that caps on donations are far more important than limits on spending. That is a debate for another day, but it is important to set today’s debate in context.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a probing amendment, but it is highly topical. I am trying to see the relationship between the registration of parties and the sanctions legislation that we recently adopted. Following yesterday’s consideration of the fast-tracked Bill, Liz Truss plans to name even more people. It would certainly make it easier for Ministers to impose sanctions on those with Kremlin links. One of the things we addressed last night was the loopholes that have allowed oligarchs and kleptocrats to evade scrutiny. They have been quite successful in hiding their assets, certainly property—an issue we have discussed for quite a long time.

One of the things that I have been banging on about quite a bit is the Russia report and its recommendations on security risks to our democracy from interference from foreign powers and how we address that issue. We addressed this at Second Reading. It is not just some of the messaging and social network-type interference which we have seen, particularly in the US but also here, but about how our political parties are funded.

Boris Johnson told the House of Commons that

“it is very important for the House to understand that we do not raise money from Russian oligarchs.”—[Official Report, Commons, 23/2/22; col. 313.]

For many of us, it was very difficult to take that remark seriously when we look at some of the records that have been exposed. It is obviously impossible for someone with only Russian nationality, however rich, to donate legally to a United Kingdom political party, but what has undoubtedly happened is that a series of people with dual UK/Russian nationality, or with significant business links with Russia, have donated heavily to the Conservatives in recent years. Based on electoral information, Labour has estimated that donors who have made money from Russia or Russians have given £1.93 million to the Tory party or to constituency associations since Johnson became Prime Minister. In the other place, Ian Blackford of the SNP referred to the Conservatives having raised £2.3 million from Russian oligarchs.

I recognise that “oligarch” is a loose term associated with people who generally made their money from the financial free-for-all of the post-Soviet, Putin era, but those people often keep a very close link with the Russian President. One reason the legislation is so important is the connections. You can have a permissible donor who is linked very closely to someone who is not a permissible donor, and if the links to the assets and the finances are obscure it is difficult to follow the money, as Liz Truss said.

One of the biggest single donors to the Conservative Party is Lubov Chernukhin, who has donated £700,000. She has been a British national since 2011 and is married to Vladimir Chernukhin, a former deputy finance Minister under Putin. Documents published in the Pandora papers in October suggest that he was allowed to leave Russia in 2004 with assets worth about $500 million and to retain Russian business connections. Lawyers representing the couple say that none of the wealth was acquired in a corrupt manner and none of Vladimir Chernukhin’s wife’s donations was funded by improper means or affected by the influence of anyone else. That is extremely difficult to understand when you look at some of the documents in the Pandora papers published by the Guardian. Lubov Chernukhin is also notable for winning the prize of a game of tennis with Boris Johnson at the party’s 2020 fundraising ball. It is not clear whether she has managed to get that prize yet.

That shows us the extent of foreign money coming into our political process and our political parties. The reason I am raising that on this clause is that we have yet to see political parties being established for the purpose of undermining the political system we have. I anticipate all kinds of reactions from friends of Putin—to put it that way—that we have not seen before. If our sanctions legislation gets stronger and we have the economic crime Bill that we anticipate seeing in the next Session, we may see this hidden money going in different ways that will perhaps have less scrutiny but very strong connections. I am probing this to see what the Government have thought of in terms of transparency in the establishment of political parties and what they are going to do about the broad recommendations of the Russia report, which they have not really taken into account. We will certainly be returning to the question of donations to political parties later in consideration of the Bill, but I thought that this was an opportunity to look at whether there has been any risk assessment by the Government of how political parties that could fundamentally undermine our system may be established and funded. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I am conscious that there are other democracies in Europe which have parties on the right that have admitted to receiving money from Russia as loans or as grants. Happily, this country is not in that position, but a number of shadows hang over our politics and we have got quite close to it on a number of occasions. It currently affects the Government because they refused to publish the evidence the Intelligence and Security Committee collected on foreign interference in British politics four years ago and they have not yet published the evidence on the suitability of those who came in on the golden visa scheme between 2000 and 2015. That report was commissioned four years ago. If one goes back to the referendum campaign, so far as I am aware, we still do not know where the largest donation to the Brexit campaign came from, although I had one very odd conversation with a senior member of the City of London who told me that everyone knew that it came from a particular foreign country. There are issues here. We shall return to them when we get on to donations.

I mark in general that this is yet another reason why we should be lowering the limits on campaign spending at national and constituency level, not raising them, because money corrupts politics. I think that the Conservative Party has come close to corruption in the way it has very successfully expanded its fundraising, with the creation of a donors’ club. I have read on the front page of the Times that donors have said that they are unhappy about what the Prime Minister is doing on this, that and the other, and that clearly shows that donors influence politics to a considerable extent in the Conservative Party.

Yes, of course, we are all guilty. My party has also accepted one or two large and very welcome donations which were a little bit questionable. That is because we are so desperate for money for campaigning—and it is part of the reason why I agree that we should be lowering limits. So, I support the probing amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Collins. We will return to this on a later day in Committee. It is a fundamentally important issue for British politics, because part of what is corroding public trust in politics at present is the deep suspicion that money buys Ministers.