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

Debate between Viscount Thurso and Angela Eagle

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[John Thurso]

I counsel my hon. Friend to read the many excellent briefings from the Electoral Commission, which point out that the 2000 legislation contains an objective test. I shall argue for a return to those words because that is an objective test that is relatively understandable. Objective tests can, of course, be argued in a court of law—we all know that—but they have a far greater degree of certainty than a subjective test. That is why I will not be seduced down the route of amendment 101.

I want principally to confine my remarks to the other amendments, proposed by the Government in response to the amendments I tabled in Committee, which I was asked to withdraw so that the Government could make their own proposals. Like the hon. Member for Nottingham North, let me state my gratitude that on that occasion the Government clearly understood what we were trying to do.

Let me give some of the background behind those amendments. Basically, the Government were seeking to redefine the legislation based on the request they had received from the Electoral Commission and others. This was seen at the time—when that legislation arrived before us—as making significant and potentially unintended changes that we had not been able to look into. Incidentally, I reiterate the point that I made on Second Reading and in Committee, which is that if ever a Bill deserved pre-legislative scrutiny, it was this one. But as has been said before, when we want to go to a certain place, we might not have wished to start from here, but we are here, so let’s get on with it and go to where we want to be.

It seemed to me that the sensible course of action to deal with the concerns being expressed by all the people who were in contact with me was to say, okay, let’s not make those changes. Let’s stick with the existing wording, and if we stick with the wording that exists already, we will have addressed that problem. That was what I proposed and what the Government said they would do. The test for me today is, therefore, whether the amendments do what we wanted the Government to do, and that is where I shall concentrate my remarks.

Following on from two of the interventions that I have made today, I shall try to answer one of the critical questions behind the Bill: what is the purpose of part 2? If one does not believe in the purpose of part 2, there is not a great deal of point in seeking to amend it to achieve the objective. To me, part 2 is a critical and essential part of the Bill. Part 2 sets out to regulate the political campaigning activities in favour of or against candidates by third parties. As such, it hardly touches on charities, which are already regulated, as has been mentioned, by charity law. That is not the target and that is why we are not seeking to regulate on that. The target is the non-charity third parties. That is why, among other things, the 2000 Act was brought into being and passed, and it is thoroughly appropriate to look again at it.

I look across the Atlantic, as I mentioned earlier, and I see what happens when organisations such as the National Rifle Association or others start to pour large amounts of money into one district, Senate seat or state, or into one issue. Such organisations have had considerable success in that country in changing the political representation in the House of Representatives and the Senate. I observe in passing that the extremism that has entered American politics over recent years seems to have followed naturally from that.

In our United Kingdom we have a plurality and a diversity in our politics which I think is exceptionally precious and needs to be preserved. I hope we would agree on that. I do see a danger of third-party organisations being created and funded in a way that could have a serious impact on the body politic, which I do not want to see. For me, part 2, far from gagging charities, is an enabler of the freedom of speech of the smaller people in politics throughout the United Kingdom.

I stand wholly behind the principle, as indeed did the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) an hour and a half ago, when I asked him this precise question and he responded that those on the Opposition Front Bench were in favour of the principle being put forward and were behind the 2000 Act. They agreed that the Act needed updating. The point of his reply to a straightforward question was that the principle behind part 2 was in essence one with which the Opposition still agreed. If the Opposition feel that there should be no regulation of third parties, if they genuinely feel that third parties in politics—great rich blocs of people—can come and shove money into distant constituencies and get away with it unregulated, I invite them to say so. If not, I hope for their support for the principle of the Bill.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

What a straw man the hon. Gentleman has just raised. Does he not realise that that is all avoided by the existing law, which was put in place in 2000? What we are dealing with here are changes that this Government are introducing, in a partial and partisan way, without any consultation or any attempt to discuss them with wider civil society, campaigners or third parties. What we need to do is take the Bill off the agenda and do it properly so that we can develop the electoral law for third parties and political parties on a cross-party basis in order to prevent the kinds of abuses he is talking about, which the existing law, unamended by the Bill, already prevents.

House of Commons Administration and Savings Programme

Debate between Viscount Thurso and Angela Eagle

Thursday 8th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Thurso]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The Committee is not yet engaged on the Patriot Act. What we are engaged in is ensuring that these questions are asked of Parliamentary ICT. That is the important point. PICT is currently running what is called the cloud-readiness project to look at all these issues. If we want to arrive at the point where all the benefits that I have sought to outline are available to us, ensuring that the system is secure and that storage and transmission facilities are available are clearly prerequisites for any provider of cloud services. If a provider cannot offer that, it will not get the custom.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

As someone who, when she was a Minister, was responsible for the early stage of planning of the census, where we came across a similar problem with data storage, issues of privacy and the US Patriot Act, may I ask the hon. Gentleman to make sure that he asks the appropriate questions to ensure that when we finally get a cloud, it will be a cloud whose storage is in the UK so that we can avoid the Patriot Act issues?

[John Thurso]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady. Had I not thought of those questions before, it is now firmly planted in my mind to ensure that they are all properly asked.

The last point that I wanted to touch on is the plans to increase revenue. The Administration Committee has done considerable work on this, and we had a debate in Westminster Hall which featured that topic. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden will speak in this debate and I am sure that he will cover this in greater detail. It is also the subject of an amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). Notwithstanding the fact that I am about to disagree with him, I respect hugely the point that he puts and I am extremely grateful to him for having raised it in the debate. It is one of the core points and it is absolutely right that we as Members should discuss that. He has therefore done us a service by tabling the amendment, and I am grateful that it has been selected. However, I will now proceed to disagree with him, if I may.

The House has operated a number of facilities for staff, visitors and Members, including cafes, restaurants, bars and shops, for a considerable length of time. I hope it will be uncontroversial to affirm that these should be correctly priced and effectively costed. All these are details that the Administration Committee goes into. However, the Palace not only houses Parliament, but is a world-class heritage asset and one of the United Kingdom’s leading visitor attractions. I suggest that as such, we have a duty to make the Palace available to visitors who want to visit it, and an equal duty to ensure that the cost of that does not fall on the taxpayer, but is recovered from those visitors.

The key point is to ensure that there is no conflict between Parliament as a working institution and the Palace as a world-class visitor attraction, so I shall set out my principles in that regard. They are three. First, Parliament is a working institution and while it is sitting, those activities take precedence over any other activity. Secondly, all citizens have the right to visit their Parliament and to engage with their Members of Parliament and the parliamentary process without any charge at any point. Thirdly, subject to those first two principles, the Palace is a world heritage and tourist asset which should be made available for tourist visitors, provided that the costs of such provision are recovered and not passed on to the taxpayer.

I believe—and I think this is where I fundamentally disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow—that provided we have absolutely ensured that parliamentary proceedings are sacrosanct and that citizens can visit the Palace without a charge and without fear of a charge, we have a duty and a right to open it to wider visits and to charge to recover the costs.