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

Debate between Viscount Thurso and Mark Durkan

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I appreciate the work that the Select Committee chaired by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) has done. He knows, because I said so on Second Reading, that I agree with his points about pre-legislative scrutiny. I, too, regret the haste with which the Bill has progressed. However, we are where we are, and I will not debate that but crack on as you have asked me to, Madam Deputy Speaker.

On Second Reading, I said that I supported the principles of the Bill but had severe concerns about some areas of detail. In Committee, I tabled amendments, some of which the Government listened to and took on board and others they have looked at again in the other place. During the Bill’s passage through the other place, I have met on numerous occasions and worked closely with my noble Friend Lord Tyler, who has done a power of good to the Bill and improved many of the most unsatisfactory elements by a considerable degree. He has also done an outstanding job in terms of the level of his engagement with the charitable and third sectors. He has worked tirelessly to talk to them, to understand their concerns, and to try to move things forward. When we come to debate the next group of amendments, I will mention many of the things that he has achieved. My noble Friends Lord Wallace of Tankerness and Lord Wallace of Saltaire have also worked extremely hard to take on board people’s concerns.

As a result of the amendments that their lordships made and that the Government are accepting, this Bill has been transformed from the difficult Bill that we considered on Second Reading to what we now have before us. I thank my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House for the work he has done and for meeting me, colleagues and representatives of the charitable and third sectors several times. Underlying all this is the principle to which I still adhere—that we need much more transparency in lobbying and in the activities of third parties. The Bill is achieving that.

I tabled an amendment in this place covering special advisers though I did not press it. Lord Tyler has put through an excellent amendment. It is no secret that there is a divergence of opinion, if I can put like that, between the two coalition partners. My hon. Friends are very keen to include the amendment, while our partners perceive considerable dangers in doing so and wish to proceed at a rather slower pace. I fully expected the Government to reject my noble Friend’s amendment, but instead they have proposed a compromise that I am willing to accept. As has been evinced by Labour Members, the amendment uses the word “may”. They criticised that, but if we do not put such an enabling clause into a Bill, we cannot take action at a later stage. The amendment admits a concept and a principle that it is important to place in the Bill and it is a considerable step forward.

What does this mean in practice? There are two potential outcomes: first, the coalition partners discuss the measure, decide to implement it, and it is implemented this side of an election—an outcome devoutly to be hoped for but one for which I will not necessarily hold my breath. Secondly, at the next election I have an opportunity to go to the electorate and campaign for it, as would, I believe, all my hon. Friends.

[Mark Durkan]

rose—

[Mr Allen]

rose—

[John Thurso]

I will quickly take two interventions and then no more because I am going to conclude.

[Mark Durkan]

Given that the Deputy Leader of the House was so vehemently dismissive of the case for including special advisers today, what gives the hon. Gentleman any reason to hope that he might be persuaded to do so in future?

[John Thurso]

I have always seen my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House as a very reasonable and persuadable gentleman. I have had many conversations with him, and I believe that he is moving in absolutely the right direction at good speed.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Thurso]

I briefly repeat a comment I made on the previous group of amendments: the Bill left this place in an unsatisfactory state, but went to the Lords and had a considerable amount of work done to it. A huge number of the amendments made were either proposed by the Government after listening or accepted by them following a debate. I repeat that my noble Friend Lord Tyler was central to much of that process, and the Front Benchers Lord Wallace of Tankerness and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, among others, did a splendid job in that regard.

When I spoke to Lord Tyler, he told me that he shared two of my major concerns, which he expressed very well, about the degree of bureaucracy and the degree of complexity, and everything he did was to try to remove bureaucracy or complexity. He made the very good point that the Bill builds on the PPERA, but that the process of engagement with charities and the third sector threw up the fact that many of them did not understand that earlier legislation and were not perhaps compliant with it. Therefore, if nothing else, this process has helped them to understand what is necessary.

I will touch quickly on the Lords amendments that have succeeded. The fundamental change was raising the registration rates to £20,000 for England and £10,000 for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We began with the position that the rates would be halved and they have now been doubled. That is a significant change. It has lifted the vast majority of smaller organisations and charities out of the legislation completely. That is a considerable concession by the Government and it has achieved a great deal. I make the small point, in parentheses, that I do not know why the rate for Scotland should be half that for England, but I shall move on quickly.

Charities also had a critical concern about coalitions. That has been dealt with by removing all the burdens from low-spending participants in a campaigning coalition and allowing the larger campaigners to provide a single report on their behalf. That has lifted a large potential burden. That change, along with other changes such as removing the requirement for nil returns and the review, has changed dramatically the way in which the Bill can be viewed. It is now much closer to achieving the principles that I want to see, which are greater transparency and accountability in third parties. It is also less heavy-handed with those who are not a target, such as small, local organisations and charities—virtually all charities are exempt.

This process has allowed good, informed criticism to be taken on board. It has also allowed us to flush out some very ill-informed criticism. I received an e-mail from a constituent yesterday urging me to support Lord Tyler, which of course is always a pleasure, because he wanted to continue to campaign against wind farms in our area and because he wanted to be able to campaign against the building of houses on the battlefield of Culloden if anybody ever suggested it. I was able to point out to him with complete certainty that those two things would never be covered by the Bill. There are many people out there who think that it does cover such matters. It is important to have the opportunity to dispel those ideas.

I will turn to the two principal amendments that I wanted to discuss. Lords amendment 108 removes a huge raft of things that were included in the proposal before their lordships. I took the trouble of finding schedule 3 in its unamended form. The Lords amendment relates to sub-paragraphs (3), (4) and (5) of paragraph 1, which include not only transport costs, but some pretty heavy bits of expenditure, such as public rallies. Their lordships were right to think that they had cut too far and too hard.

I urge my colleagues to support the Government in rejecting Lords amendment 108 for a simple procedural reason. If we accept it, that will be the end of the matter. However, if we do not accept it and send it back to their lordships, they can, through ping-pong, propose something that takes account of the justifiable concerns about transport and so forth but does not go as far as this amendment, which has clearly gone too far.

[Mark Durkan]

Lords amendment 108 does not take out the major costs of rallies and big events. It takes out only any costs in respect of remuneration or expenses that are payable to staff in relation to rallies. It does not relate to the overall costs of rallies, such as equipment and hiring space. Those would not be taken out by the amendment.

[John Thurso]

I am well aware of that. However, the staff costs, particularly in relation to sub-paragraphs (3) and (5), will be considerable, so they should be included. I would like to give their lordships the chance to think again about that.

On Lords amendments 26 and 27, I should explain that subsection (1) of proposed new section 2A in Lords amendment 26 is an amendment made on Report by my noble Friend Lord Tyler. It is a clear amendment that does exactly what it says on the tin, and I have almost complete sympathy with it. Lord Harries added subsections (2) and (3), which render the amendment unworkable. If I may paraphrase what Lord Tyler said, the lawyers have got hold of it and they have gone far too far. In particular, it is almost impossible to work out how one would begin to consider policing subsection (3), which is so defective that it has rendered what was a sound amendment almost completely ineffective.

To those of us who like legislating, it might be quite fun to look at different definitions, but I seriously contend—I hope the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who often helps me out on such matters, will agree—that subsections (2) and (3), particularly subsection (3), put a coach and horses through the very good amendment my noble Friend put through on Report in the other place. I suggest, therefore, that we reject it, because their lordships should be allowed to have another look at it. The intention was to simplify the Bill, making it easier and taking out bureaucracy. The amendment would, however, introduce massive complexity and a great deal of bureaucracy, and runs utterly counter to the other amendments that have been accepted. For that reason, I accept the Government’s view that it cannot be accepted and that their lordships should try again.

My final point is that there is an inconsistency. The limit is now £9,750, and the registration is £10,000. The fact is that any organisation in our constituencies could spend £9,000 and we would not know about it until after the election. It is a shame that we have not had a chance to address such an unintended consequence.

Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill

Debate between Viscount Thurso and Mark Durkan

Monday 8th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[John Thurso]

The hon. Gentleman makes exactly the point I am in the process of making, but he does it more simply, and I thank him for that. That is the key point about the ring fence. The utility aspects of banking, which are operating the payment system and taking deposits, should be so constructed within an entity that when a bank fails—I say when, not if, because there will be another bank failure and our purpose is to try to make it easier for banks to be resolved so there is less likelihood of taxpayer intervention, meaning that the bank will be more likely to be allowed to go under and that bankers will be likely to be more prudent—the ring fence enables that while protecting the ordinary depositor and the payment systems.

This is a long and complicated subject, as I learned over many hours, and the flow of capital from the lady who puts some money into the bank to the company that needs it to expand and grow the economy is necessarily complex. One must therefore be careful—[Interruption.] I know that other hon. Members want to speak and I promised that my remarks would be brief, so before I get a beady eye from you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I ask the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) to let me move on.

The critical point, which I completely accept, is that the compromise we came to is the ring fence. The compromise holds good, however, only if the ring fence works properly. Our conclusion was that it would not work if it were not reinforced, and the term “electrified” was coined. The point made by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East was that if one has at one’s disposal the ability to do something—the armoury, call it what you will—those who are engaged in the activity will check whether they are being looked at before they engage in it. It is the modern equivalent of the Governor’s eyebrow. If we do not have that, we will simply have a lot of regulation that might lead not to a successful conclusion but to a long dialogue that leads nowhere between the regulator, the Treasury and the institution. People must believe that when the weapon, whatever it is, is deployed, it will have a consequence. That is the essential point.

In conclusion, I think all members of the parliamentary commission came to a unanimous view. We started from different viewpoints and with different concepts, but we agreed—all five from this House, all five from the other place: all 10 of us together—that to give effect to the ring fence it needed to be reinforced. We thought it could be done in this way and my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester has laid out the arguments perfectly.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

In following the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), I apologise for the fact that transit issues meant that I, too, missed the start of the debate. I will take up only a little time in the Chamber today, but, following the comments made by the hon. Gentleman and by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East(Mr McFadden), it is important to make the point that it is not just those who have served the House well on the Parliamentary Commission for Banking Standards who have concerns about such issues and can see the difference between the Government’s offer and the amendments tabled by Opposition Front Benchers and by the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie).

We talk about the electrified ring fence and, essentially, the Government are offering us a Fisher-Price electrified ring fence—a VTech model. They have looked up ring fence in the index of the Argos catalogue and gone for the one in the toy pages. There is not much point the Government’s saying they have taken everything into account, that this is the best model and that it will give everybody reliable assurances. Frankly, that is like trying to pretend that a tyre is flat only at the bottom and that this is just a minor stylistic difference about perception. The difference is about substance and reliability.

I encourage the Minister to listen to what right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House have said, and particularly to those who have had the best insight into these issues through the parliamentary commission and who have changed and modified their views, like the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. They have been able to give it more consideration than someone such as me, who comes to the question on a reflex reaction of full separation.

I recognise that the ring fence is the only show in town, but it must be reliable and meaningful. The Government’s proposed procedure in amendment 6 could take longer than the life of a Parliament to have an effect. There will be not just the preliminary decisions but the Treasury consents required for those decisions, and tribunals after the warnings and the decisions, then variations and consultation between the regulators—the whole thing will go on.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Viscount Thurso and Mark Durkan

Monday 1st November 2010 Commons Chamber

[John Thurso]

I am receptive to the hon. Gentleman’s argument. However, if he knew my constituency, he would know that saying it might like to be called Thurso is probably the worst insult that could be delivered to the Royal Borough of Wick and to Wickans. May I put it on record that I am entirely content with Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross—or however much of Ross I may end up with?

There is a clear need for the Bill to be amended and if, given the lack of time, we cannot achieve that, I sincerely hope that the other place will take a long, strong and hard look at it. This is the sort of constitutional change that simply must not be allowed to slip through on the back of an electoral pact.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I want to speak to several amendments that I tabled in this group. Amendments 188, 193, 189 and 192 all refer to issues that arise in the context of Northern Ireland. This group includes other amendments that address issues that arise in the context of Wales and the Scottish islands, and constituencies that include such areas. There is also an amendment relating to the Isle of Wight.

My amendments are not about “ferrymanders” for constituencies with many islands, nor are they about “valleymanders” because of the geography of Northern Ireland, but they address two points. One is the principle of having a distinct quota in Northern Ireland. Amendments 9, 200 and 202 would give the four boundary commissions four discrete electoral quotas for the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. I have no issue with that, and I agree with it in principle, although I am not here to legislate for other parts of the United Kingdom.

I tabled amendment 192 because the Government seem to have set their face against separate electoral quotas for constituent parts. It calls for a distinct Northern Ireland quota. If the seat reduction goes through, we will end up with about 15 constituencies. Because the boundaries will be changed every five years, according to the UK quota arithmetic, it could be that under the Sainte-Laguë system for distributing seats to the four constituent boundary commissions the following boundary review might reduce the number of seats in Northern Ireland to 14, and the boundary review after that, depending on what happens with registration, might raise the number again.

Chopping and changing the number of seats in Northern Ireland every five years without any regard to either a sense of equality or a quota that relates to Northern Ireland’s particular circumstances has difficulties. My amendments, which are specifically about Northern Ireland, could stand so I ask the Government to consider them even if they combine to defeat the other amendments, which sensibly and correctly call for discrete quotas. If separate boundary commissions are to be given particular tasks for particular areas, they should at least be mandated to produce a specific quota for those areas.