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

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

It is beholden on the Government to demonstrate that it will not, given that they have widened the meaning of the term “political purposes” and cut the amount of money that can be spent before it is necessary to register; that part of the Bill deals with coalitions and how they account for the cost of what they are doing; and that they have inserted some extremely uncertain definitions of “electoral purposes”. I do not want to get into a Committee-stage debate, but the Government cannot simply declaim that nothing has changed when they have changed, broadened and widened definitions and cut the amount of money that can be spent lawfully during an election period.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that in addition to the restrictions she has described, the effect of the Electoral Commission having to police these very vague arrangements and possibly introduce sanctions after an election means that self-censorship will be the order of the day, particularly for a large number of smaller organisations, given that sanctions may be taken against them possibly a year, two years or three years after the process has taken place?

[Ms Eagle]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point about the chilling and dampening effect on the vibrancy of our democracy of this Government’s approach.

I thought at first that the Government might just have made a mess of the drafting—after all, they often do that and this Bill is certainly a mess—but it seems from the Cabinet Office response and from what the Leader of the House said today that they have deliberately set out to gag critical third-party voices. They have had repeated opportunities to address the concerns put to them by charities and campaigners, but they have dismissed them. This leaves me with the only conclusion that we can draw—that this is a deliberate and cynical attempt by the Government to insulate their policies and their record from scrutiny in the run up to the 2015 general election. Part 2 is totally unacceptable in its current form and it must be changed.

The Leader of the House tried to justify these draconian measures by arguing that they tackle the problem of third-party spending in politics, but he completely misses the point. Third parties spent less than 10% of the money spent by political parties in the last election. We all know that one of the biggest problems in our democracy today is the election expenditure arms race between political parties, not the expenditure of third parties. That is what drives the search for big-money donors. This Bill was a chance to tackle the big money in our politics, and the Government have completely squandered it.

This Government are happy to be financed by donors who pay huge sums to come for dodgy dinners in Downing street. They are a Government so shameless in their search for big-party donations that they were happy to split between the two coalition parties the proceeds of the late Joan Edwards’ half-a-million-pounds of life savings, which she had generously bequeathed to the nation in her will. Their squalid behaviour is left unaffected by this Bill; instead, it seeks to silence legitimate third-party campaigning organisations.

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[Stephen McPartland]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point. I do not think those reductions will have any impact whatever. I have 400 charities and voluntary groups in my constituency, and if any of them could spend £400,000 they would be over the moon. The reality is that the reductions will not affect them whatever.

[Dr Whitehead]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about the discussion of this Bill and the extent to which it can be discussed in Committee, but is he not aware that the long title specifically talks about regulation of consultant lobbyists, and only regulation of consultant lobbyists? This Bill is not the beginning of a process; it is the end of a process. If he reads the long title, his hope that it can be amended more positively might prove to be sadly misplaced.

[Stephen McPartland]

I did take the opportunity to read the long title, as I do with every Bill on which I vote. Sometimes I vote in the Lobby with Opposition Members. I am not one who always supports the Government 100%, although I do support them 100% on this Bill because it is starting a process. When matters are discussed on the Floor of the House, it creates a debate in Government and wider society, after which we can push for further improvements if that is what is needed. I have read the title; I have also read the Bill and the huge amount of documentation surrounding it.

I want to emphasise that the Bill represents progress. We are going to establish for the first time a register of consultant lobbyists. I know that some Members are concerned about how in-house lobbyists affect what happens here, but the reality is that if a Government relations person—as I believe they are called—from a particular firm turns up here, it is perfectly obvious that they will be trying to influence policy on behalf of that firm. That is fair enough. It is the same with trade unions. It is their responsibility to try to influence policy on behalf of their members; otherwise, what is the point of them? I do not really see a distinction between in-house lobbyists and others.

The public are more concerned, as am I, about when we meet a representative of some public relations agency and we do not know what they are going to talk about. When I first became a Member of Parliament, I was very naive in my first six or seven weeks here. I did not understand why so many people wanted to meet a mere Back-Bench MP. I actually saw the same lobbyist three times in one week, expressing three different views. I then decided never to meet a lobbyist again. Anyone who wants to meet me has to be the chief executive of their organisation or to be based in my constituency. In that way, I at least know who I am talking to and what they are talking about. For me, that is key.

A further issue relates to transparency and public confidence. The public want transparency. I must confess that, until I heard the wonderful speech by my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), I never knew that lobbyists had any influence whatever. I thought that they just sat around and had a bloody good chat and then decided that they really ought to do something, but that nothing ever happened. The example that my hon. Friend gave was the first I have heard of a lobbyist having some influence.

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[James Duddridge]

I gently say to the hon. Lady, 13 years and nothing done, three years and we are doing something, and the Opposition in large part are saying, “We don’t want to do it now,” or “It’s the wrong thing.” It is contradictory. I am not saying that the Bill is perfect, but it is a contradictory position that the Opposition are putting forward.

The second part of the Bill deals with third-party funding. The Leader of the House skirted around the subject a little. I referred to it in an earlier intervention as the elephant in the room—the trade union movement. The hon. Member for Glasgow North West is right to ask why the Government are doing this. Clearly, I have a slightly more benign impression of the Government than do Opposition Members. One can think that natural, but looking at the facts and going through the House of Commons Library research paper, I wanted to know who these third parties were. I shall list some of them.

Unison spent £671 million in the year running up to the general election in 2010. The National Union of Teachers spent £121 million—sorry, £122 million if one rounds up the £100,000. The Public and Commercial Services Union spent £84 million. Unite, which receives a bad press, was not spending very much money at all compared with some of the big guns, at £16 million. The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers spent just under £5 million and Wales TUC £4.3 million. That list is not absolutely in order. There are about 20 names and I am less familiar with a number of them, such as Vote for a Change Ltd. I mention it because, under the proposed threshold of £388,000, only it and Unison would have been unable to do what they were already doing, so it is not a major issue.

I also note that 38 Degrees is on the list. It spent either £10.8 million or £10.9 million—I do not know which because of my poor eyesight, but it was a sizable amount. I reflect on the e-mails that I have received about the Bill. The hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) said that it was not just the unions that had written to him, but other constituents more generally. The vast majority of the people who have written to me about the Bill have been from one of the third-party funders: 38 Degrees. It was said earlier that the Wikipedia entry had changed and that the organisation was set up by Labour supporters and members. There is nothing wrong with that, but I think we need transparency.

[Dr Whitehead]

The hon. Gentleman might like to take a couple of noughts off his calculations, bearing in mind that the total expenditure by third parties at the last general election was £2.8 million.

[James Duddridge]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely correct; I was getting carried away—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has asked me to start my speech again. I can list the unions again with the correct figures. For Unison the figure was £671,000, rather than £671 million. For the National Union of Teachers the figure was £121,000. For the Public and Commercial Services Union the figure was £84,000. Those are still enormous amounts of money that, if targeted in individual areas, could have a massive impact.

There is a case for having no limits, but if we have that for charities and unions, perhaps the first organisations that should have no limits are political parties. The House has taken the view, and legislated on it, that we should limit public expenditure. Anyone who has been a student of American politics can very much see why. Colleagues in Congress, when they hear how much we spend in individual constituencies, are dumbfounded at how little money is involved. What we do not want to see in the United Kingdom are political action committees or things of that ilk rising up and campaigning on behalf of or against Governments in the run-up to elections as a proxy service.

Opposition Members disagree about Labour history, so I shall talk about it in trepidation, with great generality. The Labour party is the product of a union movement, and quite rightly that movement recognised that workers needed representation in Parliament because they were not getting a fair crack of the whip or fair representation here, but I gently say that things have moved on. The unions cannot have it both ways: they cannot give birth to an organisation that we accept in this place, and has limits on its expenditure at elections, and then spend large amounts of money themselves on those elections. That strikes me as entirely ridiculous.

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[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

When I first looked at the Bill, I initially thought that it was badly drafted. As has been mentioned on several occasions, it has been described as a dog’s breakfast, and I initially thought it was even less nutritionally useful than that. I have now come to a different view. I think it is a well-drafted Bill, because it serves several specific purposes, none of which actually is the purpose that we think the Bill should serve in terms of cleaning up lobbying, sorting out third-party funding and regulating the way in which the political process works for elections and parties.

Part 1, as several hon. Members have suggested, ought to be the subject of further discussion and broadening out. The hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) made an excellent speech in which she set out the extent to which lobbying seems to have made a substantial difference in her constituency on a particular issue close to her heart. Of course, such lobbying not only cannot be included under the definitions in the Bill but has been designed out of it. The title of the Bill includes the phrase “transparency of lobbying”, which will mean that people think the Government are doing something to sort it out, but the long title shows that it is only about “consultant lobbying”, excluding 97% of the real lobbying that goes on in and around this place.

The Liberal Democrats said in their election manifesto that they would:

“Curb the improper influence of lobbyists by introducing a statutory register of lobbyists, changing the Ministerial Code so that ministers and officials are forbidden from meeting MPs on issues where the MP is paid to lobby”,

but I am sorry to say that they have ended up as a human shield for a Bill that is trying to minimise the changes that can be made. It is a damage limitation Bill, not a change to lobbying overall. Those hon. Members who think that they will take part in a process over the next couple of weeks whereby we have a dialogue for change have already lost. The Bill seeks to limit the process by which lobbying can be changed, which is what the public expect this House to be dealing with. It does so to such an extent that it is mendacious about its real effect on lobbying.

Part 2, unlike part 1, was not long in gestation. Indeed, it turned up out of a bright blue sky two days before the House went into the summer recess. Its effect comes from the opposite form of drafting. The drafting of the regulations and amendments is so loose and vague that third-party lobbyists, campaigners and organisations will, as hon. Members have said, probably self-police to ensure that they do not inadvertently get caught by it.

Do not get me wrong—I think that it is important that we take further action on lobbying of Parliament by third-party groups. Hearing some of the discussions this afternoon, one might think that the process had only started with this Bill, but such groups are subject to considerable regulation under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. The Bill states that people can be caught retrospectively for undertaking action, particularly at a local level, in the year before an election and can be judged for so doing by the Electoral Commission. Believe me, the last thing the commission wants to do is to get involved in political judgments about who has been doing what at a local level and in local elections. Those people will be subject to all sorts of registration penalties which they never thought they would have to undertake.

My view, on balance, is that the drafting is deliberately vague to ensure that pesky groups do not come along to constituencies during an election period and start campaigning on the doorstep about parties that might have a few worries about their approach to the election.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. The Bill attacks the most important parts of civil society: charities, non-governmental organisations, pressure groups and trade unions. It might well be unlawful under articles 8 and 11 in schedule 1 the Human Rights Act 1998; but of course, the Government would like to get rid of the Human Rights Act as well. This is a fundamental attack on civil society.

[Dr Whitehead]

I am tending towards that view. As has been said, the Bill should be a matter of careful thought. Indeed, over a long period there has been substantial and careful thought about third-party campaigning. Nevertheless, the Bill has been the subject of no consultation, not even with the Electoral Commission on how it would carry out this rag-bag of proposals without putting itself in an impossible position. Turning up without consultation or warning is just not the way to organise and regulate third-party campaigning at elections.

Part 3 seeks further to regulate trade unions to count their membership in a way that they already do. I wonder what that is about. That seems to be dog-whistle politics that says, “We are putting further impediments in the way of trade unions, which are already doing what they are supposed to do, but we are taking action as though they weren’t.”

Overall, this is a shocking Bill, which goes 100% away from what we should be doing to regulate lobbying and about the process of third-party campaigning and civil society. We really need to take the Bill away and think again. I hope that we will vote to do that today, to get a Bill that we are in favour of—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.