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

Andrew George Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Allen]

I should begin by declaring an interest, which is in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am the chair and founder member of a charity. We do not need to read what Sir Stuart Etherington thinks might happen, because I can say what I think might happen on the basis of my experience as a trustee and the chair of a charity.

Having listened to the debate today, I am even more convinced about how I shall respond if my chief executive comes to me and says, “We should get involved, because this is a great year in which to influence politics and people on the issue that we care about, that of children and babies. This is our moment: MPs are at their most open, and we can gain access to them and talk to them. It is absolutely wonderful.” I shall say, unreservedly and without equivocation, “Do not go anywhere near this just because that nice Mr Brake—that nice Deputy Leader of the House—has said that it is all going to be okay.”

If it were to be left to the Deputy Leader of the House to decide on these matters, I would be entirely reassured. I would not even be on my feet, because I trust the right hon. Gentleman implicitly on a personal level. The problem is that it will not be the Deputy Leader of the House who makes the decisions. Someone in a wig and gown down the road will decide what should happen in Stevenage if a certain body has said, “I want to show you the results of an historic vote that took place a while ago; I want to show you which Members of Parliament were for and which were against.”

I know that we have already had that debate. I apologise for intervening earlier on the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), but I realise that he is one of those Members who appreciate a dialogue in the Chamber rather than a monologue, and I think we both reached the conclusion that neither of us actually knew what the outcome would be. So we are going to employ our own solicitors to decide. It might be a very tight election in Stevenage; the hon. Gentleman might win by a handful over a Labour candidate who was desperate to kill, personally, as many badgers as he could lay his hands on.

This might be very significant, therefore. Situations such as an intervention by someone on—to be less humorous—an anti-racist platform or a pro-racist platform who says something totally outwith what the hon. Gentleman would want said on his behalf will start to influence our politics. It will not be well-meaning, good-hearted people in this House who decide on that. It will be people outside it; it will be people in the judiciary. They will not be taking the cases, however. The people who will be taking the cases will be people who are vexatious—people who normally do not like each other, people who are on opposite sides of a political, social or environmental argument. They will be pro-frackers and anti-frackers. They will be the League Against Cruel Sports and the Countryside Alliance. These guys do not lie down easily together. They will take opportunities to get hold of somebody and change our politics in a particular way; they have proven already in the right way that they are prepared to do that and long may that continue. It is something we should encourage. Those people should not be chilled from undertaking activities and campaigning in election year, and that should certainly not be the case for the broader range of people—the Royal British Legion, Civil Society, those in the big society and the third sector. These people are our lifeblood. They are the people who have supported us, and they include people who are affiliated to political parties as well. They are people who care about out politics and our democracy. It is those people, as well as my charity, who I will not allow to enter the minefield we today are in danger of creating.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

The Deputy Leader of the House made it clear in relation to amendment 101 that not only will these decisions be taken by people in wig and gown, but that the “primary purpose” definition in amendment 101 will result in legal dispute and interpretation. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, and what is his defence of the expression “primary purpose”?

[Mr Allen]

I will get to that, but what I will say now is that this is an old trick. The civil service has got loads of people writing drafts, and hopefully they are doing the job well, and a Back Bencher then gets up with a proposal that comes in through the voluntary organisations, and the response is, “Oh, there are difficulties about the drafting here.” I will accept that. We will not divide the House on a nuance of drafting. I am very happy that my words do not appear in any Bill. Even though we will divide along party lines, what is uniting the House is that we all know this is a dog’s breakfast and clauses 26 and 27 are the heart of what is wrong with the Bill. The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) has made a game attempt to try to get it right, but we all know there is something wrong here. I will not be hung on a particular set of words, therefore.

I hope the House votes in favour of amendment 101. If we do so, we will be sending the strongest signal to the Government not that the words of the amendment should be added to the Bill, but that the Government should go away, think again, listen and do the consultation they should have done over a year ago. If we pass the amendment, the House will in effect be allowing the Government to put right the mess they made in previous times. That is the role of the House and it is something we can do.

Where did this start to go wrong again in the last week or so? I pay tribute to the Government for having listened to the outrage there was about clause 26. They realised that legislating and changing the rules was wrong. So off they went and, all credit to them, they have come back, having listened to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross—we supported each other in that debate—and said, “Okay, let’s back off quickly lads and see if we can get back to where we were before we even opened this can of worms.”

--- Later in debate ---

[John Thurso]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), and we often agree on these points more than we disagree. I was not going to begin by referring to amendment 101, but following his speech, let me address it with one or two short remarks. His argument is that we should vote for amendment 101 because it sends a signal by introducing the primary purpose test. He invites us to vote for that, knowing that if it is successful it could be put right with a better form of words at a later stage. He asks us to support the symbol rather than any particular words, a concept with which I am familiar and to which I often agree in legislation.

I have a much more significant problem with amendment 101, however, in that it introduces something that worries me greatly in legislation—that is, a subjective as opposed to an objective test. I have been involved in various bits of legislation, many of them rather dry and sometimes technical, such as the creation of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, where we have sought to introduce tests that get certain things done. Whenever one is tempted to introduce a test that is not purely objective and does not have objective criteria, one comes up against all sorts of difficulties. Although I have a lot of sympathy with the concept, I could not support this amendment because, for me, it crosses a major legislative Rubicon between the objective test and the subjective test.

[Andrew George]

In that case, in what way is the intention described in Government amendment 32 any less subjective than that proposed in amendment 101?