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

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Alan Whitehead

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[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—