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

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford). I echo her comments about the denial on the Government Benches that the Bill will be restrictive. One has only to look at clause 26, and even the explanatory notes by implication identify that the Bill will be restrictive, because the Government are extending and broadening types of expenditure that can be regulated. The most damning comment in the explanatory notes is this one:

“regardless of whether those incurring the expenditure intended it (or also intended it) for another purpose.”

Therefore, a small local charity’s campaign on a local issue could be taken up by a candidate in a general election, but before we can say, “Bob’s your uncle,” the charity finds itself in breach of the legislation.

Like many other hon. Members, I spent a great deal of my working life before I became an MP in the voluntary sector. I was the deputy director Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. With the greatest respect to the Deputy Leader of the House, who will wind up the debate for the Government, the Bill, and certainly part 2, is predicated on a misunderstanding of the role of charities in our society. There has hardly been a piece of social legislation in the past 150 years that has not had the involvement of charities or voluntary sector organisations. Some of the pressure and some of the great reforms have come from charities. I fear that the Bill reveals the Government’s tunnel vision about what charities and voluntary sector organisations are about. And we should make the distinction between charities and voluntary organisations, which are not always exactly the same.

The big society seems to be about services, not involvement in public debate. If the Government really believe in a big society, they should be encouraging charities and voluntary organisations to be involved in our public discourse. There is sometimes an arrogance among full-time politicians. They assume that they are the only people who are interested in politics, that somehow politics is our particular preserve. The reality is that civic society has proved, over many years, that it has a significant role to play in our public discourse.

Independence is crucial to the voluntary sector. I was astonished to hear the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) imply that because the National Council for Voluntary Organisations takes money from Government, it should not be independent and should not be allowed to express the opinions it wants to express.

[Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)]

May I ask one question about my right hon. Friend’s position, and the position of any Member standing at the next general election? When a charity turns up at a hustings and issues leaflets, that will become illegal. How, in those circumstances, will a candidate get to know about that charity and take forward its work?

[Mrs McGuire]

The other thing that is even more disturbing is that if my hon. Friend happens to say that he supports a particular charity and something it is promoting, and the charity happens to put that on a leaflet, along with perhaps three of the four or five other candidates, it might find itself in the same position. The alternative to that is that it may well just put out a list of people who support their objectives. It is just a nonsense and a mishmash. I am frankly astonished that the Liberal Democrats, who made and built up their reputation as community activists, are going along with this proposed legislation. [Interruption.] The Deputy Leader of the House can sneer all he likes. This is denying the heritage of the Liberal Democrats, who were forever telling us they were community politicians.

[Mike Thornton]

I wonder whether the right hon. Lady can tell me this. That is the law at the moment and the law is not changing, so why is she objecting to it? If she objected to it before, why did she not want it changed before?

[Mrs McGuire]

I have already pointed out that clause 26 broadens the definition, but if it is the law at the moment why are we wasting time and paper on the Bill? That is the question that the Deputy Leader of the House needs to pick up on when he addresses the House.

I spent a few days at a conference in Sarajevo not long after Bosnia and Herzegovina became independent. Speaking to the embryonic voluntary sector organisations there—harking back to what the hon. Member for North East Somerset said—I explained that one of the great things about the UK voluntary sector was that it was accepted as independent: it could express its views in the way it wanted. We now have an implied threat or demand that organisations that take money from Government should have their independence curtailed.

The Bill gives considerable discretion to the Electoral Commission, which is among the groups most critical of this element of the Bill. I put it to the Minister that that causes its own conflict. The Charity Commission, the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator and the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland regulate charities and decide whether their objectives are appropriate. Now we are bringing in the Electoral Commission. Under the proposed legislation, if the Charity Commission says that it is perfectly acceptable for an organisation to pursue a particular line of policy and the Electoral Commission says that it is not sure, which body will regulate the charity? Where does the charity go for a definitive statement on the pursuit of its charitable objectives? I hope the Minister has a lot to say when he stands up, as opposed to the chuntering from the Front Bench we have had in the past 10 minutes or so. The Electoral Commission has recognised this conflict, saying:

“we do not think it is appropriate for us to have a wide discretion over what activity is covered by the rules”.

The Electoral Commission, who are the experts, is asking the Government not to put it in the position of having to regulate what activity is appropriate.

I can speak from personal experience. When I was the deputy director of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, we were also involved in all sorts of political campaigning against some of the things we thought were wrong. I was also the candidate against the Conservative Secretary of State, now Lord Forsyth, who funded my organisation. Should my organisation therefore have said, “Hey, wait a minute, Anne—I don’t know whether you can continue in your job”? What would be the position then? Would everything that I did have been misinterpreted by this piece of ludicrous legislation?

As I think one of my colleagues said earlier, the Government have united the most disparate group of people against this Bill—the TUC, LabourList, Conservative Home, the TaxPayers Alliance, Guido Fawkes and Owen Jones. Frankly, they should almost be congratulated on building that alliance against this ludicrous piece of legislation. Why are the Government so frightened of the charitable and voluntary sector in this country? If they are just legislating for things that already happen, why are we all here? This is a piece of arrogance from the Government. They do not understand the independence of the sector and they are trying to curtail its activities.