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

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, I will answer directly the point made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, on the question of regulation: the degree of regulation and degree of bureaucracy. That was the main burden of both their comments.

I declare once again that I am a member of the Electoral Commission. I do not speak on behalf of the Electoral Commission; I speak for myself. However, I am a member of the commission and therefore have some awareness of the sort of arguments that have taken place.

I remind the noble Lords that, as regards the level of regulation and bureaucracy, the Electoral Commission has already recommended that, in principle, all staff costs should be taken into account: for non-party campaigning groups, for political parties, for charities and for all groups. They should have all their staff costs taken into account in any future general election. That is the position of the commission.

It is not a popular position. The parties do not like it; the charities, obviously, do not like it; but the Electoral Commission believes that is right and in the interests of a fair election process, where financial forces on both sides are evenly balanced and there is transparency about what financial support each particular group may have. That is the position in principle. Therefore, it cannot be said that the Electoral Commission sees any difficulty in practice or in principle in looking at the whole of staff costs, because it has said that it supports including the lot.

Therefore, we are really arguing only about the next general election. Originally, as all noble Lords will remember, the point was that under the Bill, the regulated period was going to start in May of this year. At that point, the Electoral Commission said, “This is too soon. If we are going to have to deal with all this extra detail, the charities will have difficulty in doing so—and so will the Electoral Commission”. That is the springboard from which the commission made its position plain; that there would perhaps be practical difficulties in doing it for this general election.

Since then, of course, the Government have changed their position. We are now talking about a much reduced regulatory period of seven and a half months. We are talking about the whole of the summer—the spring and the summer and the early autumn—when it is possible for the charities to look at this, if they are regulated, and to come to some conclusion. That dramatically changes the position. Although the Electoral Commission, as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, fairly pointed out, still has some reservations about the next general election, it says in its latest advice that the amendment of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, has only some advantages over the Government’s. That is fairly constrained language. It is a question of either/or, and it is not a very strong recommendation in favour of one or the other; it is saying that there are some advantages to the Harries amendment over the Government’s present position. It is not a big sell, in other words. So we should look at it sensibly and practically from that point of view.

In addition, as the Minister said, what we are looking for here in 2015 is, first, an honest assessment of the position. No one is looking at excessive detail, because excessive detail cannot be provided and probably cannot be checked, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, pointed out, on the timescale we are talking about in the middle of the general election. Lots of things are in practice unenforceable—even now, under the electoral arrangements we have at the moment—in the timescale of a general election. We are looking at an honest assessment. Thereafter, the review, which has to take place under the Bill, or under the Act as it may be, can look at what actually happened in this general election as a guide to future general elections. So in all those ways, the Government’s position is still strong and is worth supporting.

I will make a final point that was made in a previous debate by the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, who I am glad to see in the Chamber this evening. This is about the process of a general election, where the main players are the candidates, and the financial support they have is limited by Acts of Parliament. We know that political parties have a clear limit on what they can spend. Equally, there should be a clear limit and transparency about non-party campaigning. The candidates and the parties are the main players in the general election, not charities. The charities should be able to have their say, but the system should be regulated and transparent. I think that that is the Government’s position.

In those circumstances, given the Electoral Commission’s position on regulating non-party campaigning, which it is clearly in favour of in principle, and given that it does not see any undue practical problems, given proper time, perhaps the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, should think again about pressing his amendment.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, may I ask a simple, pragmatic question? Bearing in mind the calculations that the Minister demonstrated earlier, and what he said about various e-mails and telephone calls not being taken into account, could he give some indication, in order to help the charities, of how rough an estimate will do?

[Lord Walton of Detchant (CB)]

My Lords, I have not spoken previously on the Bill, but in the course of my professional career I have had the privilege of being associated with a large number of medical charities of which I am still president, vice-president, patron or vice-patron, covering a wide range of topics of relevance to human health. Having said that, they are at one in expressing concern about the provisions of the Bill, and in supporting the amendment tabled by my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries, for the reasons that he has given today.

This morning, when I arrived at your Lordships’ House and went into the Attendants’ Office, to my great surprise I found a copy of the Daily Telegraph pushed into my docket. I could not imagine what it was there for until I looked through the pages, and there was a whole-page advertisement, sponsored by a vast range of charitable bodies, all seeking support for his amendment because of their concerns about their ability to function and to serve the population in which they are interested to the best of their ability. For that reason, I strongly support the amendment.