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

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby, in his evocative speech, described the voluntary and charity sector as a source of political energy. I will address my remarks to the subject of political energy.

I know that I am not alone in your Lordships’ House in my concern that young people are increasingly unmotivated to participate in the conversations and campaigns of public life. The Bill exacerbates their disengagement. As we have heard repeatedly, Part 2 simultaneously extends the scope of what is considered electoral campaigning and lowers the threshold of spending, at the same time as introducing double accounting for the spends of organisations that work in coalition. The cumulative effect of that creates the possibility of silencing the voices of campaigners and of charitable organisations.

Many of us know that a commitment to a single issue or principle is the start of a broader political understanding: a broader political journey. To curtail the voice of the third sector, which has from all quarters expressed its fear of falling foul of the Bill, is to curtail one of the most important places in which young people traditionally find their voice.

The National Union of Students is just one of many organisations that fear that the Bill will curtail the important job of introducing young people to the world of public debate and political discourse. It is concerned that the Bill’s lack of clarity and need for legal opinion will price many of its poorer branches out of politics altogether—particularly further education colleges, which noble Lords will know have a high number of students from backgrounds not adequately represented in elite sections of society. Conrad Grant, president of Goldsmiths Students’ Union, is worried about how the legislation will impact on its voter registration drives that are linked to affordable housing and a living wage for part-time work. These are two issues of increasing concern to students, particularly those faced with the London rental market.

What better way can we find to engage young people than a national debate about lowering the voting age to 16, and who better to propel that debate than the NUS? Yet NUS President Toni Pearce says that she worries greatly that the entirely legitimate and important work that student unions undertake in engaging students in politics will no longer be possible if Part 2 passes in anything like its current form. Noble Lords should bear in mind that the NUS, in complying with child protection laws, has to provide staff supervision for the under-18s, the costs of which under the new legislation would be attributable to their election spend.

The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, referred to the issue of student fees, and the NUS believes that its 2010 Votes for Students campaign against raising student fees would fall foul of the new legislation, were it to happen at the next election. I hope that I am not alone in feeling that it is the democratic right of students—possibly their responsibility—to take a view on legislation that has such a profound effect on their education and then on the remainder of their adult lives. In this instance, the election of individual MPs was not their primary purpose, but it could in retrospect be argued that it could reasonably be regarded as looking to influence electoral outcomes, since the campaign helped to secure the election of a number of MPs who signed the pledge not to raise fees. Is it not legitimate in the ecology of our democratic processes that students take into the next election the lessons of the last?

In the new year we will see the introduction of individual electoral registration. This legislation will disproportionately affect young people as they move to educational institutions or to new towns and cities in search of work. To whom shall we turn for a campaign to put the young on the electoral roll? Perhaps to a coalition of youth-facing organisations, each of which—under the terms of this Bill—will find themselves having to account for the spend of the whole. Is it not the case that creating any barrier for organisations who work to engage young people in politics, and who encourage them to participate in our democratic processes, is doubly concerning in the context of IER? If we truly want an engaged electorate, as I believe we all do, if we want to encourage young people to feel that the political class is not disinterested, if we want a new generation to come to the table with their concerns and needs, we must drop as many barriers as possible—not reduce the ways and circumstances in which they can engage and pull up the drawbridge behind us.

Like others, I have been overwhelmed by representations revealing the anxieties of the third sector, including from a number of trade unions, mostly unaffiliated to the Labour party, which feel that the Bill creates punitive administrative burdens on ordinary working people. Noble Lords have spoken in detail about the provisions of the Bill that will curtail legitimate campaigns from charities and NGOs. As well as the practical aspects, there is the message of this Bill, which is that politics is owned by politicians—and that does untold damage to the public engagement of young people.

The purpose of the Bill, as described by the Government, is missing on the page, and I ask that they take the advice of the multiple committees whose concerned opinion we have heard this afternoon, pause the Bill, and, in doing so, take the opportunity to make more equitable the burdens on the third sector, trade unions and business. Above all, I hope that Ministers will agree that it will be a bad day for politics in its broadest sense if, instead of harnessing the political energy of the young, the Bill that they propose denies the voice of the young.