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

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I wish briefly to draw attention to what the Joint Committee on Human Rights said about this. I am a member of that committee and I apologise because I have a meeting this afternoon and will not be here for much of the rest of our debates. The committee acknowledged that the Government were right to review the maximum spending limits; I imagine that they need to be reviewed every so often, not least because of inflation, which the amendment addresses.

The committee’s report makes the point about the lower limits now being,

“applied to a wider list of controlled activities (such as media events, rallies, canvassing)”,

and that,

“the Government admits that it is difficult to assess how much is currently spent on these additional activities by third parties and therefore it is difficult to assess the impact of the measure. The Government’s inability to provide this assessment is of concern, and adds to the overall uncertainty and lack of understanding regarding the Bill”.

Is the Minister able to provide some assessment of what this will mean and allay the concerns that have been raised? In the absence of that and of decent evidence, which is generally lacking around the Bill, I strongly support the commission’s amendment.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, it will probably come as no surprise that the Labour Party supports reducing the cost of politics, not simply because that is right nor just because of the warnings sounded by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who is not in her place, on Monday and this morning, but perhaps because Labour is outspent by the Conservatives. The current situation is bad for democracy, not simply for ourselves, and the major reason is because money and politics rarely mix. We want all groups, candidates and parties to be able to put their views to the electorate without needing to raise large sums or without having to be rich enough to fund a campaign themselves.

Although we are slightly unsure about the wording of the Bill, we think we have much in common with the intention behind the Government’s changes, in that we support transparency and lowering costs. However, we are concerned, for the reasons that we have just heard, about what they have sought to do and the figures that they have chosen. Neither the noble Lord, Lord Horam, nor the rest of us know where the figures come from. The Electoral Commission quite rightly says that it is for the Government to propose and for Parliament to decide on the appropriate limits, in order to balance that freedom of expression against controls of undue influence. The commission listed some of the factors we ought to think about, such as inflation and the wider range of activities. However, we find it difficult to see how the Government have thought about those matters in the way that my noble friend Lady Lister suggested because we have seen nothing of the assumptions that they have made about the costs associated with policy research, press, meetings, debates and staff, which will now be covered by the Bill—and over a 12-month period.

In the earlier debate the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, compared what a third party might be able to spend against what a candidate might spend; of course we are talking about a 12-month period, not when the candidates are affected in the short campaign. So, as others have done, we ask: what are the factors that led to these figures? Were they grabbed out of the ether, rather like the 500 seats in the Commons that the Government, as the House will remember, were set on last time? Did these figures just come out of a roulette wheel without rhyme or reason, or is there something that we could look at to test the Government’s assumptions that these are the rights figures? Without that, it is very hard to see the logic behind them.