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

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend was a lowly—although perhaps not a very humble—Treasury official, and the point is well made.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Government Members have suggested that Government amendments 92 and 93 clarify matters, but does my hon. Friend agree that they actually have the opposite effect, because whereas before the Government were badly defining what lobbying activities are, they are now badly defining everything else that lobbying activities are not?

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend expresses far better than I could exactly what I was trying to say earlier, and she is absolutely right.

Let us consider how two areas would be affected by the Bill and the proposed amendments. The first of them is the introduction of droit de suite. When the European Union insisted that every country in Europe had to have an artists’ resale right, the Government at the time—a Labour Government—were wholeheartedly opposed. However, some members of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee were wholeheartedly in favour and wanted to persuade the Government to take a different course of action, which we thought was going to be inevitable anyway.

At the time the Design and Artists Copyright Society, the body that administers copyright for artists, was lobbying very hard to have droit de suite introduced in the UK, and on a generous basis—more generous than that originally intended by the UK. So far as I am aware, it never lobbied the permanent secretary, but it certainly lobbied all the Culture, Media and Sport Committee members and a lot of junior DCMS and Treasury officials, and in the end it won its case. It would not be caught by this Bill, however, because its primary purpose is not to lobby, but to administer a system of collecting rates for artists. My argument is that that is wholly inappropriate. The body that was opposed to the introduction of such a right was the body that represents all the art houses and art galleries. It, too, would not be covered by this Bill, but I think it should be.

Communications with Members of Parliament should be included, as the new clause of the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) would allow, just as much as communications with Ministers or anybody else should, because knowing who is trying to influence proposed legislation, and who tables amendments and who does not table amendments and so on, is a vital part of knowing what is going on in the lobbying business.

Let us consider, too, recent events in the newspaper industry. I think all Members would agree that it has been ferociously lobbying for quite some time, sometimes through direct means and sometimes through indirect means. The chairman of the Press Complaints Commission is Lord Hunt. I am not sure whether he is still the chairman, but he is a Member of the other House. I am not sure whether he would be included in this legislation by virtue of being a Member of the other House, but he has certainly been lobbying on behalf of a whole set of other newspaper agencies, and he is paid to do so. The Government may say, “Yes, he probably would be included, as that is consultant lobbying.”

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I appreciate that the Minister is getting her advice from the Treasury Whip, but I hope that when she replies she will spell out which lobbying professionals agree with her definition and think that Australia and Canada are a suitable comparator. As someone who has worked for eight years in the industry, it strikes me that civil servants have licked their finger, stuck it in the air and come up with a figure of—[Interruption.] The Deputy Leader of the House chunters from a sedentary position. Perhaps he wishes to add something to the debate. Apparently not. We are going to get the usual curmudgeonly Deputy Leader of the House role; the second Liberal Democrat to do that with such skill and grace in the last few years, and heckle anyone who has the temerity to disagree with his views.

[Chi Onwurah]

I support the excellent comments that my hon. Friend is making. Will he set himself the challenge of explaining why a Government who set such store in supporting small and medium enterprises, should, as he describes, put such a regulatory and financial burden upon them?

[Thomas Docherty]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend, who spoke eloquently from the Front Bench during proceedings on my private Member’s Bill last year, setting out why the Opposition want to see workable legislation. I am more than happy to set out what is wrong with the impact assessment. It uses the Government’s figures and is confused. It says that the register, which covers only consultant lobbyists, will cost £500,000 to set up and a further £200,000 to run each year. That is according to the Government’s own figures, so it must be right. Almost all the firms who are members of the APPC are SMEs. I would be amazed if there were one that employed more than 250 people in total. Most are firms with between 20 and 50 employees, so these are not large firms. They are the entrepreneurial firms that we hear so much about from Government Members. But the Government and their civil servants have made up some rash figures. They have said that there are about 1,100 lobbying consultants in this country. I am still not clear where that figure has come from. I think they have taken the APPC list and accepted that that is probably pretty much every one who is “a lobbyist”. They have then said that, if the cost is £500,000, that can be shared by 1,000, which I assume is the 1,000 lobbyists. However, the Bill contradicts that. It says that payment is per firm—the Deputy Leader of the House graciously nods in agreement—and probably only 10 to 20 firms will be caught by the current definition. I am not a great mathematician, but if one takes £500,000 and divides it by 20, that is not £500. It is significantly more. That is just the start-up cost in the first year. That is a disproportionate and huge impact on small businesses.

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[Miss Smith]

No. I have given way to the hon. Gentleman once already and I must conclude, because there is plenty of work before the Committee tonight.

I have reservations about new clause 5, although I respect the serious work that Members have done with lobbying representatives. I urge my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans not to press new clause 5.

Amendment 161, tabled by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), would make all lobbying businesses, not just those that lobby on behalf of third parties, liable for registration. As I have said, it is difficult to appreciate what value a register of in-house lobbyists would provide. I urge the hon. Gentleman not to press his amendment.

Let me turn to the Government amendments in this group. It is clear that they have been spectacularly misunderstood by Labour Front Benchers. [Laughter.] The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), who laughs loudest, claims to care for small businesses but appears not to have read the papers in preparation for this debate.

Amendments 76, 77, 81 to 85, 92 and 96 to 98 are designed to exclude the smallest organisations from the requirement to register as consultant lobbyists. They do so by amending the definition of consultant lobbying such that it includes only those who are registered under the Value Added Tax Act 1994, which I am sure the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) has read in great detail.

The Government are committed to ensuring that small businesses are not subject to disproportionate burdens. An exclusion for those small businesses that are not VAT registered from the requirement to register as consultant lobbyists will ensure that whatever burden may be associated with registration will not be placed on them. The VAT registration represents a clear threshold.

[Chi Onwurah]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Miss Smith]

Would the hon. Lady like to explain VAT registration?

[Chi Onwurah]

It would be a great pleasure to explain VAT registration, but not at this point in time. Is the hon. Lady saying that all companies that pay VAT registration are large companies, or is she acknowledging that many small businesses are registered for VAT?

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[Miss Smith]

Thank you, Sir Roger. I will be as quick as I can in making a few points about Government amendments.

It has always been the Government’s intention that those who communicate with Government in a manner incidental to their normal professional activity should not be required to register as consultant lobbyists. These are not the people or organisations that this register is intended to capture. Let me be clear that it is our intention that multidisciplinary firms that run consultant lobbying operations and that lobby in a manner that is not merely incidental to their other activities should be captured. These are the exact professional consultant lobbyists that this register is intended to capture.

We have listened to those who suggested that the exemption in paragraph 3 of schedule 1 was too broad and should be refined, including the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. Our amendments 91, 93, 94 and 95 will refine that paragraph by substituting the insubstantial proportion test with one that focuses on incidental lobbying. Specifically, paragraph 3 will provide that a person does not carry on the business of consultant lobbying if they are part of a non-lobbying organisation or if the lobbying communication they make is incidental to their normal non-lobbying activity.

In conclusion, we are proposing not a fully blown regulator for the industry, but a solution to an identified problem. I am sure that Members throughout the Committee will have read the US federal lobbying regulation manual, “The Lobbying Manual”, which runs to 894 pages. That is what we wish to avoid. I therefore oppose various amendments but support those tabled by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I look forward to hearing what the Opposition think they can do better now than they did for the past 13 years.

[Chi Onwurah]

It is testimony to the ineptitude of the Government that, after months of delay, they have introduced a lobbying Bill that covers just 1% of lobbyists and still manages to be full of loopholes.

We have heard a lot today about the importance of lobbying in our democracy. We have heard that it is nothing to be ashamed of and that transparency is a good thing that is welcomed by the industry. There is a consensus on both sides of the Committee about that, or so I had thought until I read the Bill and the Government amendments. I was entirely baffled by many of the paragraphs and sub-paragraphs in the clause and the accompanying schedule. It is plain that the Government were no clearer, because they tabled their own set of amendments. However, those amendments —[Interruption.] I have read the amendments, despite what the Minister says from a sedentary position, and rather than clearing up the confusion that the Government have created, they create more confusion. In this Bill, it is difficult to distinguish between what is the result of poor drafting and what is the result of poor judgment.

Ministers appear to have created a loophole whereby the vast majority of the lobbying industry can avoid having to register at all. Even the current voluntary registers capture more of the industry than the proposals would. The Deputy Leader of the House estimated in this debate that 350 companies would be caught by the Bill. George Kidd, the acting chair of the UK Public Affairs Council, has estimated that 100 would be caught. At least 15,000 companies operate as lobbyists, so it is clear that the Bill captures a minute proportion of them.

I find the Minister’s assertions that the Bill will not have an impact on the voluntary registers hard to believe. The Government talk about the great impact of regulation and law-making, but they seem to be saying that this Bill, which defines lobbying—it defines it badly, but it defines it nevertheless—will have no impact whatever on the existing lobbying registers. They have very little respect for the impact that the Bill will have, intended or otherwise.

I urge the Government to listen to their own Back Benchers, who have said that the Bill does not reflect an understanding of what lobbying is. The Bill has also been described as a net that is badly drawn and an albatross. I agree with the Financial Times, which said today, less figuratively but equally accurately, that the Bill is “not good lawmaking”. The whole industry agrees with that, rejects the Government proposals and supports the intent of the Opposition amendments. That is why we will press amendments 2 and 9 to the vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.