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

Debate between Jeffrey M Donaldson and Kevin Barron

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

Members will know that I chair the Standards Committee, and this morning we agreed a report on this Bill and how it might affect us in our role as Members of Parliament. It was published just half an hour ago at 4.30 pm and I assume it is now in the Vote Office if anyone wants to look at it, but I want to give a brief overview of what we found.

Shortly after the publication of the Bill, Members received an e-mail from the director of Justice in Financial Services, Joe Egerton. He was concerned about the effect the Bill would have on us. I was contacted by several Members from both sides of the House about this matter, and last week I gave evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee on its investigation into the matter.

Members will know that there have been concerns about lobbying for many years. As early as 1695 the House resolved that:

“The Offer of any Money, or other Advantage, to any Member of Parliament, for the promoting of any Matter whatsoever, depending, or to be transacted, in Parliament, is a high Crime and Misdemeanour, and tends to the Subversion of the Constitution.”

Successive resolutions have restricted what Members are permitted to do. The current code of conduct states that no Member shall

“act as a paid advocate in any proceeding of the House”.

Indeed, the guide to the rules relating to the conduct of Members makes it clear that the prohibition on advocacy is not limited to proceedings in the House or approaches to Ministers, but extends to approaches to colleagues and to any servants of the Crown. Consultant lobbying as it is normally understood consists of the acceptance of money in direct return for lobbying activity. As the code of conduct is currently written, this would almost certainly be a breach of the advocacy rule.

We also note that the requirements for registration of Members’ financial interests are far more detailed than the Bill’s requirements for entries on the register of consultant lobbyists. Although Members are permitted to have outside interests, a Member who carried out “consultant lobbying” would be breaking the current rules of conduct of the House. While we recognise that that might change, we think it is important that problems do not arise.

As Chair of the Standards Committee, I wrote to the Leader of the House and he responded on 30 August, saying,

“I know that there has been some misunderstanding about whether the normal activities of Members of Parliament would be captured under the definition of consultant lobbying as set out in the Bill. I would therefore like to be quite clear that it is absolutely not the intention of the Bill to do so.”

Although we welcome that assurance, we still have some reservations about the Bill as drafted. People will know the exemptions it contains, one of which is to protect our use of privilege in this place. That is set out in schedule 1(1), which, in effect, protects the provisions intended to assert the continuing force of article 9 of the Bill of Rights. Although some question remains about whether or not that could change in the future, we have no problem with it in the context of this Bill.

The problem lies where schedule 1 deals with Members’ communications on behalf of their constituents, as the provisions are restrictive. We believe that the main mischief in the Bill’s current drafting is in paragraph 2 of schedule 1, which contains the other exception for Members in Parliament. It states:

“A Member of Parliament who makes communications within section 2(3) on behalf of a person or persons resident in his or her constituency does not, by reason of those communications, carry on the business of consultant lobbying.”

The paragraph goes on to state that

“‘resident’ has the meaning which it has for the purposes of section 4 of the Representation of the People Act 1983”.

Simply put, we believe that the Bill, as drafted, would stop us going beyond representing a constituent who has contacted us about a matter; it would severely restrict me, as a Member of Parliament, in communicating with Ministers on public health matters and on many other things. My Committee’s report recommends that we remove paragraph (2) of schedule 1 altogether and that we add a sub-paragraph to paragraph 6, stating that a reference to payment does not include a reference to the salary of a Member of Parliament.

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

We are greatly concerned about this particular issue. As the House will know, there are five constituencies in Northern Ireland for which no Member takes his or her seat in this House. People living in those constituencies often want parliamentary representation and so come to other Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies in order to gain it. That matter needs to be given consideration.

[Mr Barron]

I am grateful for that intervention, and I entirely agree; my Committee thinks that we are in a dangerous area in respect of doing our job as Members of Parliament and being a voice for our constituents or a voice for wider issues in society. Simply put, if things were restricted in the way that the Bill now envisages, I would be getting my information from the Executive rather than from organisations that can come here to lobby me as a legislator and give me wider knowledge than perhaps the Executive would, on occasion, want me to have when we are legislating. I believe it is important that we address that.

The registrar of consultant lobbyists is given sweeping powers under this Bill. It is perfectly possible that the courts and the registrar will clarify that the definition does not extend so far, to us, but primary legislation should be unambiguous about such matters—this Bill is exactly the opposite. The letter from the Leader of the House contained an offer in relation to sorting out this problem, and I hope that this will be taken seriously. The Committee would like to see it done while the Bill is being considered by the House of Commons, if we agree, in the next week or so.