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

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I may say on behalf of the House how much we are looking forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Horam. He brings to the House a great wealth of experience from the other place. He has been a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in two departments and a member of a number of influential committees. He also brings a very interesting political trajectory, which indicates his capacity to enter into the point of view of other people and an independence of mind, both of which are characteristics of this House. We very much look forward to hearing more of those characteristics in his maiden speech and in further speeches in the House.

I declare an interest as chair of the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement. This commission has been set up with the backing of more than 50 churches and campaigning groups. However, due to the extreme speed with which this Bill is being pushed through, the commission has had only very limited time in which to act. Hearings have taken place in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, as well as in London, but our report will not be published until next Tuesday. It will be in time for Committee stage but not for today. Today, therefore, I speak in a personal capacity, although obviously drawing on some of the evidence that has been put to us so far.

My concern, as is that of so many, is the sheer speed with which this Bill is being pushed through. It is a major concern of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the Select Committee on the Constitution and the Electoral Commission. There is total agreement—no disagreement at all—that big spending campaigns should be properly regulated. But the changes made in this Bill, compared with what was in place for the two previous elections, mean that charities and campaigning groups feel that their fundamental right to free speech will be severely curtailed. They have not been consulted and nor has the Electoral Commission, which has to offer guidance on the implementation of the law. They have grave doubts about the Bill as it stands.

Part 2 of the Bill, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has united an extraordinary number of organisations. I am not going to go through the list but will just mention the National Trust. It argues that its campaigning, which has brought about so many benefits in relation to the countryside which we now take for granted, would simply not be possible under the Bill.

One of the reasons why charities and campaigning groups need to be consulted is that they are key players in keeping our democracy alive. With the drastic fall in political party membership and the indifference of so many to professional politics, it is these groups that arouse people’s interest and help to focus their concerns. At election times it is the churches and charities that organise the hustings. The CARE organisation, for example, was responsible for facilitating more than 300 hustings during the last election. It is the charities and campaigning groups that educate the electorate about particular issues so that they can put intelligent questions to the candidates. Overall they have had a huge influence. It was the churches and aid agencies which combined together to mount one of the biggest campaigns that we have ever seen, on dropping third-world debt. That was followed up with campaigns on the millennium goals and overseas aid generally. These campaigns have influenced all the major parties in a very positive way—how much poorer the world would have been without them. Because of the key role that these bodies now play in democratic engagement and in keeping democracy alive, Parliament needs to be particularly careful about any legislation which affects their ability to do this.

It is said that there are those who resent the role now played by charities in our society. Some apparently would like to confine them to service provision, leaving the formation of political policy to politicians. Whether or not this is the case, it does raise a fundamental question at the outset. Why has Part 2 suddenly appeared? What is the problem it is trying to fix? We are told that it stems from a worry that American-style big-money campaigning such as Citizens United might come over the Atlantic. If that is so, however, it would be easily caught by the present regulations. As far as the United Kingdom is concerned, in the 2005 and 2010 general elections only two third parties exceeded the new lower limit for the election year. In 2005 it was UNISON and the Conservative Rural Action Group and in 2010 it was UNISON and Vote for Change.

No problem has been identified and no reason has been given for this reduction or the rationale for this figure or any other. For the vast majority of charities and campaigning groups, it is the new threshold at which they will they have to register which has given rise to the widest concern. This has reduced from £10,000 to £5,000 a year in England and from £5,000 to £2,000 a year in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. As if this was not limiting enough, the range of activities which will count towards the sum has been greatly widened. Until now it has only been the cost of election leaflets and posters. Now, according to the long list in proposed new Schedule 8A to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, it will include all advertising and all costs involved in this, all unsolicited material addressed to electors and all associated costs, all expenses concerned with market research, canvassing and provision of services for the media or conferences, transport, travel costs, rallies and public meetings generally.

The scope is exceedingly wide and concerns expenditure over the whole year before an election as well as the immediate run-up to it, including staff costs in so far as they are connected with activities for election purposes which we know, according to Clause 26, are activities which can reasonably be regarded as promoting or procuring electoral success at any relevant election for a registered party or candidate.

There is a huge range of questions raised by this but the overall effect of reducing the limits at which a charity will have to register and the increased number of activities that will have to be taken into account when calculating the cost means that charities and campaigning groups which regard trying to influence public policy as one of their core activities will be seriously inhibited. It is not that they will be spending big sums; on the whole, they will not. However, from the beginning of an election year, if the Bill is approved, they will be very frightened of quickly going over the limit and doing something illegal. Many trustees of charities feel that it is part of their fiduciary duty—or they will do—to curtail severely, if not stop altogether, a range of activities that might be seen to be on the borderline for fear that the charity would subsequently be regarded as acting illegally.

If, however, they decide to take the risk and register, the paperwork needed to subdivide the elements of expenditure and people’s time could be a huge bureaucratic burden on small charities or campaigning groups, especially during the actual election period itself when they will have to produce weekly accounts of any expenditure. The impact assessment calculates that the cost will be only between nothing and £800 for any one organisation, but many charities think that this is a major underestimate of the kind of costs that might be involved.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very struck by what the noble and right reverend Lord is saying. Does he not agree that the ground he is now covering brings into the light the fundamental contradiction that under charity law, charities are expected to make the best possible use of every penny that is available to them in fulfilling their purposes? This Bill is going to force them to waste it on bureaucracy.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

That is a valuable point and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Judd.

There is a whole range of other problems. If groups campaign on a particular issue, the total costs involved will be attributed to each charity. Some of the most effective campaigns in recent years have come about because charities have combined. There are particular problems in relation to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, where the sum has now been reduced to a paltry £2,000 in the year. I am not going to deal with that now, but it might emerge in subsequent days.

Time and again we have heard the phrase “chilling effect” being used. Some people say that they cannot understand why charities are worried about it because there will be no curtailing of their freedom. It is the combination of these elements, the lower limits and the increased range of activities that count towards them, together with a continuing fundamental uncertainty about the definition of an electoral activity in practice that is making so many charities feel that their freedom to engage is in fact being threatened. The Government are worried about a large fish across the Atlantic called Citizens United and fear that it might swim over here, but instead of waiting for it to come, they have sent out a deep sea trawler which has thrown up a huge amount of sand and confusion from the bottom of the sea and put a net over charities which have been swimming quite legitimately in the waters of democracy. It seems quite absurd.

There is a case for including a number of activities in what counts for electoral purposes. I think that we can agree on that, although the question of staff time raises all sorts of difficulties, particularly in the case of voluntary time and whether it is workable at all. But what is strange is that all these activities are being brought together—the lowering of the threshold and an increase in the activities that count towards it. Will the Minister explain what the problem is that has given rise to this severe curtailment? It is rather like offering someone a sum of money for a piece of work and then telling them that the amount is being halved while at the same time they will have to complete a number of other tasks in order to earn the money at all. Surely if there were no reported problems before, and the number of activities is to be increased, the thresholds should in fact be raised, not lowered, in order to account for the ordinary activities that charities regard as part of their core duties.

As I have said, there is a logical case for including a lot of these activities, but will the Minister say something about how these charities are to assess volunteer time? The National Trust, for example, has thousands of volunteers. Are they to be taken into account?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a charity lawyer of long standing and founder of the firm Bates Wells and Braithwaite, which does as much charity work as any firm in the country.

I hope that the Minister will not be too dismayed by what I have to say. I do not view this as a partisan Bill; it is a Bill that all sides should, classically, deal with as they best think fit, as they are doing. However, the problem of dealing with this as Back-Bench Peers is as intense in relation to this Bill, more or less, as to any that I have come across. It is not so much the length—it is a mere 62 pages—but that it is mostly written by reference to the 2000 Act, and there is no Keeling schedule. How on earth are we Back-Benchers, with no assistance whatever, supposed to get to grips with the fine print of a main Bill of 201 pages and a supplementary and amending Bill of 62 pages? It is outrageous: I wanted to say that. I hope that in Committee the Minister will put in hand a Keeling schedule right away because without it we cannot do our job.

I note also that as we got in this morning there were three documents, totalling another 94 pages. One was the excellent Library note, one was the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the third was the Constitution Committee’s report. They were available only this morning. Again, how on earth are we supposed to do our jobs and take into full account the very careful work done by those various bodies? That merely emphasises the fact that a Bill of this importance should not be dealt with in this helter-skelter way, whether or not it comes out of the wash in time for the 2015 election. In my view, that is of secondary importance to the need to get this Bill as right as we can. It is difficult enough if we do that in the right way.

I happen to agree with much of what has been said in criticism of Part 1, although I want to concentrate on Part 2. I do not want to see Part 2 wholly scrapped, because with regard to non-charitable entities—particularly commercial third parties seeking to influence the outcome of an election by plugging, sometimes with huge resources, a particular line or point of view—we need Part 2 although, again, it should be heavily amended. I am wholly unpersuaded that we need charities in Part 2 at all. They should be exempt from Part 2 and from the 2000 Act. I shall come to that in a little detail in a minute.

A number of Peers have mentioned the importance of the charity sector, but there are one-third of a million charities in this country, 95% of which are run entirely by volunteers. It is no good the Minister saying, “They will not be caught by this Act”. Lots and lots of them jolly well will because we have the provision about coalitions. I am damned if I fully understand the coalition arrangements, but certainly they will catch tens of thousands of small charities in their tentacles because so many of them are part of a national body, albeit that they are independently and separately registered as charities, and we know all the rest.

There has been a good deal of exaggeration and quite a lot of charities, frankly, were not even aware of the 2000 Act where a lot of this stuff resides. None the less, the charity sector as a whole is up in arms about this Bill. Broadly, the charities are absolutely right. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, used the rather nice expression that this is a solution without a problem, which is right. We have no evidence from anywhere or anyone that the last election or the one before was subverted by charities. When have we ever in this House had a Bill like this which deals with a problem that does not exist? It is bonkers. It is not even as if, if we take charities out of this Bill, there is nothing that contains and controls them: they have the Charity Commission, as my noble friend Lord Hodgson and others have said.

The Charity Commission is not a pushover. I have grappled with it for the past 45 years. Sometimes, it is pretty tough going. It has a job to do.

[Lord Judd]

Very few people know more about charities and their activities than the noble Lord, but is he not being a little naive? Even if he can sustain his argument that there is no evidence from previous elections, is not the point that there could be—for example, in Sheffield—in the next?

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I think that the Charity Commission can do the job. Perhaps I may read a couple of passages from CC9, which was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham and others. It is a long and detailed guidance for charities which has evolved over 40 or 50 years. I have been quite closely involved with it. It gives an absolutely well thought through, pragmatically based series of yardsticks. The summary of campaigning and political activity by charities states that,

“political campaigning, or political activity, as defined in this guidance, must be undertaken by a charity only in the context of supporting the delivery of its charitable purposes”.

There is no equivocation. It can engage only in activities pursuing its “charitable purposes”. It continues:

“However, a charity cannot exist for a political purpose, which is any purpose directed at furthering the interests of any political party, or securing or opposing a change in the law, policy or decisions either in this country or abroad. In the political arena, a charity must stress its independence and ensure that any involvement it has with political parties is balanced. A charity must not give support or funding to a political party, nor to a candidate or politician”.

That is as clear as clear can be. They are not empty words, and there are a lot more to go with them. The Charity Commission enforces this, and the charity world is remarkably free of any abuse of these guidelines.

The noble Lord, Lord Judd, may remember that when he was director of Oxfam we had a major battle with a statutory inquiry instigated by the Charity Commission into Oxfam having had activities outside the range of what was permissible under charity law. Fortunately we ended up convincing it that we had not, but these are not empty words. If the Minister says that they are not quite strong enough then give the Charity Commission more resources. It has had a great deal of its people power taken from it. If we remove it from this Act, it would be a big load off the back of the Electoral Commission. It would be a saving of manpower, not a waste of manpower. It would be an economic measure to give the Charity Commission a little more assistance and not to put the burden on the Electoral Commission.

Others have said it, but the charity world as it is is the jewel in the crown of our culture. More than half the adult population is engaged in charity in one way or another. Charities are the engine of civic engagement at a time when in other respects we are in dead trouble. They exemplify organic life, volunteerism, communalism, philanthropy and trust. They are cherished. Can we claim those characteristics for the body politic? I fear not. Can big business claim any of those virtues? I fear not. Yet we are on the brink of putting into force an Act which will damage the sector, particularly the smaller part of it. It will demoralise charities, it will cause bureaucratic overload and it will waste money that is hard obtained and can be used better elsewhere. I do not see that we have anything remotely approaching a justification for shackling the charity sector in the way we are when there is no proven evidence of abuse and when the Charity Commission is there to do a job which it is already doing.

I have probably said more than enough, but I hope that when we get to Committee I will not have to put down 100 amendments because it would be a waste of time compared to a much more fundamental review. My last word is to remind the Minister that charity law is severe. A charity can exist for charitable purposes only. It can act only to pursue those charitable purposes. It can act only in the public benefit. We do not need this.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interests. I have worked both as an executive and as a volunteer in a number of charity and voluntary agencies. I was director of VSO, director of Oxfam and more recently I am a trustee of Saferworld. My activities have mainly been in the international realm but also very much nowadays in the environment role as well.

I think that we are in a grave situation tonight. My noble friend in winding up what I thought was a very good opening speech, promised that we would work constructively and hard to try and make this a better Bill. I hope that that is possible; I have some doubts. The Government will have to do a lot of work to persuade us that we can make this a better Bill because there is tonight’s well argued issue about the complete incompetence and failure to think through and to analyse the consequences, and the unintended consequences, and how they will be dealt with. There is also a question about the underlying purpose of the Bill. At best that could be crudely party political and at worst it could be quite sinister. I have done a lot of work in the North Caucasus region and Russia in recent years and I am horrified to be looking at what is being proposed here and seeing how it relates to what is happening to civil society in Russia.

At times like this it is important to go back to the grassroots and listen, and I am going to ask the House to bear with me while I do that. In all the plethora of representations that have been made to us, there is one that has registered strongly with me. It is from the Newcastle Council for Voluntary Service, and other noble Lords may have seen it. I shall quote from what the council says:

“It isn’t clear which elements of our work could be classified as campaigning. For instance, we are involved in research on the impact of welfare reforms. Is that campaigning? We regard campaigning as one of our legitimate efforts, as our focus is about using voluntary and community action to improve the lives of people in Newcastle. It would be impossible to designate/attribute an economic value to this element of our work. There would be potentially disproportionate amounts of administration involved. The Act would effectively be a deterrent as there could be confusion over what was classified as campaigning. Obviously we are bound by Charity Law and do not engage in party political campaigning, but we have signed up to campaigns previously which want to change or strengthen policy during election time, eg support for housing homeless people”.

At this point I want to make my own intervention and say that I really do not understand this nonsense about the election period. If there is a valid role for voluntary agencies and charities in informing the public, it can be particularly important in an election year. The parties have to take into account the realities that are being beamed at them from the voluntary sector. I shall continue the quote:

“(Shelter Campaign) or addressing Child Poverty (Child Poverty Action Group) and general anti-poverty work”,

are all among the council’s concerns. It goes on by saying:

“It is sometimes difficult to attribute exact staff costs to different workstreams. Would we be deterred from joining in partnerships and working in collaboration with others as it wouldn’t be clear if a joint piece of work was subject to the new Act and we could be unintentionally drawn into this? As part of our general work, we try to engage in public policy discussions, this could inhibit us from doing so in future. For instance, we promoted the hustings sessions around the election of the Police and Crime Commissioners locally; in particular the sessions aimed at the voluntary sector. Would this count as campaigning under the Act in the future? … currently we are involved in the Living Wage Campaign; the Who Benefits campaign; doing studies on the impact of government policy on our members ie other local charities; working with disability charities looking at how to minimise the impact of welfare reforms on their users; doing studies on local organisations to improve the case for funding voluntary and community organisations. All these pieces of work fall well within our charitable objectives. All of these could fall subject to the Act”.

I see the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, shaking his head. The noble Lord and others have to face reality. Whatever was intended, the perception is that this is going to happen, so to rush this Bill through without having had any consultation with the organisations concerned is a political and constitutional disgrace. What these remarks indicate is how important it is to consult, so that you have the good will and involvement of the people who are doing the work at the front line; not pontificating in this House, but actually doing the work at the front line. I am absolutely dismayed that this Bill is before us without consultation, but I am not surprised. It is all too characteristic of the arrogance which is around: “We know and we can do it”. I am afraid that for a sane, decent, modern society, we must have a government approach which says, “Here is a problem that deeply affects people. Here are real issues of proper accountability during elections and the duties and responsibilities of trustees”. How can we sit down together and find a solution that we are all happy with and which we see as constructive? That is the mature and self-confident thing to do, not this lack of self-confidence which means that things have to be driven through rather than gathering up and involving people in a solution that is wholesome and rooted in our society.

This issue of campaigning and charities is not new. I was director of Oxfam and I wonder how many people remember where Oxfam started. It started in the university church in Oxford in 1942. There was the threat of invasion, with everyone geared up to defeat the enemy. I was a youngster at the time and I can remember the signs and slogans for victory. There was a great atmosphere. A cross-section of society came together: academics—Gilbert Murray among them—trade union leaders and church leaders. They were deeply disturbed about the appalling famine which they knew was happening in Greece. They went to the Government and said, “We want to get relief to Greece”. The Government said, in effect, “You must be mad. Greece is occupied by the Germans. How can you talk about doing that in this context?”. They said, “It’s not the Germans we’re concerned about, it’s the Greek people”. The Government said, “Look, there’s a blockade of Greece. How can we break a blockade to get assistance through?”. So in 1942 they went out with a petition and gathered thousands of signatures in Oxford and beyond. They got the public’s support and went back to the Government and said, “We want to do something about these people in Greece”. The Government caved in and said, “Well, if you can organise something with the Red Cross and you do it through the Red Cross, we will let you do it”. How would that have happened if there had not been a determination—a conviction—to drive through the objectives which they thought were there in the organisation they were forming and to take whatever action was necessary to garner public support for what they were doing?

More recently, when I was director of Oxfam, I went on a visit to Latin America in the bad and ugly years—sinister and horrible years in many ways with the things that were happening. I was meeting our own people and the brave partner agencies with which we were working. I ended up in San Cristobal in Mexico. I met the brave Roman Catholic bishop of San Cristobal. He was a tough guy. Open-necked shirt, wooden crucifix, but my God, he was a strong man. He was frequently in conflict with the Government of Mexico because he was standing by the Indians in their terrible predicament in Chiapas. He was being threatened physically and verbally all the time.

We got into a very good conversation. I asked him whether he had a message he wanted me to take back to Oxfam and to the British people and he said that he had. He said, “You talk of your partners here. You talk to people here. You talk about them. How often do you talk with them and speak for them? I believe that solidarity is the real meaning of charity. You cannot be neutral. You have to stand up and be counted. You have to tell it as it is”.

That is an historic, inescapable duty and responsibility for those of us doing serious charitable work. Otherwise we are caught up in a conspiracy in which we are satisfied with treating symptoms; in doing so perhaps masking what is really wrong and failing to speak out on the underlying issues that arise out of our work. Of course, any charity and any voluntary agency campaigning must ensure that what it is saying is rooted in its own experience. That is not only right in principle but it brings strength to their campaigning because it brings the strength of experience.

If, intentionally or not, we are doing anything that is quenching the spirit of charities at their best—because advocacy can become the best way to serve the poor—we are doing the country a very serious disservice.

Israel and Palestine

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure that I speak for many in the debate when I say that it has been a particular privilege to hear the noble and gallant Lord introducing it so masterfully, with a résumé that was a showpiece of objectivity and constructiveness.

I declare an interest as chairman of the Middle East Committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, where we try to bring together Palestinian and Israeli politicians for dialogue. I have just returned from one such meeting. It also gives me the opportunity to visit the region, which I have done several times in the past year, meeting a good cross-section of parliamentarians, and indeed of political leaders, both in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

I will make a couple of observations. The first is that we should have learnt by now that enduring peace cannot be imposed, and that the danger is that if outside interests, however powerful, significant and critical to the outcome, slip into the error of thinking that they can manage the situation and manage a solution, we will be making trouble for the future. I think that the noble and gallant Lord was arguing that a solution has to belong to a sufficient cross-section of people; it must be owned. I look no further than Northern Ireland, where we have a very good example from our own history of putting that principle into practice. There is a difference between facilitating and masterminding negotiations; we forget that at our peril.

The second thing to remember—again, Northern Ireland is an extremely good example—is that if you are to have a successful outcome, a lot that is going on at ground level is important. It has often been overlooked, but in the lead-up to the initiating of the peace process in Northern Ireland, a lot of work went on among women, for example, at community level. This was terribly important in drawing more people—we have never been able to draw everybody—into a feeling of positive participation in the process, and in enabling them to influence events. Therefore, if we are to make a contribution—the noble and gallant Lord was absolutely right—we must not sit around agonising like a Greek chorus but must get on with offering practical advice and help.

One thing that we should facilitate is round-table discussions on issues such as women’s issues, climate change and its implications, and the problems of youth, into which we should draw, as far as we can, representative people from key elements in both communities. That could be immensely helpful, but, again, it can be done properly only if we have an endorsement of the process by the leaders in both countries, otherwise it looks as though we are just meddling and interfering.

An interesting thought I have heard expressed recently is that we might try to encourage, in third countries, scholarships and support for youngsters from Israel and the Occupied Territories in order that they can experience higher education mutually and together in the same place among others. This could make a powerful contribution.

I have made these observations, but of course there are many other issues such as human rights, the treatment of youngsters in the conflict and so on, which are acute problems that have to be resolved because they are aggravating everything. However, I suggest that the contextual elements in the process are indispensable.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I very much doubt whether any of us will be able to forget the harrowing television pictures of the children and their look of fear and bewilderment as they literally choked and writhed to death. This was a heinous crime, for which those responsible must, sooner or later, be brought to account. But as this debate has made very clear, the issue is how that is done without punishing the innocent, exacerbating the future costs and dangers, and proving to be totally counterproductive. We have to listen to the advice and wisdom of men and women with considerable military experience, such as in the speeches that we have heard in this debate from my noble friend Lord West and the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt.

As we grapple with our abhorrence at the cruelly poisoned children and, indeed, the adult victims, we must never forget the 1.8 million refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and elsewhere. We can do something about their plight and face up to the future destabilising effect of so many refugees across the Middle East—just think of the story of the Palestinian refugees and how that is being compounded by this situation. As the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, has just said, we should be at the forefront of the humanitarian battle, and indeed we should support the people of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and elsewhere who have provided so many with a home.

Here in Britain we are very good at persuading ourselves that the world will automatically see things as we see them. As someone who has spent most of my life travelling the world in international work, I ask how many people we really think will believe that this is just to deal with chemical weapons. Of course they will not believe that. They will see it as an intervention in a civil war and as us punishing the regime in Syria for the terrible things that have happened.

The other thing of which we sometimes persuade ourselves is that somehow Syria is self-contained and that we can clinically look just at Syria and take appropriate action. Syria is intimately involved with Egypt, Iran, Iraq and the whole Middle East situation. Military action would have great implications for any prospect of a Middle East settlement and peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. In this context, we are foolish if we imagine that anything that we do will not have implications far wider than Syria.

I also suggest that we should look at our own credibility. This is not an easy thing to do. The peoples of the world do not necessarily see us as self-evident champions of the rule of law and arbiters of justice. They look at us and see rendition, Guantanamo Bay and torture. As we have heard, they see the story of arms sales to reactionary and oppressive regimes. They see us insisting that our nuclear arsenal is essential to our self-defence. They see our allies in the past as having not altogether clean hands on chemical warfare and they see us believing that somehow, if we are to make a contribution, our possession of these things must be taken for granted.

There is resentment in much of the world—we must face this—about being managed by the traditional great powers. This resentment plays into the hands of extremists and al-Qaeda. That is why the UN road is so important. If action is to be taken, it must be in the context of the widest possible global international consensus, not just among the traditional powers but among the deprived and excluded people of the world as a whole, because the world is seeking a change in the power balance. All this is absolutely central to how we approach the situation that we are debating.

Of course we must go on in the Security Council. We must not be fatalists but must keep at it. We must also think of the UN Uniting for Peace Resolution 377 of 1950 in the Korean context and make sure that whatever is done has widespread global endorsement and not just that of the traditional powers.

European Union Committee: 2012-13 (EUC Report)

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, it is good to follow the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat. He brings to his chairmanship of Sub-Committee C a lifetime in politics and of experience in international affairs, and from across the Floor I have always found him particularly well informed and enlightened. He also brings his considerable experience as a Commissioner of the European Union. He referred to his good fortune; I think that the committee is certainly fortunate to have him in the chair. While I mention the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, I want to join others in paying tribute to the chairmanship of all our committees, and of course to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, for his supreme chairmanship, to which he brings not only an ability that is desperately needed but a commitment which is very challenging. I think that we all deeply appreciate that. I want in personal terms to put on record my appreciation as a member of Sub-Committee F of the outstanding leadership and chairmanship that we consistently have in the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. I have known him for many years. He, too, brings vast experience of the world and international affairs, which again illustrates just how well served Parliament is by their leadership in committees and by the experience that that leadership brings.

In thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, I would like to say how much I have appreciated the joint work between Sub-Committees F and E the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Bowness. He provides again to the House a real example of integrity and political courage. He speaks for what he believes, and does so not only with passion and emotion, but always on the basis of sound analysis and detailed knowledge. I think that the House should be grateful. I wish my long-standing friend the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, well in her chairmanship. She will have a tough challenge following the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, but I know that she will more than live up to it. I have had the good fortune of serving under her on the Joint Committee on Human Rights and know what a very effective chairman she too can be. I am sure that we all wish her well.

There is another group of people whom we ought to bear in mind and thank in our deliberations. These are the witnesses who provide so much valuable evidence to the committees as the basis for their work. We would not be able to produce our reports unless many people had a put great deal of time into preparing submissions and appearing before the committees, and sharing their insights, experiences and thoughts.

This brings me to something about which the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, was talking. There is one gigantic challenge with the European Union and our approach to it. To the majority of people in the country, certainly a wide cross-section, the European Union is a remote and closed world. It speaks with great deliberation and experience to itself. It is very well informed about the work with which it deals, but to some extent it has lost contact with those who are dependent upon it and have to respond to its initiatives. That underlies a lot of the public anxiety about it and needs to be challenged. It is something to which in our work we could all make an important contribution.

When we are assembling lists of witnesses it is important not to fall into the trap of taking evidence just from those who are already informed about the European Community. We must develop the ability to seek out people who are coping with the consequences of European Union policy, or who have a great deal to say about the challenges to which the European Union should be responding, and to hear their views as well. These are people in the front line of the work with which we deal. When we were doing our report on migration in Sub-Committee F, I was struck by some of the witnesses from this front line, dealing with the issues of migration in our society. As we develop our work we should take this very seriously.

As I understand it, one of the issues with which the Government are concerned in our future relationships with the European Union is that it should be opened up and become more flexible and closer to people. It should be more accountable to the nation and people as a whole. That is a laudable objective. If it is to be fulfilled it is incumbent on the Government to live by example and not just theory. Even after a week, what happened last week was nothing short of a parliamentary disgrace. Here were two committees that had done tremendously detailed work on the implications of opting out and taken evidence from a wide cross-section of witnesses, who had put a great deal of effort and time into what they had to say to the committees. These two committees had listened to those in the front line of work in the context of justice, security and the rest. But what happened? Just hours before the debate on the same day, the Government’s response appeared. How is that opening up the matters of the European Union to the public as a whole? How is that enabling Parliament to do its job as it should? We should all have had time to consider in depth the Government’s response and prepare ourselves for a sensible debate in that context.

We should not hesitate in calling for the Government to do far better on this in the future. At the moment they are not serving the cause of enlightening our country at all by behaving in this way. It is not a totally isolated indication. We must understand what lies behind it and one of the difficulties is that we all know that there is a huge debate going on within the ranks of the coalition. It is not simply between the two formal parties that form the coalition, but even within the ranks of the Conservative Party. I have friends in the Conservative Party with whom it would be very difficult to get a thin sheet of paper regarding their views and mine on Europe. But there are others in the Conservative Party who are very different, committed to a xenophobic, insular and narrow view of where Britain’s future lies, and that is certainly not within the sphere of the European Union, nor even on too many occasions, I fear to say, of international co-operation as a whole.

That will always be a complication when the Government are getting their case together, but it in no way excuses what happened last week. I have been disturbed at the way in which we are repeatedly entertained to what, if it was not so grimly serious, is a charade of on the one hand senior government voices whipping up the sceptics and the critics of the concept of the European Union, and on the other those who are trying to keep the whole show on the rails. I suspect that that includes the Prime Minister.

One of the contentious issues in which emotion has obscured reality is the repatriation of criminals who have completed their sentences and are not British subjects. There is too much evidence that some in the senior ranks of government, who should know better, have been whipping up a view that this is somehow the fault of the European Union or of the European court. If that were case, it would be a very serious matter. Let us establish how great the problem is. In that context, I put down a Question on 3 June, asking on how many occasions in 2012 the Government were prevented from deporting criminals, who were not United Kingdom citizens, following the completion of their sentences by rulings of the United Kingdom courts citing Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

I drew the House’s attention to this last week. I have had approaches from Ministers, who have protested how sorry they are that I have not had a reply and that I must of course have one. I hope he will forgive me, as he is not in the House, but because this is so serious I must say that last night I sent an e-mail to the noble Lord, Lord McNally. I pointed out that today was the last day before the recess. A week had gone by and I had still had no reply.

I was very touched that the noble Lord sits so assiduously by his iPad, because within minutes, I had a reply in which he said that he was shocked that I had not had a reply. I would like to think that that is just innocent incompetence, the machine just not getting a reply together, but I cannot help being concerned lest that reveals something much deeper: that the Home Office is in no hurry to answer the question because the facts might not conveniently fit with the rhetoric and the playing to the gallery, to put it bluntly, which has gone on.

As we consider the future of the European Union, these matters are very grave indeed. We must have a Government displaying to us openly, fairly and straightforwardly the matters central to the issue. That, of course, starts with the Select Committees. I come back to the issue of how totally unsatisfactory—that is putting it in mild language—how totally wrong and insulting it was to produce a report only hours before the debate took place.

I want to say what a great privilege I find it to serve on Select Committees and how much I appreciate all those who make that work possible and so effective. A real tribute must go to the clerks and their support staff, who do a fantastic job for us all. I hope that they will get a decent break this summer, although I fear that in the case of Sub-Committees E and F, that will not be as simple as it sounds because we are going to meet during the recess. That shows the commitment to those issues by a large number of people. Again, I give real thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, for his terrific leadership in this operation.

Russia: Non-Governmental Organisations

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Judd]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what representations they have made to the Government of Russia about their policy toward non-governmental organisations.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government are concerned by pressures on NGOs across Russia, including the NGO “foreign agents” law. These concerns are outlined in the FCO’s Human Rights and Democracy report for this year. In recent months the Foreign Secretary, the Minister for Europe, and my noble friend the Minister of State for Justice have raised this subject with their Russian counterparts. Two days before the Prime Minister’s 10 May visit to Sochi, senior officials raised concerns about the treatment of civil society at the annual UK-Russia human rights dialogue, held in Moscow.

[Lord Judd]

Do the Minister and the Government agree that a vibrant civil society, participating in public debates and analysing policy on the basis of the experience of engaging in society are vital to a healthy democracy? How can the recent draconian action by the Russians, with more than 208 organisations now raided by government officials, possibly strengthen democracy and stability in Russia? How can this be reconciled with membership of the Council of Europe? What are the Government, together with European Union partners, doing, in the Ministers’ meeting at the Council of Europe, in bilateral meetings and on every possible occasion, to bring these truths home to the Russians?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, Russia is at present moving away from the principles of open society. That is deeply concerning to all of us. We continue to express our deep concerns about that, and our concern that this does not allow for the long-term stability of Russia itself, every time we meet our Russian counterparts.

Crime: Sexual Violence

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I express my appreciation for this debate and for the right reverend Prelate for having introduced it. It goes way beyond this House. I am a trustee of Saferworld, I also work very closely with bodies such as Amnesty International and UNA and many others of course who have accumulated vast amounts of evidence about the sickening brutality of the way rape is now used, as has been argued in this debate, as a weapon of war. All the people working day after day on these issues are really grateful for the right reverend Prelate’s pressure on this matter.

Impunity has been mentioned and the United Nations Development Programme for Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office gives one example. It is just one of a great number. In the years between 2005 and 2007, 14,200 rape cases occurred in South Kivu in the Congo. What is really disturbing is that only 2% of the perpetrators were ever brought to justice. The Foreign Secretary has put on record his conviction that effective response to sexual violence needs to be built into every aspect of conflict prevention and peaceuilding. Could we perhaps be told what progress is being made on that?

Access to justice in tackling sexual and gender-based violence in conflict necessitates improving security and justice systems. What progress is being made on that? Physical protection, medical protection, including emergency reproductive health services, particularly taking HIV and AIDS into account, psychosexual support and legal assistance are all essential. Are we making progress on these? Also essential is building sustained capacity of women’s organisations coupled with support and protection for the women involved because the risk to them and the threats to them can be acute. What are we doing in a co-ordinated way to meet all these points? Are we really using our knowledge and concern to influence effectively the remaining stages of our engagement in Afghanistan?

Israel and Palestine

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, the noble Lord has made a very powerful speech, which we need to take very seriously. I am sure that I will not be alone in thanking the noble Baroness for having introduced this debate. Her commitment on this issue is second to none. Last week, I was in Gaza, heading up an international mission from the IPU. Our task is to try to draw representatives of the people in Gaza, the Occupied Territories, the West Bank and Israel into more active dialogue so that one can build up a context in which leaders are able to take necessary action. It would be quite wrong for me to report in detail because we must wait until we have visited the other territories, which we hope to do next month. Of course, our talks with Israel will be every bit as important as any other part of the mission.

I think I can say one or two things from a recent visit about the situation as I saw it, some of which has been put before the House before. In every aspect of what I am about to say, the role of civil society is obvious. You cannot build a strong democracy or a strong future without a strong, thriving civil society. That places a huge responsibility on civil society in our own country to get into partnership in that building of the role of the civil societies and the dynamic of society.

I start with water. Some 95% of the water in Gaza is not fit for human consumption. Noble Lords should think of the voluntary and other agencies in this country that operate in the sphere of water; WaterAid springs to mind. Organisations like that have a tremendous role to play in working with the local community to put that right. It will not be put right, however, until the strategic dimensions of water can be tackled. It is an alarming thought that, within two or three years, the aquifer will break down totally because of shortages of the necessary spare parts.

We saw the overcrowded schools and the wonderful, happy—it has to be said—and neatly dressed children going to and from school. There are great things to be done in building partnerships between schools here and schools there, if only they could get on with it. There are 700,000 people out of a total population of 1.7 million—to use the jargon—who are food insecure. That means that they are dependent on handouts by UNRRA and the rest. It became absolutely clear that the population does not want to be dependent; it wants to build a strong economy, and that is what it cannot do in the present situation. People have said, “Has there been no improvement on the supply of goods through the blockade since the ceasefire was negotiated last November?”. I have a good deal of sympathy with people who said to me, “Wait a minute, do not start looking at the tactics. The principle is that somebody else has a hand on the tap and we are not able freely to get access to everything we need to build a balanced economy. We are not getting everything we need but we want to get on with the job”. There is plenty of evidence, even if you look at it very briefly, of people trying desperately hard to do constructive things for their society, but again, the role of civil society here in relating to all that is important.

I conclude by saying on a wider level, because I think I should share this with the House, that I was certainly encouraged by what I had not altogether expected: a lot of positive talk about coming together with Fatah and the people of the West Bank and the Occupied Territories. There really seems to be some hope that the talks that are currently getting under way, with thanks to Egypt for its assistance, can be fruitful. If we are going to do that, of course, there has to be a serious and positive response from the world by saying that these talks desperately matter in providing the context in which progress can be achieved.

Drones

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Judd]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what bilateral and multilateral discussions they are having on the regulation of the civil and military use of drones.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, Her Majesty’s Government and the UK Civil Aviation Authority are working with both the International Civil Aviation Organisation and the European Commission and EU member states on developing harmonised rules and regulation for the safe integration of civil remotely piloted aircraft systems into both European and global air space. The Ministry of Defence is not involved in any bilateral or multilateral discussions specifically on the regulation of the military use of remotely piloted aircraft systems but is involved in more general discussions on arms control, such as the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that encouraging reply. Does he not agree that, as far as the domestic situation is concerned, whatever the value of drones for emergency services and the like, their increasing availability makes the need for some sort of code an urgent priority? When it comes to the international scene, how do the Government define the difference between extra-judicial killing and legitimate killing? How can transparent accountability for every civilian, not least innocent children, be ensured? How can the use of drones in areas not defined by the UN as conflict zones be justified? Is there not a desperate need for something like the Geneva Conventions?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord has asked several complex questions and I will try to answer some of them. The development of civil systems is clearly a complicated area. Basically, for large unmanned systems, the same rules apply as for manned aircraft. For small unmanned systems—there are now some very small unmanned systems—provided they are within the sight of the person controlling them, regulations need not apply. Clearly, a lot more work is needed in that area. On the international dimension, the question of extra-judicial killings is something which, as those who have read this morning’s Guardian will know, is being actively debated in the United States as we speak.

Public Services

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, as one who, like many others in this House, has spent a great deal of my life in voluntary agencies, I very much welcome the way in which my noble friend introduced this debate. It is absolutely undeniable that, with their integrity, experience, ethos and principles, voluntary agencies have a great deal to contribute to effective public service. They are free of the pressures of shareholders and profit. They are there to serve.

However, if this is to be the success that we all want it to be, we have to watch some issues very carefully. One is that this is genuine partnership and not simply voluntary agencies being contracted to provide a service defined by government. There must be an interplay between the agencies and the Government as to what the right services are and how they should be delivered. I was very worried once when I visited a young offender institution where there were dedicated workers on a contract to get those within the institution into jobs. As they did their work, they became convinced that there were quite a number of youngsters who were quite unfit to go straight into jobs and needed a lot more support, help and counselling before they would be ready to go into the employment sector. They got absolutely no credit for spending time on this; in fact, as they put it to me, they were endangering the contract because their job was to deliver people into jobs. That seems to be something we must look at very carefully, because it is a real danger, which could turn a good adventure into a sad story.

The other danger that we must take seriously is financial dependency. If voluntary agencies are working increasingly on government contracts, will their existence as agencies become dependent on that kind of income? I raise this because if I became convinced of anything in my time as director of Oxfam, it was that responsible advocacy could be one of the greatest services to those with whom we were working. By building real relationships of solidarity and real experience at the ground level, we were able to speak to government and society about the real underlying challenges we faced. I think it would be very unfortunate if, by the way that the scheme developed, agencies started self-censorship or dumbing down their advocacy role. That would be to betray their unique contribution.

As a member of the party I am in, I am in politics because I care about public services—I want the highest quality services. However, having worked in the voluntary sector, both as a volunteer and a staffer, I must say that the essence of the voluntary sector at its best is that it is a catalyst or challenge to society; it uses its experience to widen society’s outlook and to increase the sense of responsibly in society and, indeed, in government. As we take this opportunity forward, we must guard that principle as fiercely as we possibly can.

European Union Committee Report

Lord Judd Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Judd]

I am very glad to have the opportunity of following the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, because, as others have said, it is important to pay a warm tribute to her and her committee for all the excellent and outstanding work they have done. I am a member of Sub-Committee F and already, from the work that has come through to us from her committee, it is clear that the quality and significance of that work was very great indeed. For my part, I do not just think it was a contradiction; it was absolutely ridiculous and farcical to cut the number of committees at the very time when the Government say that they want to tighten our scrutiny of Europe. It is madness; it makes no sense and needs to be reversed as soon as possible.

We are fortunate to have with us both the past chairman, to whom I have paid tribute on previous occasions, and the present chairman, with whom I have worked on a number of issues across the party divide over the years and for whom I have tremendous respect. What they do to set the context for everything we are trying to achieve is very important and we cannot underline our gratitude too often. Also—others have done this and I certainly want to do so—I pay a very warm tribute to the clerks, staff and specialist advisers at our disposal. There is no doubt whatever that the impact our reports have in Europe—sometimes more of an impact in Europe than here—is because of the expertise and professionalism that goes into them. We are very well blessed.

The other people to whom I want to pay tribute are the chairs of our sub-committees, who work immensely hard on our behalf. In our sub-committee, it is impossible to say how lucky we are to have the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, as our chair. He brings with him a huge background of commitment and experience which is almost unrivalled and helps immensely whatever we are trying to do.

When I look at our work, one of the things that frequently strikes me is the commitment and quality that goes into the preparation of the evidence that comes before us from witnesses. We ought to pay tribute to them, too, because without that evidence we would not be able to produce the thoughts that we finally produce.

It is absolutely vital—we try to do this—that in our call for evidence we go to as wide a cross-section of the community as possible: to not only the in-circle of the usual, more highly-tuned policy players but to the real practitioners out there who are often in the front line of the implications of the matters on which we are deliberating. They are often so preoccupied with their work that they do not have time to think about making recommendations on policy. We ought to assist and encourage them in that because it would make our work more relevant.

Even more important, at a time when there is no doubt that for many people in the British public Europe is remote and does not seem to be engaged with real life as people experience it, the more we can engage a wide cross-section in feeling that we really take their work as highly significant and relevant to our deliberations and want to bring it on board, the more we will be bringing home to a wider cross-section of people in our society the relevance of Europe.

Reference has been made to the opting-out debate, if we are to call it that, which lies ahead. It seems a bit of a nightmare. I am sure that we shall all do as constructive a job as we possibly can but I find it extremely distasteful to be starting this job in the context of a situation in which we say, “Of course, we will opt out of everything because we have got to demonstrate to ourselves that whatever we opted into is really of significance to Britain and then we will reapply again”. How on earth do you create an atmosphere in which there is going to be positive good will towards our reapplication if you start off by saying we reject everything and now we want to come along and do some cherry picking? If you belong, you belong, and you can constructively play your part in strengthening the wholeness of the work.

I am glad that my old, long-standing and good noble friend—I nearly said “George” but I must not do that—Lord Foulkes, as he so often does, made the point which is central to the essence of the matter. Others have referred to it but he put it bluntly. The first reality of life is that we are locked into a totally interdependent world. There is no way in which we can look to the interests of the British people—whether in finance, trade, the management of the economy, climate change, health, security, immigration, terrorism and all the rest—on our own. We simply have to work with others because these issues cross all national frontiers. In that context, Europe becomes an indispensable part of meeting that global reality of which we are a part. In so far as we repeatedly fail to bring this home to the British people, we are failing our children and grandchildren. History will judge us by the degree of success we have in contributing positively and constructively to the international institutions and their work. I am certain of that.

Of course, it is equally true that if we believe that—I believe it passionately, as noble Lords can see—then we must not allow our commitment to be abused. It is therefore tremendously important to take financial and administrative accountability, and the search for maximum possible cost-effectiveness, efficiency and the elimination of waste, as central to our purpose. We want efficiency and to be sure that every penny spent in this vital way is spent to good effect. We do that if we are seen to be members of the club, playing a central part in the evolution and strength of the whole community. If we are just regarded as the awkward squad, as rather neurotic, even insecure islanders to the north and west of Europe, how on earth will we have the influence that we want to bring to bear in a cause that matters? It is a matter of engaging, belonging and being felt to belong. Then, if we come along with tough policies on cost-effectiveness, on cutting budgets to make sure that the priorities are right and the rest, we carry some weight. At the moment, we undermine our whole role in that because of the general way in which we are seen as the negative brigade.

I conclude with one other point. If Europe is to go down the road of closer integration and tougher policies towards unity in fiscal and economic matters, I do not see how it can avoid going down an equally important road of greater co-operation on social policy. I do not see how we can have a stable Europe unless we do that. To go along with fiscal policies that are not balanced by sound, progressive social policies is playing a dangerous game in terms of future stability. I believe that in the context of our own society, but I believe it in the context of Europe, too. The whole cause matters. We make ourselves effective in getting the efficiency and financial disciplines we want in these institutions by being second to none in our commitment.