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

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am a fan of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips. I have every reason to be grateful to him from when I was running a charity myself, but I cannot support his amendment. I, too, have had words with a great many charities and have been surprised by how many of them are opposed to this amendment and have not taken any comfort from his faith in the Charity Commission doing the excellent job that he appears to think it would do in this regard.

Some of the charities I have spoken to have been opposed to the idea of exemption for personal reasons. For example, the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign would not have wanted to go through the process of registering as a charity to gain exemption. Those involved were too busy with their campaign. I have spoken to other charities which point out that coalitions are often formed across sectors so that they make up coalitions not only of charities but of social enterprises and, indeed, of commercial organisations. I certainly have had experience of that in my campaigning background. What we have to remember is that the NGO sector, whatever it is, is increasingly diverse. We are constantly coming across different forms of NGO-type organisations. There is a great potential for confusion among the public and supporters. We should focus on the activity being undertaken, not on the type of organisation undertaking it. I understand that some legal opinions have suggested that going for exemption may be a legally unviable option and much too open to challenge. There is also a widely held view that it is unfair to make non-charitable organisations subject to tighter regulation, thus making it more difficult for them to highlight the problems which this legislation is increasingly going to bring about.

We come back to the point that this legislation is being introduced without proper evidence and without proper consultation. As I said at Second Reading, it is very much a sledgehammer Bill to crack what was, at best, a small nut of misbehaviour by some non-charitable lobbying organisations. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, himself said that it is complex, there is a great deal of bureaucracy and there will be a diversion of philanthropic effort. It puts a disproportionate burden on organisations and is wholly unnecessary. This does not seem to be an argument for exempting charities but for amending the Bill in the way your Lordships are trying to do.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, I did not speak at Second Reading for the same sort of reasons as the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, but I will just make three points in support of the amendment. In passing, I have to say that I have the impression that the charity sector does not speak with one voice on this and does not have a monolithic view. Some charities want an exemption while some do not. In those circumstances, I take the view that it is incumbent on one to support what seems the most rational course, which is what I propose to do. I declare up front my interest as a vice-president of the RNIB. I will make my three points quite briefly.

First, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, has made clear, charities are already regulated up to the hilt as regards political campaigning and not engaging in it. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, has suggested that, because of their special status, which gives them a peculiar responsibility to be beyond reproach, charities should be subject to the regulation which this legislation proposes. However, it seems to me that the validation kitemark, as you might call it, which charity regulation provides is precisely the reason not to load charities with additional regulatory burdens. What would be the point of conferring this special status on charities and then saying that it does not actually count for anything?

Secondly, along with everyone else, I pay my tribute to my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries and to his Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement, which, as everybody has said, has done such sterling work on the Bill, which will be of great assistance to the House. However, I was not entirely convinced by its argument for not exempting charities. The argument seemed to be that charities should not have an exemption because other people should have one as well—but in that case, it would not be an exemption. The case for charities having an exemption is that they are in a class of their own. As I say, if everybody is to have the exemption, it ceases to be an exemption; if others feel they should have the benefit of charitable exemption, the answer is surely for them to seek to register as a charity. Concerns have apparently also been expressed that an exemption for charities could increase the prospects of a successful challenge to the PPERA rules on freedom of expression grounds, since it will make it more difficult to argue that the restrictions imposed on others by the rules are necessary and proportionate. If that is the case, so be it, and a good thing too. In saying that I am in favour of the charities having exemption, I am in no sense against the others.

The commission chaired by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, is concerned about the impact of the Bill on the reputation of and trust in charities and the extra regulatory costs they will face in order to campaign for their charitable objectives, but it does not recommend an exemption. I am afraid that I draw the opposite conclusion. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, raised the point that non-charitable campaigners might seek to set up charitable vehicles as a means of avoidance. However, that is surely not a genuine concern because if they set up a charity they would immediately become subject to the controls imposed by charity law. They would not be able to smuggle through, under cover of a charity, things they would not be permitted to do under charity law. There would be no point in setting up a charitable vehicle to get round the Act. Given the strictness of charity law and regulation, it would be completely self-defeating.

Thirdly, the best way I can contribute to this debate is from my experience when I was more active within RNIB than I am now. I was chairman for nine years and in various senior trustee capacities before that, so I have a good deal of experience with a leading campaigning charity. This experience tells me that the desire to impose stricter controls on charities to restrict the scope of party political campaigning is completely misconceived. At election time, we are concerned to promote our views to the parties, not to promote the views of the parties to anyone else. As often as not, we are simply asking the parties about their views, not promoting those views. If I have understood him correctly, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said in an earlier debate that this kind of activity would not be caught by the legislation. However, proving that their activities were exempt would tie the charities up in bureaucracy. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has shown us this with his graph showing the correlation between bureaucracy and transparency. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, also made this clear when he described the increased regulatory burden to which charities would become subject as a result of the Bill.

The simplest thing would be to exempt the charities from the legislation.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I am very glad that I held back and listened to another contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, who said many of the things that I would like to have been able to say but could not have done with the same level of experience. There are two points which I would like to add or underline.

First, there seems to be a view in the House this evening, expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, that it would, somehow or other, be unfair to exempt the charities because the other organisations would then be more carefully controlled than the charities. That is the whole point: the charities are already very, very carefully controlled in what they can and cannot do in the public space before, during and at election time. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, has said, it may be that CC9 and the further additional requirements of the Charity Commission are not totally adequate but they are certainly very much more so than they were previously. They are certainly more adequate than the guidance that was given to the charities at the time of the passage of PPERA. I am very sorry to see that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, has left his place, because he was the main author, I think he would probably claim, of that Act. Therefore, its inadequacies, which have been drawn to our attention throughout today—and, I have to say, have been drawn to my attention in the large number of meetings I have held—relate very much to the inadequacy of the treatment of charities, which are already so firmly circumscribed in what they can and cannot do.