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

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, I have not been part of the commission, but I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, and my noble and right reverend friend said about Amendments 167A and 167B. I was convinced by these amendments and then, when I heard the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, with his extraordinary mathematics on inflation, telling us how much it actually costs to put on a show, be it a conference or a different occasion, I was completely convinced. Then the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said that these things were costing far too much. Has he seen printers’ bills lately and does he know how much 3,000 leaflets will take out of your pocket in no time at all? These figures are still really quite limited, and I hope that the Government have seen sense. I have a feeling that we are not going to hear their answers because they are reserving them all for Report.

The issue I mentioned in relation to Clause 26 was that of smaller charities. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was quite right in describing the role of smaller charities. My particular question for the Minister was: what happens if these charities are linked in a coalition? I know that we are going to discuss the coalitions again, but it hinges on this a little bit. Many of these charities which were spawned by the larger charities—Oxfam and Christian Aid—are now growing in their own right but nevertheless have a symbiotic connection and are often seen together in conferences. Will the Government reflect on that effect on smaller charities as well?

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 167A and 167B. I have two questions for the Government that have not been raised. First, we have had no specific evidence from the Government that the previous spending limits were overly permissive, resulting in undue influence on the outcome of general elections. Therefore, I would be grateful if the Minister would outline what specific evidence gave rise to this clause.

Secondly, because it again comes from the Government, I note that the Electoral Commission thinks that the regulatory burden that the Bill would impose on registered campaigners has been grossly underestimated in the Bill’s impact assessment. With many Bills coming before this House, I have had occasion to question the depth of the impact assessment. It really must go into the impact on others who will be affected by the Bill, and that has not happened in this case.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, noble Lords from across the House have made it abundantly clear that the Government’s decision to significantly reduce the threshold at which organisations register with the Electoral Commission was not based on any evidence and would significantly hamper the ability of civil society organisations to participate in democracy in the run-up to an election. I add to that the comments from committees of this House and of the other place about the lack of an evidential base for this policy.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights said:

“We are not yet satisfied that the Government has sufficiently explained the need for the reduced registration thresholds (particularly in light of the increased range of regulated activities)”.

The Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee said:

“In the absence of any evidence that there is a need to lower the threshold for third parties to register with the Electoral Commission, we recommend that the Government revert to the existing levels”.

The reductions are patently unreasonable and unfair, but they give rise to a particular concern because of the cumulative effect of provisions in the Bill. The evidence of that is overwhelming in the report of the commission. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, was right to ask what assessment had been made of the cost of the new obligations and bureaucracy. I look forward to the Minister’s answer.

The decision taken by the Government when they drafted the Bill to lower the thresholds at the same time as increasing the range of regulated activities—including, astonishingly, staffing costs, which we debated on Monday—suggests that the Bill is more about stifling dissent in the run-up to an election than about taking big money out of politics; at least, that is certainly the effect of the proposals that they have come up with. The Network for International Development Organisations in Scotland has said that,

“a prevalent fear is that it will put a halt to all activity. If the threshold is as it stands, that would be one member of policy staff. Everybody else would have to stop work. It would effectively cut down some organisations”.

The Electoral Reform Society agrees, and says that:

“I think that this will kill small organisations. They just won’t participate. There is just too much bureaucracy. They’ve never had to register before”.

Finally, the RSPB corroborated both these statements, saying that,

“it is illogical to halve the thresholds and caps at the same time as widening the activities that count towards them; this could seriously curtail legitimate charitable work”.

I wonder why the thresholds were changed and I would be grateful for an explanation from the Minister.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was, in many ways, fear-mongering about the flooding of organisations by big money. I have looked at Bond, because the noble Lord quoted it. It said that big money in a constituency was “theoretical” and that no one had provided a specific example. As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said, we are casting our net to catch the large fish but it is the small fish—which play a hugely important part in making our civil society vibrant—that are being caught, and the governance of the country will suffer.

My noble friend Lady Mallalieu was very clear about the issue. The Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement says, in its report:

“The most important measures to avoid undue influence, such as US style super PACs, are already in PPERA and the Representation of the People Act. In addition, none of the measures introduced effect undue influence in relation to political parties or candidates”.

I look forward to the Minister’s response.

In closing, I will say that I, like others, am particularly concerned about the situation in Northern Ireland, where the reduction to £2,000 is not just unfair and unworkable but absurd. On Monday, we all agreed that civil society has a vital role in sustaining the peace process in Northern Ireland, where the situation is still fragile, and the reduction in the threshold can act only as an impediment to the fantastic work of its vibrant and valuable civil society. I look forward to hearing from the Minister that the Government have, indeed, listened and will move on this issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Horam]

I hear what my noble friend says and I think he will also recognise that the Electoral Commission made the point of practicality—whether this really is a practical way forward. Whether it is workable in practice has to be the test.

As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, knows, I have supported quite a few of the recommendations of his commission, which was a very thoughtful and helpful exercise. But on this point, I am very certain that the Government must hold their ground for the sake of democracy in this country.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, because constituency-based limits seem to be even more inappropriate than some of the other sanctions we have been discussing when related to non-party charities and other organisations working in the criminal justice system, as the noble and right reverend Lord pointed out—and I have referred to these organisations already—I would like to preface my contention that Clause 28, which was so admirably described by the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, should not stand part of the Bill in its present form.

On Monday, we took almost six and a half hours to complete four groups of amendments in Committee, which not only confirmed what many other noble Lords have felt since it appeared—namely, that this is a thoroughly bad Bill—but caused me to reflect on its actual aim. My reflections were stimulated by the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who suggested that its purpose was to prevent money taking over politics as it is doing in the United States.

On rereading Part 1, which is all about professional or consultant lobbyists, the scales fell from my eyes. The noble Baroness’s description of young people being trained to lobby by the Tea Party called to mind a conversation on the steps of Washington Cathedral one Sunday in September 1973 when I was accompanying my then boss, the Chief of the General Staff, to Matins during an official visit to the American army. A delightful elderly ex-ambassador to South Vietnam whom we met earlier in the visit said to him, “The trouble with this country is that it’s governed by whizz-kids, and the trouble with whizz-kids is that they haven’t got time to listen. You see, I’d told them that the Watergate building was in the Foggy Bottom district of Washington, and if they’d only called it the Foggy Bottom incident nobody would have taken them seriously”.

Then it dawned on me. Looking around Whitehall, I am struck by the numbers of whizz-kids advising every ministerial office. I understand that this is soon to be increased by 10 more per Secretary of State. They are not civil servants but whizz-kids: clever young people employed because they are uninhibited by practical experience. They are not afraid to put forward blue-skies theories, many of which I suspect that the more experienced Ministers would confine to the waste-paper basket.

The Bill is nothing more than a whizz-kid panic attack, brought on by the spectre of hordes of Tea Party-trained consultants flooding across the Atlantic and rotting up the 2015 election. Having panicked, they then tried to prove their virility by dreaming up preventive measures, which in their headlong rush they tried to process without submitting them to the normal procedures which, as we know, rubbished them once they saw them. This House too was swept along by this rush, until on Monday the voice of experience had a chance to make itself heard. I hope that on looking through Hansard their bosses will have realised that something is wrong and the whizz-kids need to be told to calm down. These hordes are not going to stream across the Atlantic, and even if they did we already have mechanisms in place that can cope with them.

Our political system, including our electoral system, may be at risk, in which case we may need to take remedial action. However, let us watch what happens in the 2015 election to see what action may need to be taken. Having made so much noise about the big society, the very last thing the Government ought to do is risk alienating voters by threatening the contribution of the voluntary sector, which is one the UK’s jewels. Rather than risk doing any more damage to ourselves and our reputation, surely we should now withdraw the Bill until we know whether we need such an instrument after 2015. I wonder whether any other noble Lords share the pious hopes of an old general.

I turn now to Clause 28. Again, we have had no examples from the Government of where disproportionate expenditure in one constituency has had an undue influence on the outcome of an election. Non-party organisations and charities, particularly those which work in the criminal justice system, are not organised into political constituencies. I cannot imagine how it is possible to divide their activities and apportion them to what is going on in constituencies, as my noble and right reverend friend pointed out. For example, consider the Shannon Trust, which provides the Toe by Toe reading programme in every prison in the country. Would it have to report how it is campaigning for funds in each of the constituencies which are involved in an election?

As has been pointed out, the Electoral Commission said that controls may be unenforceable within the regulated period, given the difficulty of obtaining robust evidence to determine and sanction breaches. If all of that is so abundantly clear to anyone looking at the whole system, why on earth are we presented with what the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, so rightly called gobbledegook which I defy anyone to understand?

[Lord Hardie]

My Lords, I rise as a fairly junior judge, and I also have pious hopes about the future of the Bill. My name is among those who oppose Clause 28 standing part of the Bill. I associate myself with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries of Pentregarth and my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham. I will not repeat what they have said. Much of what I wanted to say has already been said, but I want to concentrate on two things.