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

Mike Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I will give way again later.

The Bill does change the activities in respect of which spending may count towards the third parties’ spending limits. Those activities are being more closely aligned with the type of expenditure that is regulated for political parties, a change that the independent regulator, the Electoral Commission, advocated to us in June. I understand that that particular provision has caused concern within the charitable sector. Charity law prohibits charities from engaging in party politics, from party political campaigning, from supporting political candidates and from undertaking political activity unrelated to the charity’s purpose. The Bill does not change that.

Charities will still be able to give support to specific policies that might also be advocated by political parties if it helps to achieve their charitable purposes. The Bill does not seek to regulate charities that simply engage with the policy of a political party. It does not prevent charities from having a view on any aspect of the policy of a party and it does not inhibit charities attempting to influence the policy of a party. Such activity would be captured only if it was carried out in such a way that it could be seen also to promote the election of a political party or candidate or otherwise to enhance their standing at an election. The situation is the same as under the current legislation and remains unchanged by this Bill. That is a key point to allay charities’ concerns.

I recognise that the wording of the clause has caused representative bodies to be concerned, and I am keen to continue the discussions with campaigners in which colleagues and I have already taken part. I can reassure them that we are not proposing a substantive change in the test of whether third party spending is considered to be for electoral purposes.

[Mike Thornton (Eastleigh) (LD)]

I have genuine concerns about the change to the definition of “charitable use”, and particularly about the use of the word “activity” for electoral purposes rather than “materials”. To enable us to support the Bill and the reform, will the Leader of the House assure me that that can be looked at again, with the involvement of the charitable organisations?

[Mr Lansley]

I can certainly assure my hon. Friend that I and my colleagues—the Deputy Leader of the House and the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), who is responsible for political and constitutional reform—met the NCVO again yesterday. We will continue to do so. Let me reiterate that I am not looking for a substantive change in the test of what is expenditure for electoral purposes, but we are looking for a change, advocated to us by the Electoral Commission, in what constitutes controlled expenditure so that it is not just about election materials but includes activities such as advertising and election rallies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harris]

As you might say, Mr Speaker, it is now on the record.

I would not want the House to believe that I have spent my whole time during this debate reading tweets, but it would be appropriate to mention at the outset that Iain Martin of The Daily Telegraph recently posted a blog entitled, “How did David ‘Big Society’ Cameron end up sanctioning a bonkers bill that bosses around charities?” I hope that it will become required reading for the Leader of the House, his deputy and all Government Members who plan to vote for this Bill. The Leader of the House has told us that it will not have the effect that many Labour Members have insisted that it will. He has a long way to go if he is still trying to persuade Telegraph journalists.

In the run-up to the 2010 general election, an organisation called Power 2010 took it upon itself to campaign personally against me and five other Members of the House because we had the barefaced cheek to have long records of opposing nonsense like electoral reform. It took out national newspaper advertising and even came to my constituency to launch a specific campaign directed at me, which was very entertaining. We got lots of its leaflets and plastered them all over my campaign office—not my publicly paid-for constituency office. That had the effect of increasing my share of the vote to above 50% for the first time since 2001, and my majority went up to 12,600.

I could therefore welcome the Bill, because if it becomes an Act that kind of campaign specifically targeting individual MPs will be outlawed, but I do not want that to happen. For a start, such a campaign is perfectly democratic. If people want to spend money faffing about and wittering on about nonsense like electoral reform, that is entirely their business and they are welcome to it. It does not have any impact on or relevance to my constituents, but if people want to spend their money on it, that is fine. Secondly, there is the effect that it had on my majority.

One of the many problems with this Bill is that it affects aspects that do not need redress and ignores aspects that do need redress. If the Deputy Leader of the House casts his mind back to last year, he will remember that the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport had a little bit of a kerfuffle regarding his special adviser, Adam Smith. It was clear that News International had lobbied Adam Smith to try to get a change of policy from the Government with regard to its attempt to take over Sky. We all remember the drama that ensued in this House. This Bill would not affect such a situation in the slightest, because only permanent secretaries and Ministers are now affected.

Before I came to this House I used to lobby for an organisation called Strathclyde Passenger Transport. I knew then, and I know even more now, that if I wanted to affect policy I should speak not to the Minister, but to their Parliamentary Private Secretary or SpAd. Those are the people with a direct link to the Minister and the policy-making process. This Bill does absolutely nothing.

The Bill is an obnoxious piece of proposed legislation: it is illiberal, anti-democratic and badly drafted. I am left with the conclusion that it could only have come from the Liberal Democrats. I have on my phone—I know you do not like such gimmicks, Mr Deputy Speaker—a photograph of the leader of the Liberal Democrats holding a pledge card during the last general election that reads:

“I pledge to vote against any increase in tuition fees”.

He is flanked by the then Lib Dem candidate for Cambridge, who has a smile on his face, so I guess it was before he was elected to this place. At that time, the Liberal Democrats presumably had no objection at all to a nationwide campaign by the National Union of Students targeting specific individuals to support its stance on tuition fees, but something tells me that they do not want the NUS to lead a similar campaign next time in response to their decision to do a complete U-turn on their tuition fees policy. That is what this Bill is about. It might as well have been called the “Defend Liberals in Marginal Seats Bill”, because that is what it will do.

[Mike Thornton]

Will the hon. Gentleman read out a specific part of the Bill that would outlaw the things he is saying it will? It is very interesting that I have not seen any such parts.

[Mr Harris]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I have only one minute and 57 seconds left, so I am sure he can find that himself.

If exactly the same Bill had been proposed by the previous Labour Government, not a single Lib Dem would have voted for it, and when the next Labour Government move to abolish the legislation—by that time I hope the Lib Dems will have retaken their traditional and rightful place on the Opposition Benches—I suspect that not a single Lib Dem MP will object to its repeal.

On 5 June I challenged the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s questions. I asked him whether it was when an undercover reporter pretending to be a lobbyist entrapped an MP that he decided that now was the right time to launch an all-out attack on the trade unions. Where is the demand for new curbs and new regulations on trade unions? Why are Conservative and Liberal MPs so frightened of trade unions? I have been a member of a trade union my whole working life and am proud to be a member of Unite. For me that is a matter of pride; for many workers it is a matter of necessity. Why do the Conservatives still see trade unions as the enemy within? This part of the Bill simply does not need to be there. Where has the demand come from? What are they so scared of? Is it now un-British for there to be any kind of fierce political debate during election campaigns?

If the Leader of the House is right and this Bill will not result in the gagging of third parties, what is the Bill for? Either the behaviour of third parties in recent years has been unacceptable and needs to be addressed, or it has been perfectly acceptable and does not need to be addressed, in which case there is no point to this appalling Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs McGuire]

The other thing that is even more disturbing is that if my hon. Friend happens to say that he supports a particular charity and something it is promoting, and the charity happens to put that on a leaflet, along with perhaps three of the four or five other candidates, it might find itself in the same position. The alternative to that is that it may well just put out a list of people who support their objectives. It is just a nonsense and a mishmash. I am frankly astonished that the Liberal Democrats, who made and built up their reputation as community activists, are going along with this proposed legislation. [Interruption.] The Deputy Leader of the House can sneer all he likes. This is denying the heritage of the Liberal Democrats, who were forever telling us they were community politicians.

[Mike Thornton]

I wonder whether the right hon. Lady can tell me this. That is the law at the moment and the law is not changing, so why is she objecting to it? If she objected to it before, why did she not want it changed before?

[Mrs McGuire]

I have already pointed out that clause 26 broadens the definition, but if it is the law at the moment why are we wasting time and paper on the Bill? That is the question that the Deputy Leader of the House needs to pick up on when he addresses the House.

I spent a few days at a conference in Sarajevo not long after Bosnia and Herzegovina became independent. Speaking to the embryonic voluntary sector organisations there—harking back to what the hon. Member for North East Somerset said—I explained that one of the great things about the UK voluntary sector was that it was accepted as independent: it could express its views in the way it wanted. We now have an implied threat or demand that organisations that take money from Government should have their independence curtailed.

The Bill gives considerable discretion to the Electoral Commission, which is among the groups most critical of this element of the Bill. I put it to the Minister that that causes its own conflict. The Charity Commission, the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator and the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland regulate charities and decide whether their objectives are appropriate. Now we are bringing in the Electoral Commission. Under the proposed legislation, if the Charity Commission says that it is perfectly acceptable for an organisation to pursue a particular line of policy and the Electoral Commission says that it is not sure, which body will regulate the charity? Where does the charity go for a definitive statement on the pursuit of its charitable objectives? I hope the Minister has a lot to say when he stands up, as opposed to the chuntering from the Front Bench we have had in the past 10 minutes or so. The Electoral Commission has recognised this conflict, saying:

“we do not think it is appropriate for us to have a wide discretion over what activity is covered by the rules”.

The Electoral Commission, who are the experts, is asking the Government not to put it in the position of having to regulate what activity is appropriate.

I can speak from personal experience. When I was the deputy director of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, we were also involved in all sorts of political campaigning against some of the things we thought were wrong. I was also the candidate against the Conservative Secretary of State, now Lord Forsyth, who funded my organisation. Should my organisation therefore have said, “Hey, wait a minute, Anne—I don’t know whether you can continue in your job”? What would be the position then? Would everything that I did have been misinterpreted by this piece of ludicrous legislation?

As I think one of my colleagues said earlier, the Government have united the most disparate group of people against this Bill—the TUC, LabourList, Conservative Home, the TaxPayers Alliance, Guido Fawkes and Owen Jones. Frankly, they should almost be congratulated on building that alliance against this ludicrous piece of legislation. Why are the Government so frightened of the charitable and voluntary sector in this country? If they are just legislating for things that already happen, why are we all here? This is a piece of arrogance from the Government. They do not understand the independence of the sector and they are trying to curtail its activities.