Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Wes Streeting and Tom Tugendhat

Thursday 7th January 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Wes Streeting]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hamilton. I add my voice to those congratulating you on your new role in the shadow foreign affairs team. I am sure your experience will be greatly appreciated throughout the whole House.

I confess to feeling some responsibility for this discussion. The question we should always ask when debating any potential law is: what is the problem we are trying to fix? I understand the problem the new clause is trying to address. It is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar described, the chilling effect that was undoubtedly caused by the gagging law passed by the previous Parliament. I will talk about that chilling effect shortly, but it is worth remembering why that gagging law was passed in the first place. It was, of course, because some very foolish Liberal Democrat MPs and a few Conservatives made the decision prior to the 2010 general election to sign a pledge in a Committee Room down the corridor with me, as president of the National Union of Students, that clearly stated, “I will vote against any increase in tuition fees and will campaign for a fairer funding system.”

The irony was that, prior to the general election, I was hauled in by members of the Liberal Democrat party leadership, who subsequently joined the Cabinet, to explain why the NUS had gone so soft and was not demanding abolition of all fees in line with Liberal Democrat policy. That would have been laughable in itself, given subsequent events, were it not for the fact that previously, as leader of the NUS, I was dragged up to a particularly dreary Liberal Democrat spring conference at Harrogate expecting to endorse its new graduate tax policy as the “Labour” president of the NUS. Of course, it was never a party political role—[Laughter]—but nevertheless, there I was, ready to endorse the Liberal Democrat graduate tax policy, which never came to fruition.

That is an important example because, even as president of the National Union of Students, which is arguably one of the most small “p” political charities where candidates stand on political tickets—I was elected as a Labour president of the NUS—there was never any doubt in my mind about who I was accountable to and who I served. I was elected first and foremost—in fact, only—to serve students. If that meant going up to a wet and windy Liberal Democrat spring conference to stand alongside its leader and endorse a policy that, sadly, did not come to pass, I was prepared to do it.

In the same way, I told Lord Mandelson, when he was Business Secretary, that unless there was student representation on the Browne review, he would find me and 100 other student union presidents outside the Business Department holding up signs saying, “Students let down by Labour”. The point is that, whoever is in government, if sometimes they take decisions that impact on beneficiaries or communities that we serve under the auspices of our charitable objectives, we must have the muscle to hold their feet to the fire.

That happens today to Labour politicians up and down the country, whether it is the Labour-led Welsh Assembly Government or Labour in local government. Look at the work that the Refugee and Migrant Forum of Essex and London does. It threatened to take the Government to court over their terrible “go home” vans and was prepared to turn up at its local Labour council to say it must do more to support refugees and migrants.

The Ilford Salvation Army does a load of great work on homelessness, and I want it not just to provide for homeless people with direct provision, but to turn up at the door of their local councillors or Members of Parliament asking them to explain why public policy is having a detrimental impact on those people and how it needs to change.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case for the ability of charities to explain themselves, and I fully support that. Will he point to the part of the Bill or any element of it which prevents that and therefore creates the need for the words “political campaigning”, not just campaigning on issues?

[Wes Streeting]

We are debating new clause 2. Members can see it but, for the benefit of those watching, let me point out that I do not see any reference in it to party political campaigning. It would simply enshrine in legislation the right of charities to undertake political activity. That is important, because a chilling effect followed the gagging law, which had a number of practical implications. For example, charities spent ridiculous amounts of time with spreadsheets trying to calculate their national spend versus constituency spend, and whether they were close to the spending limits and whether that would affect their collaboration with other charities.

I thought the Conservatives were the party that wanted to scrap red tape, yet they have generated a whole load of red tape for voluntary sector organisations whose funds would be better spent on helping their beneficiaries through either direct service provision or lobbying and campaigning. Students unions at the last general election were afraid to hold hustings events. Of course they should do that—it is nonsense that they should not hold those events. The gagging law had a chilling impact.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman is being extremely generous in giving way. I do not know about his hustings events, but most of mine were held in churches, which are almost by definition charities. The number of charities that were afraid to hold hustings in my community was zero, so I am baffled as to why he feels that some were afraid about that.

[Wes Streeting]

I am simply citing the representations I have had from my old colleagues at the National Union of Students about the impacts of the gagging law. It is important to put that forward. I was the head of a charity at not one but two general elections. First, I was president of my university’s students union back in 2004, where our “Get out the vote” campaign in Cambridge undoubtedly contributed to the loss of an excellent Labour MP, in the form of Anne Campbell—she had abstained on the Second Reading of the Higher Education Act 2004, which I am sure contributed to that. Secondly, during the 2010 general election, I was president of the NUS.

At that time, charities were well constrained from party political activity and endorsing political parties, and there is unlikely to be a single charity campaigner in the country who cannot cite CC9 of the Charity Commission’s guidance chapter and verse, which is clear about the restrictions on charities in party political campaigning. The gagging law passed in the previous Parliament was a solution in need of a problem. There were no previous problems; it was just that the Liberal Democrats got scared of the consequences. Alas, even the gagging law could not save them.

Finally, on the general attitude to the voluntary sector’s political representation and campaigning, too many Members of Parliament seem to be happy to turn up and have photographs with guide dogs at party conferences, pop along to their local Barnardo’s outreach and have photographs with service users and be there for photographs, leaflets and press releases, yet when it comes to being confronted with the consequences of the decisions this place has made under successive Governments, they do not like the hard truths.

We need to think about the voluntary sector’s reach and its broad focus on speaking up for and serving the most disadvantaged in our society—people who do not know how to find their way into the corridors of power. Incidentally, those in the sector are not like the many commercial organisations that have also had significant amounts of public money, but which can none the less exercise their muscle in Committees, in the corridors in this place and on the Floor of the House. These are charities that speak up for some of the most dispossessed and disadvantaged in our society, and when they say that the gagging law has had a chilling effect, it is incumbent on us to listen and to take this simple, uncontroversial measure to ensure that every charity knows that they are empowered to make political representations to speak truth to power on behalf of their beneficiaries.

Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Debate between Wes Streeting and Tom Tugendhat

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. Like many hon. Members who have spoken, I have experience in the voluntary sector. I have been the chief executive of a small national charity, a senior manager in a medium-sized national charity and a trustee of local and national charities. I continue to be a patron of a number of local charities, although I will spare the Committee a list of all of them. I do not think that, as a patron, I will come under the scope of the Bill, but as a trustee I certainly have cause for concern.

As has been said, it is important that the public have confidence in the vibrant voluntary sector throughout the UK. It is worth stating that, considering the professionalism of the work that takes place in the sector as a whole, the public should have that confidence. In a week where there has been some unhelpful and, I would argue, misleading coverage about the quality of charities and the way in which donors’ money is spent, it is worth repeating that case, because there is a lot of mischief-making going on. It is important to have in place the right regulatory framework to give the public confidence, but whenever we pass legislation in this place we should ask ourselves what problem we are trying to solve; whether the approach we are considering would be effective; and, most importantly, whether the legislation is proportionate. The measures in clause 1 fail many of those tests.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman rightly raises the question of proportionality. I would merely argue that one must not forget that the charitable sector enjoys a huge benefit from the state; after all, the tax break is a state subsidy. I do not think any of us—certainly not the hon. Gentleman himself—would challenge the importance of that state subsidy, but although it is hugely welcome and important to the sector, it imposes a burden. The charitable sector must account for its actions in exactly the same way as other organisations that receive benefit from the state should do. The clause is one element in ensuring that that happens.

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making those points. It is absolutely right that charities benefit, particularly from gift aid. As an avid, although somewhat despondent, viewer of “The X Factor”, I notice that the Chancellor has generously waived VAT on the winner’s single, which I am sure we will all be rushing to buy.