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

Debate between Lord Bishop of Oxford and Lord Horam

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, certainly raises a very important point, which I am glad we are discussing, even though it is rather a late hour to do so. We should have some reassurance from the horse’s mouth: he mentioned that the Government have made various points, he has made various points and he has talked to the Charity Commission—presumably the Charity Commission for England and Wales—and the Electoral Commission. However, I remind the House and read into the record that our briefing from the Electoral Commission says specifically, under the heading, “A joint introductory guide for charities”:

“We are committed to working with the UK’s three charity regulators”—

that is, the one for England and Wales, the one for Scotland and the one for Northern Ireland—

“to ensure that charities have clear and reliable guidance about how to comply with the rules. The Electoral Commission and Charity Commission for England and Wales will produce a joint introductory guide for charities that need to understand if their activities are covered by non-party campaigning rules”.

It goes on to make various sensible points about testing its guidance, about taking campaigners’ views into account and about supporting and advising campaigners. That is all part of a process of being available in a sensible and practical way to charities and to campaigners who are not charities—which is equally important.

Given that the Electoral Commission and the Charity Commission are, I believe, working along the same lines and intend to produce joint guidance for charities and non-charity campaigners, and given the clear commitments being made, I think that it would be unnecessary to put this provision in the Bill. Neither the Charity Commission nor the Electoral Commission has the slightest doubt that it has to produce something sensible in this area. As a result of the amendments that have now been made by my noble and learned friend, there is time to do that before September, before the new arrangements kick in. While I support the spirit of my noble friend’s amendment, I think that it is unnecessary in the light of the clear commitments which have been made.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

I am happy to have added my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for the reasons that he articulated so clearly. Reading through the guidance provided by the Charity Commission, both its general guidance and its specific guidance for election periods, it is clear that it covers the same kind of ground as the guidance of the Electoral Commission—it has to give the same kind of detailed guidance—and it must make total sense for the two bodies to produce some co-ordinated guidance. I do not think that we need any reminding that guidance for future elections will be crucial. There are so many complex areas here, and this whole subject has been so raised, that charities and campaigning groups will need to be crystal clear as to what part of their activity is covered by the regulation and what is not. I am therefore very happy to support the amendment.

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

Debate between Lord Bishop of Oxford and Lord Horam

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

The commission is keen to emphasise that every aspect of the Bill is integrated with every other. Clearly, constituency limits have to be taken into account very seriously when we are thinking about raising either the threshold or the cap.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

I intervene briefly to support the Government and oppose the amendments put forward from the Cross Benches because the overall argument about undue influence is important here. As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has just said in his intervention, it is not only a question of the total amount of money spent but of the way in which it is deployed in any geographical area, whether it is in one constituency, a number of constituencies, Scotland, Wales or England. That is the problem and that is why the Government are right to try to reduce the spending limits, with a view to reducing the possibility of undue influence.

There has been some discussion of the figures of a 60% or 70% reduction, and I obviously do not know exactly how they were arrived at in detail, but I know, as we all know, what happened at the last general election. As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, rightly pointed out, spending by the Hope not Hate campaign throughout the whole country totalled £319,000. It was the third biggest spender, and only two registered third parties spent more than the Government are proposing—the public services union, Unison, which spent £671,000, and Vote for Change, which is a Liberal Democrat-backed organisation wanting change to the electoral system. Those are the only two organisations, apart from Hope not Hate, which spent anywhere near or above the amount proposed by the Government.

I fully accept that there will now be a different definition of controlled expenditure, and on previous amendments I pointed out that the Government should look very carefully at what is included in controlled expenditure, particularly in relation to staff costs. If they were to be removed from the definition of controlled expenditure, most of the problems in that regard would be solved. However, leaving that aside, the fact is that the spending of most other organisations that registered—all the fuss is about only the 30 or so organisations that took the trouble to register in the last general election—was way below £319,000, which is the limit proposed by the Government in the Bill. There is plenty of headroom there for people to run a proper campaign, given that they can concentrate those resources in a particular area. However, it is the overriding view of the Government that such a campaign should not unduly influence the result in any particular constituency. It is therefore entirely consistent with the logic of their position to reduce the spending limits as they propose.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

I hope that the noble Lord is not suggesting that the Hope not Hate campaign unduly influenced the election with that £319,000, which was spread right across the country. Was it not a fundamental expression of democratic rights that that campaign should have been able to do that? I am sure that he would not want its work to be hindered.

[Lord Horam]

I would not want its work to be hindered but there should not be undue influence in any particular set of constituencies or a constituency. That is what concerns me. If the noble and right reverend Lord says that this campaign was across the whole country, then clearly there was not an undue influence. None the less, if a campaign is focused on particular areas there may be undue influence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Horam]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness about the way in which this clause has been written. I thoroughly applauded her speech at Second Reading in which she drew out the extent to which this is incredibly complicated, even for someone with some arithmetical skills, which I do not possess, let alone any understanding of law by a non-lawyer. None the less there is a supremely important principle in this clause and my noble friend Lord Tyler drew it out perfectly. In many ways it is the heart of this Bill.

The fundamental issue is that spending by political parties is controlled because we do not want there to be a free-for-all spending-wise in this country in the way there is in America. Therefore, we have control of political parties’ spending. We have control at a national level and we have control in a regulated period; we can argue about the length of the regulated period but we have one. We have control at the constituency level. That control must be strong. Therefore, we are really arguing about what the level of control should be.

I am quite amazed that the commission of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said quite specifically that there should be no constituency limits on spending by third-party campaigners. That must be absolutely wrong in principle because they are not standing in the election. Why should they have an unlimited influence in a particular constituency as opposed to the people who have actually got the guts to stand for election and put their name, personality and fortune on the line in the hope of coming to Parliament? It must be wrong for them to be outbid financially by some third party, who is not willing to put their name and person up for election in the way the candidate has had the courage to do.

I hope that the noble and right reverend Lord will reflect on this. The idea that there should be no constituency limits is wrong in principle. Therefore, I think there should be a clause of this kind, although I would hope it would be very much better drafted than the one we have at the moment.

Secondly, the argument is put forward by the commission that any limits placed are unenforceable. Obviously, the commission is making the point that it is being asked to do a new task. Previously, the commission has looked post hoc at what has happened in a general election; here it is being asked to do it in real time, during the course of the election, to find out exactly what is going on and whether the system is being abused. That is a very difficult task and the commission is right to say that it is having tasks imposed on it that it has not done before and which therefore may well be very difficult to enforce, to the point of being unenforceable in some circumstances.

Those of us who have fought elections know that the existing limits on what parties can spend in elections are very often unenforceable in practice. As I know to my personal cost, parties find all sorts of devious ways around the amount that can be spent in a general election and it is very difficult to track them down. In that sense, the existing rules are unenforceable, but they do have a restraining effect. As a candidate in a general election, when I came to fight the election I knew that I had to get a little war chest together. The general assumption was that you had to try to get together about £10,000 to fight an election.

I will say in passing that most associations and local parties are extremely poor. Getting together £10,000 is quite hard to do. At the penultimate general election, when I was defending a majority of 269 against the Liberal Democrats, I reached £10,000 only by having a gift from the noble Lord, Lord Ashcroft, of £6,000; otherwise, I and the local party would have had to fork out. We are living in a poor world. Local parties do not have the resources of Oxfam and all those large organisations that want to home in on an election and put their view—as they rightly should, within proportionate limits—to the people who stand in elections.

Having constituency limits acts as a clear restraint on what parties think they can spend and what third parties think they can spend. Therefore, if there was a restraint of the kind the Government recommend, that would exercise a good influence on the whole electoral system.

The issue has been raised, in relation to the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign, that you cannot have a spending limit related to one constituency. There are three constituencies in Lewisham; of course you could have the expenditure divided between three constituencies. Some expenditure would not be allowed in a particular constituency. In Orpington, for example, there was always a huge banner, usually taped up by the Labour Party, in one main road in my constituency and it was never accounted for in the local expenses of the Labour Party in Orpington although it would actually influence people going round the M25 and other roads nearby. These things can be dealt with and there is no real difficulty in trying to apportion expenditure in the way that is described.

It is all perfectly possible, it is doable and it is essential if we are to have a proper democracy in this country. Indeed, I would argue that what the commission is proposing is actually anti-democratic.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

I feel I ought to point out something that the commission made quite clear at the beginning of its report: that its recommendations were for the 2015 election only and that there should be a proper review post-2015. We had only six weeks to consult, despite the recommendation of a lot of bodies, including ourselves, that there should have been a proper three-month or six-month review. In the six weeks, we could not find a workable solution to this, so for the 2015 election our recommendation was that we should not have limits. We could not get our minds round this to find one that is really workable. The Government may be able to do this—we will just have to see—and they may accept the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. In defence of the commission, I point out that this was only for the interim because we had such a short time to consult.

[Lord Horam]

I understand what the noble and right reverend Lord is saying and I accept that. None the less, I want him to understand that, in running a proper democracy, at a constituency level this is a very important issue.