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

Baroness Mallalieu Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, this is a case of confusion worse confounded, so I am very much in sympathy with the points made by my noble friend Lord Tyler in that respect. I thank my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness. He has been exemplary in the way that he has sought to respond and consult, but he has been in a bit of a straitjacket for two reasons.

First, as has been said so often during the course of this Bill, if ever a Bill needed pre-legislative scrutiny it was this one, but it did not get it. That decision was taken probably at a pay grade above that of my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, but it was a mistaken decision.

The other problem that we face, and here I make a plea to the Minister, is that we passed these amendments in this House last week and within 24 hours they were reversed in another place. That is no way to treat your Lordships’ House. There should have been wider consultation and discussion. Clearly, my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness had fruitful, although not totally successful, discussions with the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. For that we should all be grateful, because the noble and right reverend Lord did so much with his commission and in other ways to try to improve this Bill. However, those discussions, however well meant and however protracted, were not enough. There should have been a proper opportunity for real discussion before we had to face the answer from the other end of the corridor. This is no way to treat your Lordships’ House.

As far as this particular series of amendments is concerned, we now have to rely on those round-table discussions. I am glad that the Minister felt that that was a useful suggestion and am grateful to him for acting on it and discussing it with the Electoral Commission already. I hope that those discussions will take place and that they will take place soon, but that they will not be rushed, because this is an extremely complex and difficult situation.

I know very well why the Minister said what he said this afternoon, and I also understand the argument elegantly put by my noble friend Lord Tyler. This is complex. All of us who have stood for election to the other place, or indeed for election to local councils, know that the distribution of leaflets is an inexact science. When you are doing it outside a shopping centre or a railway station or other places where people congregate, you have no idea to whom you are giving the leaflets and which constituency they come from. You have a rough idea that most of them may come from your own constituency, but many of them will not.

Let us have these discussions. Let us hope that they are fruitful. Let us hope that they can build upon the imperfect base that this Bill provides for them. Therefore, let us move on this afternoon.

[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. This amendment is plainly a compromise. It does not frustrate the intention of the Government to impose strict constituency limits. That is accepted in the amendment. It responds to the concerns of Ministers both here and in the other place that not all activity had been regulated; now it is. It meets exactly the objection of the Commons. It now includes campaigning activities of all kinds that are clearly targeted at a particularly constituency or constituencies to influence voters.

Above all, the amendment has the merit of clarity for the campaigners themselves, is more practical and is more readily enforceable. I employ, if not the exact words then the spirit, of the wise advice of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, at an earlier stage, that we should not reject an improvement in pursuit of perfection. There can be no perfection in this Bill because it has been conducted at such speed. However, this is a simple improvement that I hope that this House will insist on.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I will first echo the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that it took just 24 hours to reject the advice of this House and of the voluntary sector. I understand that, anticipating another victory today, they are going to do the same tomorrow. They do not seem to take your Lordships’ House too seriously. It also means, of course, that we have not had the opportunity to hear from the Electoral Commission about the new position—although we have heard from the voluntary sector, which remains deeply concerned about the government position on this.

Just yesterday the Government had another blitz on red tape, boasting how they were removing unnecessary shackles from a number of bodies. Last week, the Government published their Deregulation Bill, which will get its Second Reading in the other place on Monday. Therefore, on the one hand all this red tape is being lifted off organisations, and yet on the other we have here something that will tie up charities, churches, women’s groups, young people’s movements and green campaigners in completely unnecessary red tape and complicated accounting. It is not that simple.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Mallalieu]

My Lords, I support Motion C1 in the name of the noble and right reverend Lord. Of all the matters raised in relation to the Bill, this is the one which many of the charities and campaigning organisations which gave evidence before the Harries commission raised as the most important for them. It was the one about which, above all, they felt most strongly and they most earnestly wanted to see it changed. For campaigning organisations this is the single most important amendment, whether they are charities or not.

As they see it, this is a bureaucratic nightmare. It is a burden which we are seeking to impose and which they really have no way of defining accurately. How are they to separate regulated and unregulated staff time? The Minister has said that he does not want timesheets kept and that all that he is suggesting is an honest assessment. But what is the difference between an honest assessment, a rough calculation and an edited guess or, quite frankly, thinking of a figure? Where is the dividing line to be drawn and how can we land the Electoral Commission with the job of trying to do that? We are about to produce something which is wholly unenforceable and which the Electoral Commission itself believes should not apply for the 2015 election, after which there will be a proper review and a look at the whole question of staff costs, for both political parties and campaigning organisations. I strongly support our resistance to attempts to land people with a load of rubbish.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, regret the fact that the Government felt unable to accept the exclusion of staffing costs from the Bill because I believe it to be a very important part of what charities are all about. I recognise that my noble and learned friend has done his very best to try to shorten the gap between us. However, I have a particular question for him because many charities are sustained by the work of elderly volunteers. I think all of us who go to charity shops are conscious that much of the work being done is done by them. Not only is the work done by them; their lives are substantially enriched by their involvement and commitment to a particular charity, which may well be a relatively local one.

If a volunteer of that kind or a part-time worker has expenses which they can then ask the charity to meet—for example, for meals, transport and so forth—I am not clear whether this amendment, or indeed the Bill, will catch it. I raise that point because I honestly do not know the answer and because the issue here is not just one of bureaucracy. There is also that of the very real contribution which working for charities and campaigning groups makes to the happiness and good life of many of our fellow citizens.