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

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

As always, my hon. Friend puts his finger on an extremely relevant point.

The Leader of the House made much of his personal commitment to the pre-legislative scrutiny of Bills, and I will be the first to praise him for that. However, his commitment is ringing pretty hollow now. The Government promised that there would be pre-legislative scrutiny on the lobbying proposals in part 1. In May 2012, when he was the Minister responsible, the present Minister for Immigration, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), told this House:

“We are going to . . . publish our proposals and put them up for pre-legislative scrutiny”.—[Official Report, 22 May 2012; Vol. 545, c. 972.]

There has been none, and the Government have deliberately chosen to preclude it by taking the Bill so quickly and on the Floor of the House.

Let us remind ourselves of what the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), who is now the responsible Minister, told the House in April this year—

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Eagle]

I will give way in due course to the hon. Gentleman, but I am in full flow making a particular point. If he will let me finish it, I will come back to him.

The current Minister in the Cabinet Office stated earlier this year:

“Cabinet Office Ministers have had no meetings with interested parties on the Government's plans for a proposed statutory register of lobbyists since September 2012.”—[Official Report, 26 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 1057W.]

The hon. Lady appears to be completely unperturbed by her lack of consultation and engagement on these important matters.

The Leader of the House has regularly praised the work of Select Committees since the Wright reforms were implemented, and claimed the credit for their increasing power and influence. Why, then, has he chosen to ignore the impressive piece of work on lobbying done by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which his Government have had in their in-tray for nearly a year? We had an apology from the right hon. Gentleman today, but does he really think that a two-paragraph response from the Government after this Bill was published is the way his Government should treat a serious piece of work by a well-respected Select Committee? He can hardly be surprised that the Committee believes that the Government have shown

“a lack of respect for Parliament and for the many people who contributed to our inquiry.”

The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee is so concerned about the Bill that it has been forced to hold emergency hearings during the recess. The right hon. Gentleman gave evidence to the Committee this morning. The Chair of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), spoke for many in this House, I know, when he said last week that the proposals on lobbying in the Bill amount to a “dog’s breakfast”. The hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell), who I see in his place, immediately objected to the use of the term “dog’s breakfast” because in his words,

“Far more thought has gone into pet nutrition than into this Bill.”

As a Member whose constituency once contained a Spillers dog biscuit factory, I can tell the hon. Gentleman from my personal experience of pet nutrition that he is absolutely right.

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who is always interesting, although I am afraid I fundamentally disagree with him on this occasion.

In fact, this is an excellent, measured and balanced Bill. It is the right Bill to introduce at this time. Every aspect of it makes me admire the Lord Privy Seal more than I have ever done before. He is right, in part 1, to have come to this approach for regulating lobbyists, because lobbying is an important part of our constitutional settlement. It is a right of individuals to come here to lobby us. Indeed, the petitioning of the Crown is a specific right in the Bill of Rights. It is why Parliament was assembled in the first place: people were able to petition for redress of grievance. Anything done to regulate or control lobbying has to be done with exceptional care and thoughtfulness, and to be as minimalist as possible while maintaining the proprieties we seek to achieve.

[Paul Flynn]

One of the most reliable and enthusiastic lobbyists in the country has had 53 meetings with Ministers in this Parliament, including 35 meetings with members of the Cabinet, to lobby for some sensible causes, some eccentric causes and some barmy causes. Should we not put this most influential lobbyist, Prince Charles, into the orbit of the Bill?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

We are so fortunate to have a Prince of Wales who is able to train properly for the job he will have as our sovereign in due course, and to have access to Ministers. Of course, that should be confidential. Compared to some princes of Wales we have had in the past, how fortunate—how blessed—is this nation to have one who does his duty so diligently? I am glad that he does, and I think we can admire His Royal Highness for that—almost as much as we admire the Lord Privy Seal.

[Chris Bryant]

I am slightly worried that the hon. Gentleman’s respect for the Lord Privy Seal is based on a fundamental misconception. I do not think he has read the Bill, because it does not say anything about regulating lobbying Parliament, only about lobbying Government. That is one of the Bill’s flaws.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Oh dear, the hon. Gentleman gets so over-excited on these occasions that he intervenes far too early. What I was going to come on to say is that the matter of what happens in Parliament is, rightly, not covered in the Bill. It is the duty of Parliament and the House of Commons itself to regulate its own affairs. If the Bill interfered in the procedures of this House I would oppose it. We have an absolute right, under the Bill of Rights, to freedom of speech in this House, and members of the public have the right of access to Members of Parliament. That absolute right must be defended. Members of the public must be free, whether individually or collectively, to express their views to Members of Parliament. If MPs fall foul of the high standards that are expected of them, then that is a matter for the Privileges Committee to deal with. We have powers not only to expel Members if necessary, but to imprison them, and they have no right of appeal to any court in the land.

That is how we should proceed in terms of Parliament. Government is another matter and that is why it is right that part 1 deals with the lobbying of Ministers of the Crown and of civil servants. That is a matter rightly confined to legislation.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, but he just mentioned civil servants. In fact, the Bill does not cover civil servants, just permanent secretaries. Is that not a failing and an oversight of the Bill?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I do not think it is. It is important to deal with the senior figures who will be important in decision making, and the Bill is right to do that.

The Bill is also absolutely right to confine itself to professional lobbyists. It is surely reasonable that when a public company—for example, Coca-Cola or Shell—has a meeting with Ministers, we know and understand that they will be promoting their own business. However, when an obscure lobbyist wanders into Downing street, we want to know who that obscure lobbyist is promoting. [Interruption.] Bing Crosby? I do not think he has been going to Downing street recently. As far as I am aware he is no longer alive. It is right that regulation should be at ministerial level. Crucially, the Bill defends the liberty of people to lobby, so it has got that difficult balance right. There has been talk about the long gestation period of the Bill. That has been because it has not been easy for the balance, between the protections of freedom of speech and the need to regulate lobbying, to be correctly aligned. The Government, in their wisdom, have succeeded magnificently in doing that.

Part 2 is even better—it is the highlight of the Bill. It is so sensible that we should regulate third parties in the same way as political parties. The idea that a third party in a general election should be subject to less regulation than a political party that is openly fighting an election is the height of absurdity. The panic that we have had from the Opposition Benches and some in the charities section is glorious to behold. The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) said that there was a firestorm—a literal firestorm—in Hampstead. I was hoping that London’s noble fire brigade was not going to go out and be disappointed—that it would not react as when it was summoned by Matilda, as you will remember, Mr Deputy Speaker: it came out in all its glory and, of course, there was no fire, because Matilda called the fire brigade when there was not a fire to be seen. Eventually, there was, and she burnt to death. That is the danger of saying that there are firestorms, when in fact this is a perfectly sound Bill.

[Lady Hermon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is so enthusiastic about this Bill. May I invite him to come to Northern Ireland, where I am sure everyone listens to every word he utters and takes it seriously? This Government are passing legislation in Northern Ireland to continue giving anonymity of political donations to political parties, yet we have wonderful charities in Northern Ireland that will be criminalised under this Bill if they happen to organise a rally or campaign in the run-up to an election. How can he square those two things?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Lady has been taken in by the scare story and this absurd idea of firestorms. That is not what is happening. Charities are not allowed to campaign in general elections, and quite rightly so. Political parties fight hard to raise their money, whether it comes from unions, business or individuals. Why should they not have charitable status, when charities may intervene in elections using the tax they have reclaimed—the extra funds and the status they have as charities—but without standing for election fully? And they cannot: the law does not allow charities to be directly involved in general elections.

That is quite correct, and it will be maintained by this Bill. There is no change in the status of charities: they are not allowed to promote particular candidates in elections. That is surely right, and it is why this Bill has caused a storm that is quite unnecessary, because charities will be able, as they are now, to put forward the views they hold dear, but not to back individual candidates. With all the tax and fundraising advantages that charities have, they should not be involved in the election process. That is the standard of the Charity Commission as it is today; it should remain so. The controls that are in place are not being changed.

What is being changed is the position on third parties—those organisations that lack the courage to stand for election, but wish to intervene in the election process by spending money up and down the country. They should be subject to the same requirements as political parties. If we are to have a cap on total spending for political parties that openly stand for election, a lower cap should be applied to third parties that do not have the courage to put their names forward to stand. If we do not have that, the alternative is to go down the American route, for which I have some sympathy, of completely unlimited spending—people can spend as much as they can raise. Opposition Members would not like that, because I can tell them that we on the Conservative side would raise a good deal more money on that basis than they do. We would outspend them a great deal, so they should be pleased about the caps, which are given by benign Conservatives to level the playing field with our socialist friends. That is a good way of ensuring that the democratic process is fair and is not skewed by money.

A lot of campaigning organisations, including the NCVO—the National Council for Voluntary Organisations —receive a lot of money directly from the Government, and they are now spending that Government money lobbying the Government. That seems a terrible waste of public funds. I hope that the Bill will be amended in Committee to make it even more perfect than perfect—to gild the lily—and prevent that wastage of public money.

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[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, because I intended to come to the point she made. It is an important point and one that I raised this morning. I had a meeting with the Deputy Leader of the House and the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith). It was very civil and I got a cup of coffee out of it, but I do not think we made much progress in agreeing on very much.

The problems with the Bill are so fundamental that even the impact assessment is wrong. The civil servants who drafted the Bill—who, ironically, would not be covered by the lobbying Bill they are seeking to introduce—have failed to understand the lobbying industry. That is not surprising, given that they failed to meet anybody, from either side of the argument, in the last 12 months. They have not met Spinwatch, Unlock Democracy, Charter88, the charities or the Association of Professional Political Consultants—I could go on. Those civil servants have met nobody. They have stuck their fingers in their ears and produced a Bill that no one in the industry or on either side of the argument is prepared to support. That is a shocking state of affairs.

The civil servants who drafted the Bill have also misunderstood how to calculate the number of lobbyists. Their impact assessment claims that there are between 800 and 1,000 lobbying firms, but the evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee shows that there are fewer than 100. So the £500,000 that it will cost to set up the register, and the £200,000 a year running costs, will have to be met by 50 or 60 firms. Great free-marketeers and defenders of business such as the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) should join us in the Lobby tonight, because the burden that that will place on the companies caught by the legislation, many of which are small businesses, is ridiculous and disproportionate. The Bill will do nothing to solve that problem.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

If one takes a free-market view, the conclusion is not that we should have more regulation of many more people, as the hon. Gentleman wants to have.

[Thomas Docherty]

I believe in a level playing field. It should not matter whether someone works in-house or elsewhere, or whether they work for Rio Tinto or Oxfam, for Bell Pottinger or CAFOD. The same set of rules should apply equally to all of them. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman does not think that the rules should apply to all those who are paid—handsomely in some cases—to carry out this work.

I want to return to the point raised by the hon. Member for St Albans, and to take it slightly further. As I said to Ministers this morning, there was a case recently in which a Minister of the Crown met a third-party consultant—a commercial lobbyist, as I think they are called—to discuss a planning application in their constituency. The Government seem to define that as a private discussion. If that consultant had chosen to raise other issues at the meeting, that activity would not be covered by the Bill because the consultant would say, “I am meeting the Minister not in their role as a Minister of the Crown but in their role as a Member of Parliament. I just happened to raise a general issue of Government policy that might be of interest and over which the Minister might have some influence.” That would be ludicrous.

For that reason, if for no other, the rules should apply to all parliamentarians. Ministers of the Crown—whether in the House of Lords or the House of Commons—are all parliamentarians. Extending the rules would avoid any double standards. Many Members of Parliament are members, and chairs, of influential Select Committees. They have a greater amount of influence in shaping the early stages of Government policy than those who serve as Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State. Anyone who has read Chris Mullin’s excellent book, “A View from the Foothills”, will remember the ceaseless slog of the life of an Under-Secretary. I see a Parliamentary Private Secretary smiling at that suggestion. Select Committee Chairs are hugely influential. Similarly, Members of Parliament who sit on Bill Committees help to shape our legislation. They are the people who should be protected from unscrupulous lobbyists, and if we did that we would provide the public with far greater confidence in the process. The rules have to apply to all those who exert influence.

The rules cannot only be about those who directly communicate with those in a position of power. In all of my eight years as a lobbyist, in the House and in consultancy, I met a Minister on two occasions, at most. I used to advise others on who in the Government, in Parliament and in the Scottish Parliament it was best to go and see, on the correct issues on which to press them, and on what their arguments should be. The Bill does not cover any of the people who do that.

The Bill is so narrow that it does not even cover those consultants who sit in the room during meetings, because a person has to actually communicate with a Minister or permanent secretary in order to be covered. The consultant might have done all the preparatory work and the strategy, and we have all taken meetings that have been facilitated by the consultant, but they might not actually be in communication with the Minister or the permanent secretary. For example, if a consultant were to contact the diary secretary of the Leader of the House, that would still not be covered by the Bill.

This is a dreadful Bill. It is not worthy of further progress and I hope that the House will reject it and ask the Government to come back and do their homework correctly.