U-turns expected on Lobbying Bill after public outcry, but will it still go through largely untouched?

06 September 2013

By Sarah Glenister

Next week, the Committee stage for the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill begins – coinciding with TUC Congress. And it seems public outcry may have forced the Tories to back down on some points.

Next week, the Committee stage for the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill begins – coinciding with TUC Congress. And it seems public outcry may have forced the Tories to back down on some points.

A source close to Nick Clegg has told the Guardian that the government will offer to withdraw some of the most controversial elements of the proposals, including parts that say non-party political campaigning may be treated as political if it leads to a candidate winning a vote. This means that if the campaigners concerned are not registered as lobbyists, they could be prosecuted, even if they never intended their campaign to affect the election.

The u-turn has come about after widespread opposition from the press, government and independent bodies and the public to laws that would effectively gag charities and trade unions. Under the proposed rules, reduced limits would be imposed on the amount charities, lobbyists and trade unions can spend on campaigns in the year running up to an election. The definition of “spending” on campaigns has also been broadened to include staff costs and overheads.

The proposed limits are as follows:

Amount that requires charities to register with the Electoral Commission: £5,000

Amount that can be spent per constituency: £9,750

Amount that can be spent in the year running up to an election: £388,080 (down from £988,800)

The implications of these new spending limits are numerous. They mean unions and campaigners will find it difficult to work together in case their combined spending extends over the limit. It could also disable targeted campaigns in areas that are carrying the burden of suffering, since the constituency spending limits will mean what money unions, campaigners and charities are allowed to spend must be thinly spread nationally.

In addition, trade unions will be forced to have their register of members approved by the certification officer every year. This puts extra barriers in the way of union action, including balloting members, as any administrative mistakes in the register that lead to the wrong people receiving ballot papers could give rise to injunctions against unions that stops them from acting. No other organisation is under so much scrutiny. The question is, why is the Coalition so eager to gag unions, charities and campaigners if not to silence dissent before an election?

Proof of these aims became clear when the Bill was first published and it was revealed that some of the most powerful lobbyists will be completely exempt from the Bill. If lobbying is not one of the major operations of a business, and it doesn’t organise meeting with ministers themselves, it will not need to sign the register. This will include some of the most famous big business pressures on the government including Rupert Murdoch’s empire, the tobacco industry and the banks.

The Bill has not been popular with anybody. It was trashed this week in its second reading (see video of the debate in the top right), with even Tory MPs criticising it. Conservative Angie Bray said: “If left unamended … it will be Parliament’s and Government’s reputation that suffers.” The Electoral Commission responded with a diplomatically worded report warning the government of “significant issues of workability”, including that bloggers could be penalised by the Bill, and the Commission could end up having to stop rallies, marches and events.

“While we as the independent regulator should be free to decide when the rules have been broken, and how to deal with breaches of the rules, we do not think it is appropriate for us to have a wide discretion over what activity is covered by the rules,” the Commission stated.

It also pointed out that the Coalition has presented no good rationale behind some of its proposals, which many Labour MPs felt had simply come out of the blue without prior consultation of any kind.

“In our view the Government has not yet set out clearly the rationale for many of the changes in the Bill, and it is therefore hard to assess whether the Bill delivers the Government’s policy objectives,” the Commission said.

Yesterday (05 September 2013), the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee went so far as to urge the government to “withdraw the Bill and support a motion in the House to set up a special Committee to carry out pre-legislative scrutiny, using the text of the existing Bill as a draft.”

The Committee described the Bill as “seriously flawed” and criticised the lack of consultation or pre-legislative scrutiny on the proposals; the “narrow” definition of “consultant lobbying”, which excludes the in-house lobbyists of big business; and called for senior civil servants and special advisors to be added to the list of people with whom contact by lobbyists would lead to their inclusion on the lobbyists register.

Chair of the Committee Graham Allen said: “This Bill is an object lesson in how not to produce legislation … the Bill is now being rushed through the House in a way that indicates a lack of respect for Parliament … [and] none of the measures will address the scandals that caused comment by the Prime Minister, the Coalition parties and above all the public, who will feel let down by this partial Government response.”

With this wide opposition will the Coalition consider dropping the Bill, or at least withdrawing it for pre-legislative scrutiny? The answer, if the track record of the Coalition so far is anything to go by, is likely to be ‘no’.

Last year, the shares for rights proposals passed in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill were allowed to go through despite the vast majority of the 209 responses the consultation on the policy received arguing against their introduction.

The government also introduced new guidelines to public consultation, leaving it up to the discretion of ministers as to whether an issue is consulted on or not, and how long the consultation should be, leading to some calls for evidence lasting for just one week and other policies – including most of those in the Lobbying Bill – never being consulted on at all.

This administration is not interested in what the people have to say. Extremely unpopular policy has already been brought into law and the Lobbying Bill is just another method by which the Coalition plans to silence dissent.
Unsurprisingly, the government want the Bill to achieve Royal Assent before May 2014 so that it can be in operation in time for the 2015 elections. Let’s hope there are enough hurdles in their way to prevent it from coming into effect by then.

Resources:

Hansard Transcript of Commons Debate

Electoral Commission Report

A solicitor’s response to Andrew Lansley’s “Mythbusters”

Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s Report