Political

Government agrees welcome changes to Transparency of Lobbying, non-Party Campaigning, and Trade Union Administration Bill

I wrote before about how the problem with the Transparency of Lobbying, non-Party Campaigning, and Trade Union Administration Bill is that it seeks to regulate too little lobbying and too much campaigning.

Good news, then, that at the end of the week the government let it be known that it will support changes to the Bill which do just that – make it cover more lobbying and less campaigning. Neither set of changes make the Bill perfect,* but they do make it an awful lot better.

On lobbying, the definition is being expanded so that the sort of concerns I wrote about whereby a lobbying team in a larger communications consultancy would be left out are now being fixed. There is still quite a lot of argument to go (especially in the Lords) over the extent of the lobbying definitions. Expect there to be some fierce battles within government between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats over whether or not meetings such as those with Special Advisors count as “lobbying” for the purpose of the legislation.

On third-party campaigning, the key change is simple but big. The previous problem with the Bill was that the range of campaigning it set out to control was too loosely defined, straying too far from activities directly related to trying to increase or decrease the number of votes received by a candidate or party. Now the Bill will be changed to go back to using the well-established definitions from the 2000 legislation as to what counts as that sort of activity.

Those definitions have worked pretty well for the past 13 years, and have the advantage of accumulated guidance and rulings to help interpret them. They are also the definitions that organisations are used to working with – and the uncertainty generated by new definitions was one of the big concerns expressed by the NCVO, Electoral Commission and others.

As the BBC reports:

Sir Stuart Etherington, the chief executive of NCVO, said he was pleased the government had listened and “significantly met” the concerns of charities and community groups.

* “Perfect” = “what I would have written”. Your definition of perfection may vary…

5 responses to “Government agrees welcome changes to Transparency of Lobbying, non-Party Campaigning, and Trade Union Administration Bill”

  1. An advantage of the 2000 definitions are that they formed the core of the debates over the changes in the Charities Acts in the period 2001 to 2006.  Under the old charities laws campaigning was severely restricted… So there is a well developed consensus and documentation on these understandings, consolidated in the 2012 Charities Act.

  2. Changing the definition back to the previous formast will avoid catching some activity that was previously excluded. But the drastic cuts in spending thresholds and simultaeneous widening of things included in them mean other groups who previously published information or held meetings on party policies may find they are now above the threshold and subject to some onerous reporting restrictions. Meanwhile, groups who previously registered will find their resources slashed by reduced limits and the need to count far more of their activity as election depending.
    With Lansley’s amendments not yet published, and no justification for these reductions in resource, it is verty premature to suggest the problem nis sdolved.about the redu

  3. Oh dear, that last comment was appallingly typed with big fingers on a tiny phone, then sent while editing by mistake…  Try it like this
    Changing the definition back to the previous format will avoid catching some activity that was previously excluded. But the drastic cuts in spending thresholds and simultaneous widening of things included in them mean other groups who previously published information or held meetings on party policies may find they are now above the threshold and subject to some onerous reporting restrictions. Meanwhile, groups who previously registered will find their resources slashed by reduced limits and the need to count far more of their activity as election depending.
    With Lansley’s amendments not yet published, and no justification for the reductions in resources that campaigns can use in election work, it is very premature to suggest the problem is solved.

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