Lobbying bill is a mess beyond amendment

This unpleasant little bill returned to the House of Commons this week, so it’s a good time to assess where things stand. Following opposition from the third sector, some positive amendments have been made by the Government. However, when the dust settles it is likely that this will still be a bad piece of legislation for the third sector and its campaigning activity. Here is a run-down of some of the amendments agreed by the Lords and backed by the government:

• Registration threshold increased to £10,000 in Scotland. If you would be spending over that on regulated activity, your organisation would need to apply to the Electoral Commission. The current threshold is £5000 in Scotland and the Government had planned to push this down to £2000.
• Maximum spending threshold in Scotland set at £55,000, much lower than the current £109,000. If your organisation spent over that threshold then the people within your organisation who authorised this would be committing a criminal offence.
• All the above thresholds are lower for Scotland than for England, with no rational reason given why.
• The regulated period covered by the bill has been reduced from one year to 7.5 months for the 2015 election only. But critically, this Bill won’t come into effect until after the Scottish Referendum.
• Organisations that campaign together as a coalition will now not need to account for the whole coalition’s spending as previously proposed, just their bit.
• The Government has committed to a review of the regulations after the 2015 election.

When the dust settles it is likely that this will still be a bad piece of legislation for the third sector and its campaigning activity.

In addition there are two important amendments which were passed by the Lords that have since been overturned by the House of Commons:

• To reduce the scope of staff costs to only cover time spent producing publicly available communications like websites or leaflets.
• To narrow the scope of constituency regulation to activity relating to distribution of materials and unsolicited phone calls to ascertain or influence voting intention. This would greatly reduce the burden on organisations that don’t operate on a constituency basis.

The Bill will now go back to the Lords on the 28^th January as part of the delightfully named ‘ping-pong’ process. This means the bill will go back and forth between the Lords and Commons until agreement can be reached. Unfortunately there seems no desire to address the central problem which exists around the definition of ‘controlled expenditure’. If this were clarified none of the above would matter as third sector campaigning activity wouldn’t be covered by any of these regulations. Following the most recent developments, others are now coming round to our view that part two should be dropped completely. The Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) CEO Sir Stephen Bubb has recently supported this position. Anything short of this will have a negative impact on the campaigning activity which is such a crucial part of the third sector’s work. There’s still an opportunity to voice our opposition to this bill so please write to your MP or peers, and express opposition to this legislative shambles.