Throughout the rushed passage of the UK Government’s Lobbying Bill (that wonderful piece of legislation that, if enacted in its current form, will stop nearly all campaigning of any kind by anyone within 12 months of any election – so basically all year, every year here in Scotland where we currently go through 4 election cycles (local, Scottish, UK and EU)), I have been raising my eyebrows at the statement that the Bill does not ‘intend’ to silence charities, campaigners, and supporters.
How can a piece of legislation that drastically lowers the spending cap on campaigning within an election period (from around £100k to £35k in Scotland) whilst simultaneously lengthening the time that the cap covers and widening the costs it covers – including staff costs – do anything but negatively impact campaigning?
This is clearly an attack on the freedom of people to join together and campaign on issues that matter to them. Never mind organisations – this will have a direct impact on people’s lives as policies are shunted through without scrutiny from civil society.
In discussions during the current ‘pause’ before the Bill bounds on through the House of Lords (it was meant to have gone through already but there was such a stink kicked-up that the Government agreed to hold off for a few weeks to listen to our concerns – how thoughtful), one Lord suggested that perhaps in exchange for being made exempt from the new conditions, charities would agree to retreat from their ‘political’ campaigning. You know, like against the bedroom tax. Never mind that this is currently allowed within the law – we wouldn’t want that to get in the way of silencing charities now would we?
Bizarrely for me, I have even found myself nodding in agreement with the Director of Political Affairs at the Countryside Alliance, writing on the website
Conservative Home no less:
“Being cynical, one might suggest that if a future government wants to do something which would provoke considerable protest, such as banning hunting [or bringing in a manipulative alteration to housing benefit], then it should do so during the regulated period – when the ability of a campaign group to oppose it would be heavily restricted or even silenced altogether.”
So at least the Coalition has managed to achieve something – pulling lefties and righties together. Surely that tells you in itself what a mess this Bill is.
The next stage of the Bill is in the House of Lords on Monday and Wednesday – 16 and 18 December. I’ll certainly be tweeting against it as colleagues continue to work behind the scenes.
If you want to join in, use
#GaggingBill and get in touch with me or my colleague,
Felix Spittal
Last modified on 23 January 2020
