Committee on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement
Evidence Session – Belfast
October 17th, 2013
Present:
Georgette Mulheir, CEO of Lumos – Commissioner
Liz Hutchins, Friends of the Earth – on behalf of the Commission
Seamus McAleavey, CEO, NICVA – chair of the evidence session
Nick Garbutt, political commentator and former Chair of Opportunity Youth
Amnesty International NI
Charities Aid Foundation
Children in Northern Ireland
Community Foundation NI
Ecumenical Alliance
Friends of the Earth NI
Macmillan Cancer NI
NICVA
Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities
Northern Ireland Women’s European Platform
NUS-USI
Open College Network
RSPB NI
Save the Children NI
NICVA:
We’ve been working together on the bill. I’ve been liaising with a lot of our MPs on this. Liz has been working directly with Peers and MPs. The Bill was passed, we emailed you about supporting some amendments which were not answers to all our problems but dealt with some of the issues we had with the bill. Spending limits still an issue- a fight we have to take to the Lords.
At the third reading of the bill all the Northern Irish MPs who were there voted for the amendments we asked them to vote for. They then voted against the Bill. Those in attendance were: Jeffrey Donaldson, Mark Durkin, Lady Hermon, Naomi Long, William McCrea, Alisdair McDonnell, Jim Shannon and David Simpson. They voted along the lines that their parties told us they were going to. It says here that Margaret Ritchie was absent but she was there, she text me from the House of Commons so not sure what happened there but she was definitely there!
From our point of view it’s disappointing, we’re not much further than we were when we first met. In terms of Northern Irish MPs, your engagement has really helped and we have got support across all political parties. They all picked on different areas but most of them referred to Civil Liberties and all of the things we have talked about.
Lady Hermon has been leading the charge on this. She’s asking questions about it, she’s had a lot of contact with me and she’s having direct contact with some of our organisations too.
Margaret Ritchie, we met with her and she got it straight away. She’s actually working it into other questions that she’s asking about other issues, such as on the right of victim’s groups to lobby, giving what’s going to happen with transparency bill.
They get it and understand the issues but they unfortunately do not carry that much weight with things like this in the House of Commons.
We’ve moved to talking to Peers, who are not people that we’ve had an awful lot of working relationships with in the past, apart from Paul Bew and those more prominent Peers who would have more natural affinity to the voluntary and community sector anyway. So it is interesting work for us. We take heart from the fact that no-one has diverged from this in terms of political representation. Even when the DUP spoke, Jeffrey Donaldson was strong on it but Sammy Wilson in particular used his experience as Finance Minister. He didn’t agree with a lot of the lobbying that arrived on his desk but actually he was glad to have it, it was beneficial and he didn’t want to see it stifled.
In terms of our work, we’ve done the best we can but it is disappointing that it hasn’t had a major impact on what the legislation looks like now. It’s up to the next stage.
MPs have been dealing directly with you on these issues; we need to reinforce each other’s messages. After today we need to work on the messages that we send to the Lords and how we engage with them.
Today is a good opportunity, there is of course the issue of no consultation, but there have also been unintended consequences of the Bill. I’ve moved from saying that they are not intentional to becoming more cynical. Others don’t know what’s coming round the corner, when they may have to campaign on something in their area, something that affects their family. It’s a huge issue that we need to get even more vocal on.
Liz: Great to see a broad range of organisations engaged here. Our meetings with Amnesty, Oxfam, Countryside Alliance, Royal British Legion etc shows the breadth of the opposition on this issue. The government have done something they didn’t intend to. One of our bigger objectives should be to strengthen civil society through this; our ways of working and strengthen our voice in democracy. Most urgent thing is to halt this attack.
Our approach has been to build massive public opposition to Part 2 of the bill. MPs reported that they had more letters/visits from constituents on this issue than on any other in the last three years in the run up to the second reading. A bit of a tail off after that but that is significant.
Initial media coverage, but it’s difficult to get journalists to engage with it.
Asks are to halt damage: getting parliamentarians to work together on all sorts of amendments that may not solve all the problems of the bill but serve to explain the nature of the problems. It is an unreasonable timescale for such a big piece of legislation with such wide-ranging repercussions. We want to halt the timescale for part two of the bill and relevant select committees and the Labour Party are calling for that too.
For us to set the agenda, we need to step back and consider what is appropriate regulation of non-party campaigning in the run-up to elections and what should these principles be built on? If we don’t do this, we risk being sucked into their agenda and it will be difficult to assert what actually needs to happen. That’s why the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement was set up, to give some space for this dialogue to take place. It’s really important and it needs to go out to all nations to get a view on these issues.
In terms of the politics, there’s been pretty much a unified view from all opposition parties on the process and content of Part 2 and also the principles behind it and this looks set to continue into the Lords stage and with the additional elements of the Crossbenchers there seems to be wide-ranging concern - though not high levels of understanding - amongst Peers so we need to make sure all our potential allies understand our concerns and the big discussions in the House of Commons.
It’s still not clear but it seems that the Conservative Party motivation seems to be concern about how trade union funding is used, they’re concerned that it isn’t used to support Labour candidates. Liberal Democrats essentially do not seem to want to be held to account for popular policies they’ve been aligned to as part of the Coalition government and they’re pretty much saying, quite directly, that they don’t like some of the scrutiny they’ve received such as that from Friends of the Earth on Energy, and that they’re unhappy about some of the mass campaigning that’s been going on and they would like to curtail that a little bit before elections. What they are also saying is that they want to keep big money out of elections, they don’t want US-style “Super PACS” which are outlawed anyway.
Our task in the House of Lords is a detailed expose of all the problems with Part 2; that we seek out our allies and corner the arguments of the proposers, systematically exposing why they are unfounded arguments. Whilst continuing to push for a pause in the legislative timescale.Not likely to happen but the Coalition are alarmed about our push and so they are desperate to get this bill through and up and running by May 2014.
Seamus: Bill is based on opposition, some of MPs in ruling parties need to rebel?
Liz: A group of libertarian Tories who rebelled like David Davis, but it’s not their top priority, so we need to make it so. Some Lib Dems voted against third reading but not for the rebel amendments in the previous stage, which was bizarre. Some of them are not happy with it too and are feeling the pain of our campaigning.
38 Degrees have done amazing work organising public meetings with MPs on a platform, asking them to account for their support for this bill. This is already rattling some Lib Dems and giving the campaign a broad public face.
??: How many rebel Tories?
Liz: 10 in first vote and I think fewer and slightly split rebellions at two key votes at the report stage and strange voting at third reading.
??: In terms of broadening the campaign, are any organisations not on board?
Liz: There are about 50 on board and named as supporting the Commission, most are big NGOs, some are smaller groups. Want to get Liberty on board. We could double this number I think we just need to help them understand the potential implications and help them work out how to contribute?
Timescale, is ridiculous, it’s set to be implemented by May 2014. Electoral Commission needs to have guidance ahead of that. They said they wanted “Royal Assent” by the end of the year but that seems to be slipping to the end of January. Date for second reading in the Lords is the 22nd October and committee stages are starting 5th November. Committee of the whole House of Lords will be taking place, which has to hear every amendment tabled. So one idea is to table a lot of amendments dealing with every issue. Which amendments need to be tabled and within those which ones are totemic that we want to focus on to get big symbolic rebellions around?
??: Peers and amendments, can the House of Commons overturn them?
Liz: Two track approach. Peers have direct relationships with charities and I think a lot of NGOs are more confident about dialogue with them. They see themselves as being stewards of our democratic process and a proper legislative process. They have the authority to radically change this bill. Ideal scenario is that the timescale is suspended, the Lords radically overhaul it, deleting part 2. This is something that is being considered. And then a fresh Bill back to the House of Commons that isn’t threatening to democracy. A “ping-pong” scenario between the two Houses therefore is an issue. All legislation must be signed off in the Commons, so we need democratic link between constituents and MPs. Even if repealed, Commons could bring it back in. If government feel need to push legislation through in tight timescale, they may have to concede, “ping-pong” thing can delay timescale. Putting pressure on is key.
Children’s org: If government wants to run something through they can, Lords can only stall it. It’s an issue of time for the government. They used to be able to reject it for two years.
Seamus: What the Lords can do is stall it. If Lords start to radically change it; that would cause them an issue. Government wouldn’t have a lot of time in terms of their agenda to change it.
??: Applies to devolved elections? That’s news to me.
NICVA: So insidious, Electoral Commission are trying their best but how on earth are they supposed implement this? Lady Hermon just wrote to Chief Electoral Commissioner in the end to ask whether it applies to Northern Ireland, there’s some information on this now.
??:I read it doesn’t come in til 23rd May which is after European elections.
Save the Children NI:Perhaps we should suggest that they cut Northern Ireland wheels off and leave us completely alone?! Because officially the other nations will be spending money on Northern Ireland election period. So would the cap be applied twice?
Liz:Are you under the same charity commission as the rest of the UK? If you’re registered under a different commission you’d have separate annual accounts, but this is something we need to check.
Seamus:You have to register for charity status here in Northern Ireland. You have got to be registered in each of the regions but that’s a separate issue, this is electoral law issue. In England no assembly type elections, the implications could be worse here, we have more elections here.
Introduces Nick, works in PR, former Deputy Editor of Belfast Telegraph and former Editor of Irish News.
Nick:One thing I would like to share first, I’m here in a personal capacity so I can speak without constraint as I feel really passionately about this. I was speaking just before this to someone who does policy in one of the larger voluntary sector organisations here in Northern Ireland. She said she wasn’t coming here today, so I said to her, “surely this is the biggest issue in town, you could be criminalised in a year’s time!” And she laughed and replied, “sure send me a pass to prison”.
That’s what we’re up against. So many people who should be passionately engaged in this just aren’t involved at the moment, what are the implications of this?
The most pernicious anti-democratic measure that I’ve ever come across. It made me furious reading the first reports about it. It’s disgraceful. Let’s put it in context, if this meeting were to take place in a year’s time if the bill is in place and gets Royal Assent; if the intention of this meeting was to organise a mass lobby against this pernicious act, as it would be when it’s in law. If this meeting were taking place, then Seamus would have committed a criminal offence and would be subject to significant fight and every single person in this room would be criminalised too. That’s basically it, that’s my understanding of what it actually says.
Is that right? I want to talk a bit more specifically about why this matters even more in Northern Ireland. I wanted to appeal to you to work with other people on this. This doesn’t just affect the voluntary sector but other vital stakeholders too. What does it say on Paisley’s Church? “Time is short”. We don’t actually have any time to get mobilised on this. By the time it’s locked in, we’re kind of finished.
Complacency. Why did she say that to me? It’s so implausible. Surely this can’t happen. That must have been her primary motivation. It’s so old Soviet Union. I suspect that people have been a bit gulled by what some politicians have said, ignoring the facts of their own role. It’s not for the politicians to implement anyway on the ground, so what the politicians are saying is factually incorrect. The legislation is clear in its implications. They can’t be allowed to get away with that.
A lot of the coverage has used UK wide figures. So people assume it won’t impact on them. But maybe if they understood what was happening here than they wouldn’t be thinking that. That £11,000 figure. People in the voluntary sector are great at tendering. This figure is not just the amount you would spend on a campaign. It’s salary costs and all overheads.
Let’s talk about my experience with Opportunity Youth when I was Chair. They work with young people from chaotic backgrounds, helping them find place in society. It of course involves work on ground and training, but to do the job effectively you must engage with all sort of government departments; there are very few departments that you would not want to engage with. It would be a serious dereliction for me as chair if Opportunity Youth were not standing up for the young people it works with. It involves influencing policy, and not just the civil servants but politicians and party manifestos. I would worry about organisations fulfilling their charitable objectives if they were not doing that sort of activity.
Let’s take an organisation who isn’t here like Disability Action. They would have a policy person. I have no idea what she earns and it would be impertinent to speculate, but imagine it’s £35,000 a year. Say the act has come to pass, people with disabilities who have been severely impacted by welfare reform. Vile bigotry targeted at them, people who are “too lazy to work”. Agenda around stigma and around fairness and equality. People with mental or physical health issues are being demonised by government. These are my views. What is a policy person doing in run-up to an election, lobbying, asking difficult questions, demanding their agenda is met and exposing those who are hostile to that agenda. She wouldn’t be able to do it if this bill passes!
Another aspect that concerns me. This legislation is an attack on the trade union movement in Britain. The TUC IS affiliated to Labour Party but in Northern Ireland we have a congress of trade unions, unaffiliated to any party. Because they are not affiliated, they were able to play leading roles in the peace process.
Say there was some serious outrage by dissidents or loyalists. If people who support violence were standing in a general election it would clearly be an “election activity” to hold a peace rally. You couldn’t do it for less than £11,000. So goodbye to their work and their leadership. It’s obscene, appalling.