The Lobbying Act – an obscure footnote in election history?

Hopefully 2015 will be remembered as the only General Election where the Lobbying Act cast its oppressive shadow over charity campaigning. With luck it will be consigned to history, only to resurface as an obscure question in a pub quiz for policy wonks. The Lobbying Act (or the Gagging Act as it has become known) changed the rules which regulate the behaviour of non-political organisations in the run up to elections. This has caused legitimate and entirely non party-political charity campaigns to be restricted by legislation which was meant to prevent political parties avoiding limits on their spending in the run up to elections. The Act directly threatens the vital role charities play in our democracy – advocating on behalf of their members and beneficiaries to ensure their voices are heard in the political debate. It makes it more difficult for charities to pursue their charitable objectives and has been seen by many as an attempt to push charities out of politics.

It’s not as straightforward as simply repealing the Act

Much of the problem is that the new rules are complex and ambiguous, leaving charities unsure whether the Act applies or not. As it stands a charity campaign can be caught by the Act if it is advocating for a policy change that is closely associated with a political party, even if that is not their intention. An example of this emerged when the Conservative manifesto committed to scrapping the Human Rights Act. Charities support Human Rights legislation, as it often underpins much of their work andwould want to campaign against this.  Unfortunately because other political parties share this view, the Lobbying Act would come into play, even if it is not the charities’ intention to influence voters. This caused Amnesty International UK to register with the Electoral Commission (the elections regulator), which means logging and monitoring of all their campaign spending and donations as well as conforming to strict spending limits. More worrying than the bureaucracy involved is the possibility that registration could cause Amnesty to be perceived as party-political, despite this clearly not being the case. There are also some bizarre inconsistencies at work here. For example, technically this blog if placed in a newspaper would not be covered by the Act as newspapers are exempt. However, were it to go on our website it could come under the Act. Considering the money that the major newspapers plow into influencing voters towards political parties, then all this charity campaigning stuff starts to look like very small beer. As the manifestos have been published it’s become clear what the political parties are planning to do about the Act. The Coalition brought in the legislation, so it’s no surprise to see that the Conservatives and Liberals have made no additional commitments beyond the limited ‘independent’ review they are currently undertaking. The Greens, Labour and SNP have committed to repeal the Act, though I hesitate to welcome this in case I have to register with the Electoral Commission! Regardless of the election result and the party or parties in power, this legislation needs to be addressed. And it’s not as straightforward as simply repealing the Act, though that would be a sensible first step. There is a need to think carefully about these rules and what we want to achieve. Our democracy is richer with more voices and opinions in the run-up to elections, yes there needs to be checks in place to prevent political parties from using third parties to disguise their campaign spending, but they shouldn’t act as a barrier to the legitimate campaigning undertaken by charities for the benefit of their members.