{"id":22013,"date":"2013-09-03T10:53:53","date_gmt":"2013-09-03T09:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=22013"},"modified":"2013-09-03T10:53:53","modified_gmt":"2013-09-03T09:53:53","slug":"the-electoral-commission-says-the-governments-lobbying-bill-is-bad-law-thats-unenforceable-and-a-massive-burden-on-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/09\/03\/the-electoral-commission-says-the-governments-lobbying-bill-is-bad-law-thats-unenforceable-and-a-massive-burden-on-free-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"The Electoral Commission says the government’s lobbying bill is bad law that’s unenforceable and a massive burden on free speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Electoral Commission has published its commentary<\/a> on the government's lobbying bill <\/a>this morning, which it will be responsible for enforcing. The commentary is damning, not helped by the fact that they were not consulted in advance on the bill. They say:<\/p>\n

Key points for Second Reading<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is important that, where non-party campaigning takes place on a scale that\u00a0could have a significant impact on elections, it is transparent and controlled.\u00a0Inadequate controls could ultimately result in voters losing trust in the fairness\u00a0and effectiveness of the UK\u2019s overall framework for regulating political\u00a0campaigning. We regulate the general rules relating to this type of campaigning.<\/p>\n

The Bill both widens the scope of the current rules on non-party campaigning that\u00a0affects parties and groups of candidates, and imposes some additional controls\u00a0on such campaigning. In our view, as drafted, the Bill raises some significant\u00a0issues of workability that you may wish to explore at Second Reading.<\/p>\n

Areas that you may wish to focus on in particular include that:<\/p>\n

1. the Bill creates significant regulatory uncertainty for large and small\u00a0organisations that campaign on, or even discuss, public policy\u00a0issues in the year before the next general election, and imposes\u00a0significant new burdens on such organisations<\/p>\n

2. the Bill effectively gives the Electoral Commission a wide discretion\u00a0to interpret what activity will be regulated as political campaigning.\u00a0It is likely that some of our readings of the law will be contentious and 2challenged, creating more uncertainty for those affected. While we as the\u00a0independent regulator should be free to decide when the rules have been\u00a0broken, and how to deal with breaches of the rules, we do not think it is\u00a0appropriate for us to have a wide discretion over what activity is\u00a0covered by the rules<\/p>\n

3. some of the new controls in the Bill may in practice be impossible to\u00a0enforce, and it is important that Parliament considers what the changes\u00a0will achieve in reality, and balances this against the new burdens imposed\u00a0by the Bill on campaigners.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The wording is diplomatic but the message is clear. They think this is a badly thought out bill for which there is no apparent policy objective which is backed by impact assessments which the Electoral Commission clearly think are risible.<\/p>\n

But will the government listen? If not, kiss goodbye to democracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Electoral Commission has published its commentary on the government’s lobbying bill this morning, which it will be responsible for enforcing. The commentary is damning,
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[153],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-speech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}