Two weeks ago the Government and the House of Lords struck a deal to delay the ‘Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill 2013-14’ in order to allow Ministers to “consult widely all of the interested parties, members of this House and the many others outside”. This consultation is focused on the second part of the three part Bill that refers to charities. I have written about this ‘gagging bill’ previously, expressing my view that the government has cynically linked charities with the abuse of commercial lobbying which has plagued this government just like all of its recent predecessors. The Bill is meant to fulfil the promise David Cameron made to us in early 2010 before the General Election to end lobbying. Sadly only a small part of commercial lobbying activities will be covered by this Bill, whilst the inclusion of charities under the ‘non party campaigning’ element duplicates existing charitable legislation to prevent charities from undertaking political activity. The Lords wanted a 12 week delay to enable a meaningful level of consultation over this part of the Bill, and the Government didn’t want any delay, so they settled on a shoddy compromise of six weeks. The risk is that the delay is long enough to allow the Government to justify progressing the Bill, explaining that consultation has taken place, without allowing sufficient time to get the Bill right.

I last wrote about the Bill, on Thursday week after I had heard that the consultation period had been agreed. On the same day I contacted 14 out of our 16 Sussex MPs (the ones who supported it previously) to ask if they would engage with charities to explain why they have supported the Bill so far, and perhaps more importantly to listen to these organisations to find out what these charities feel about the Bill. Our MPs are supposed to remain accessible to their constituents, and at a time when democratic engagement is at a very low ebb they should have seen these messages as a great opportunity to encourage greater involvement. It is usual for MPs to correspond only with their constituents, however I wrote in my capacity as coordinator for Churches Together in Sussex, a role that requires me to work across Sussex, covering all 16 constituencies. I have met most of the MPs before or corresponded with them on other issues. I am not asking to meet with these MPs personally, simply asking how they will engage with charities in their constituencies, so I can alert the 1000 churches in Sussex to this engagement.

The 14 MPs who voted for the third reading of the Bill are all members of the Government and some are Ministers. I have contacted them in a number of ways and so far (with 4 weeks to go) the response has been rather disappointing.

One MP (Greg Barker) explained that he could not correspond with me as I am not a constituent, I pointed out that he does correspond with other organisations based outside of his constituency on a regular basis (I could list a number of these) and I am now waiting to have a response to my third email on this subject which he has promised to respond to!

Three MPs have agreed that they would be happy to receive correspondence from constituents on this subject. Two of these (Mike Weatherley and Simon Kirby) have refused to hold any meetings with any constituents on this subject, the third (Andrew Tyrie) has not offered to meet with constituents but has not refused to do so either.

The remaining 10 MPs have not responded to my email or other correspondence in any way. They are Norman Baker, Peter Bottomley, Nick Gibb, Charles Hendry, Nick Herbert, Tim Loughton, Francis Maude, Amber Rudd, Henry Smith and Nicholas Soames. Of these three are Government Ministers who the statement claimed were personally intending to consult widely, these three are Norman Baker, Nick Gibb and Francis Maude!

I am not alone in having written to these MPs on this matter and received little or no response, several colleagues in the voluntary sector have also contacted their MPs, with similar levels of success. We still have four weeks to run on the six week consultation period for this Bill as agreed by Government Ministers. However at the beginning of Parliament Week ‘an exciting new national initiative that allows you to get involved with parliamentary democracy in the UK’, it is sad to report that of 14 MPs in Sussex who have so far voted for this legislation none are willing to explain why they did so or to meet with constituents regarding the Bill, and only 4 have taken the time to even reply to my message. Two MPs chose not to vote for the legislation, Caroline Lucas voted against it and she has maintained strong contact with charities in Brighton & Hove throughout the process and Stephen Lloyd abstained. I wonder if this in part explains why people such as Russell Brand and Jeremy Paxman have hit such a nerve in the national debate when they suggest that they do not have confidence in the political system and want to see a major change in the way we do democracy!