Regular readers of this blog will know that for the last month, a recurring theme has been the disaster which is the ‘Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill 2013-14′. I won’t repeat my previous comments here but suffice to say, the Government which promised to stop lobbying, then got distracted, perhaps because the rewards of being lobbied were more enticing than they had expected. When they did rush the Bill out in July, more than three years after it had been promised, it was a terrible mix of a weak lobbying Bill, an attempt to restrict the work of Trade Unions and an attempt to gag organisations that can make electioneering difficult for vulnerable candidates in elections. For the last four weeks the Government has being ‘going through the motions’ of consulting interested parties over the part two of the Bill that refers to the organisations that sometimes get in the way of the political parties, including charities and social enterprises. They are doing so because the Lords made it clear when they reviewed this part of the Bill “the handling of the Bill to date is a matter of significant concern.” and “An overall concern with Part 2 is whether its provisions are necessary.”

As someone who works for charities that operate throughout Sussex I have been in contact with the 14 Sussex MPs who chose to vote for the Bill in its entirety. All but one are Conservatives, but this is not a party political issue as far as I am concerned. I wrote about their responses last week and with one notable exception, there has been no change of response to update. The one exception is that I have now met with Simon Kirby, MP for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven. We had a brief meeting last night and to his credit Simon accepted that there are aspects to part two of this Bill that he had not considered or appreciated when he was voting for it. Specifically the impact on groups who would interpret the Bill with the cautious and risk averse mindset that exists within many of the charities I work with. Whether this revelation will lead Simon to support the removal of part two or to agree a major amendment remains to be seen, but he is the only one out of 14 MPs who has agreed to a meeting on this subject, he was willing to listen and he certainly gave me the impression he was willing to re-consider his decision.

In paying credit to Simon, I also want to acknowledge the support from the lobby group, 38 Degrees who I have blogged about previously. One of their volunteers, Richard, rang me having read my blog. He was able to suggest some material that I might find helpful which was the report of an Independent Commission that has reviewed this Bill and arrived at a number of proposals to be considered by the Government. I was able to leave a copy of the executive summary with Simon for him to consider. The report can be found here, and I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in this subject.

Having given credit to Simon Kirby for his willingness to meet and listen on this topic, it is important to acknowledge the three MPs in Sussex who have failed to even take the time to respond to several emails and tweets or facebook messages on this subject. Nick Herbert and Henry Smith are two backbench MPs who I have met and corresponded with on other matters. I have no knowledge of how responsive they have been to their constituents. Norman Baker, is MP for Lewes, he is a Government Minister, someone who is supposed to be consulting on this Bill. Not only has he failed to respond to my emails, I know of one of his constituents who works at a senior level within the Voluntary Sector in his constituency. She too has received no response. At a time when our democratic structures are in terminal decline, it is shocking that these three men have chosen to ignore reasonable and open questions on a Bill which David Davis, the Conservative MP states “The Bill has not gone through what in my view would be a proper constitutional process and so will of course be subject to unintended consequences all over the place.”