On Monday, the House of Lords will resume the Committee stage of the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill 2013-14. This was paused on Armistice Day (quite a significant date) as the Lords demanded either that part 2 of the Bill was removed altogether, or else that the Government opened up a consultation period to attempt to create effective legislation. The 12 weeks the Lords asked for was reduced to 6 weeks by the Government, but the consultation was nevertheless announced. It remains to be seen what the Government has done in that time. The Bill is sometimes referred to as the Lobbying or the Gagging Bill. Part 2 of the Bill refers to organisations which might engage with MPs or Political Parties in the 12 months prior to elections and this includes charities and social enterprises. It seems reasonable to assume that some of the consultation would involve such organisations. However it is unusual for Governments to put legislation on hold for consultation. The only recent example is the Bill to wind up the Primary Care Trusts. However there is good reason for our legislators to reflect on the lobbying Bill.

According to Parliaments own Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee: “This Bill is an object lesson in how not to produce legislation. There was little or no consultation with those affected. There was no pre-legislative scrutiny. And the Bill is now being rushed through the house in a way that indicates a lack of respect for Parliament.”

Deputy Prime minister, Nick Clegg said: “The parts on third party campaigning were discussed extensively by the three parties in the cross-party funding talks. it was agreed by all parties, and backed by Sir Christopher Kelly in his recommendations on party funding reform, that any change to party funding arrangements should also include some limits on third party campaign groups when they want to influence the political outcome in a constituency or constituencies.”

However John Denham MP, Labour Party lead in the talks said: “There were no substantive talks on third party funding at all. far from discussing the current proposals ‘extensively’ they were never raised, never proposed and never discussed. indeed, we all agreed that the issues were so difficult and so complex that they lay beyond our powers to examine and resolve them. it was clear that a separate piece of work would be necessary.”

Conservative MP David Davis said: “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.”

In order to find out more about the work that is going on to challenge the Bill, I can fully recommend the The Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement which has a couple of reports based extensive discussions with interested parties. Although the period of consultation has technically ended, the discussion in the Lords which resumes on Monday will only last till Wednesday when their Lordships begin their Christmas break, which will run till 7th January. This means that there is still plenty of time to contact MPs (who will ultimately have to pass any modifications that come out of the Lords). There is also still time to contact Ministers who we were told would “consult widely all of the interested parties, members of this House and the many others outside”. According to an on-line dictionary, the word consult is defined as “to seek advice or information from; ask guidance from” There are around 100 MPs who are Ministers at various levels. Several of these are based in Sussex and I wrote to all of them to offer advice and information from local churches in their constituencies. I also wrote in the same way to all of the MPs in Sussex who had supported the Bill in its current state. I have written on this previously but for the sake of Norman Baker (Minister), Nick Herbert MP, Henry Smith MP who have so far completely ignored my emails, and Nicholas Soames whose office sent me a message to say they were dealing with my correspondence but have not yet dealt with it, there is still time for you to reply IF YOU CAN BE BOTHERED. In Normans case I know he has also been ignoring correspondence from his constituents on this subject so this is not a problem confined to one or two emails!