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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Henry G Manson – On the Lobbying Bill
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Henry G Manson – On the Lobbying Bill
Hasty legislation usually makes for the lousy legislation. But for lousy and cynical legislation, look no further than the government’s ‘Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill’.
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No change there then.
The HS2 opponents are just plucking figures out of their posteriors and using them. £50 billion, £73 billion, £80 billion. Ridiculous figures with no basis in reality.
And idiots believe and use them ...
This matters. The same methods will be used against any large infrastructure projects - Heathrow, new roads, everything.
Henry - have you been drinking?
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jun/18/heathrow-public-funding-expansion
O/T good analysis of the Miranda decision yesterday:
http://www.headoflegal.com/2013/08/22/miranda-v-home-secretary-todays-hearing-and-order/
"Labour and Conservative MSPs demanded to know how he had been chosen to stand for the Holyrood seat of Dunfermline, which he won with a majority of 590 over Labour in 2011.
The Herald's sister paper, the Sunday Herald, revealed last year that the SNP was warned of his violent past by Rob Armstrong, the brother of Walker's third wife, Diana Walker, whom the shamed MSP assaulted on several occasions."
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/pressure-on-snp-as-msp-guilty-of-beating-three-wives.21945788
"ALEX Salmond last night led calls for bully MSP Bill Walker to quit Holyrood — after he was found guilty of beating his former wives and stepdaughter."
http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/article5090973.ece
SNP 11,010 37.6% (+13.5)
Lab 10,420 35.6% (+2.7)
LD 5,776 19.7% (-13.5)
Con 2,093 7.1% (-1.2)
More to the point however, this so called anti-lobbying bill is of no consequence.
MPs have repeatedly proved utterly incapable of policing themselves with regards to expenses and corruption. So even if this bill had any teeth (which it does not) it would only be a matter of time before the lobbyists watered it down and changed it. Just like IPSA was systematically watered down and made supine by MPs furious that their perks were being questioned.
What will happen is that in a month, or a year, or a few years there will be one hell of a scandal with resignations and somebody is going to look quite the incompetent fool when this legislation is proved to be worthless.
There's going to be more expenses scandals and there's going to be more and bigger lobbying scandals. If enough MPs actually realised with just how contempt they are regarded by the public then they would be biting Cammie's and Clegg's hand of to make sure an effective curb against lobbying and expenses scandals was implemented instead of this toothless mess.
" The Deputy Prime Minister has privately demanded that the Bill is not published until after the party conference season in order to avoid a conflict with his colleagues.
However, the Home Office plans to produce the Bill just three days before the Lib Dem conference in Glasgow next month. Under the planned reforms to the immigration system, migrants’ access to the NHS would be restricted to try to deter foreigners from moving to Britain for free treatment.
Downing Street originally intended to publish the Bill in September, once some of the consultations were complete. Senior Lib Dems demanded that the Home Office move the Bill’s publication date from Sept 13, the day before the Lib Dem conference. Home Office officials then offered to introduce it two days earlier. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/10260738/Clegg-seeks-to-delay-migrant-Bill.html
Big Brother? More like a Big Girl's Blouse!
Note that most of the recent cost increase from £32.7to £42.6 billion was due to the Treasury moving from the usual P50 to P95 accounting, apparently a highly unusual move.
So yes, not using usual accounting practices for such projects is, indeed, plucking figures out of their posteriors. Read the IEA report if you want a laugh.
If you are stupid enough to believe the £73 or £80 billion figures, you should also ask yourself why infrastructure costs so much in this country compared to other countries. Perhaps we should spent a few billion fixing that ...
My current thinking, having read a great deal about this, is that the cost will be in the £30 to £35 billion range as long as there are no wholescale changes to the route. In other words, either some of the contingency will not be used, or it will go slightly over budget.
Oh dear, Henry. - Would you kindly leave this kind of hyperbolic nonsense to Polly @CIF where it belongs.
Mr. Manson, whilst the bill would appear in need of some improvement I think it's a bit rich for an advocate of the Labour Party to use the Big Brother theme. It's not like he wants to be able to lock people up for 90 days without charge or force everyone to carry an ID card.
Mr. K, you can't claim Cameron's both a vile tyrant and a big soft girly.
On a side note, it's worth recalling that many charities are political, either in party allegiance terms or in terms of spending a lot of their energy on political campaigning. It may be legitimate for them to be included to at least some degree in a lobbying bill.
Labour plans for a ‘tourist tax’ would mean millions of families could no longer afford to take ‘staycations’ in the UK, ministers warned last night.
Culture Secretary Maria Miller and Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said a ‘levy on overnight accommodation’ would hit thousands of businesses in the tourist sector. The proposal, put forward by Ed Miliband’s Shadow Cabinet ally Sadiq Khan and backed by some Labour councils, would potentially see a tax placed on all hotel, bed and breakfast and self-catering accommodation
Similar taxes in the United States are typically levied at 10 per cent of the price of a room. If Labour adopted a similar rate it would add £10 to the cost of a £100 hotel room. A family staying in a £90-a-night room would pay an extra £126 in tax for a two-week holiday.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2400543/Labours-plans-hotel-tax-spell-end-staycations-hit-businesses.html#ixzz2cm63phH0
How the figures are reached is important: there are set ways of pricing projects, and inventing new ones (as apparently is the case with these unattributed figures) makes them B/S.
The mindset should be: "What are the costs and benefits of the project?"
The mindset is: "We don't like this project. How can we create a big, scary figure?". The same technique was used by the IEA.
Sure, write me a cheque. It may bounce. :-)
A good analysis of the IEA report that some stupidly believe:
http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/hs2-iea-report-one-huge-turkey.html
But I'd expect nothing more than opposition for HS2 from a Green party supporter. A Green party who were previously in favour of high-speed rail, but are now miraculously against it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10260728/Labours-property-firm-paid-no-tax-for-eight-years.html
I've done some searching and not been able to find an official document with it on. It appears to be an unsourced briefing using assumptions that are not used when pricing other projects. In other words, B/S.
(As for opposition to HS2: I thought you were firmly in that camp. I'm still amused by the Green Party's volte-face on high-speed rail).
Why is a Scottish MP commenting upon an English Railways and Infrastructure project? Should his views be any more pertinent then - say - those of Kaj Leo Johannesen...?
Disclaimer: Genernally neutral on the HS2 project. Niether argument - for or against - convinces me....
As for The Mirror, it is a good job that their photojournalist hasn't tracked down the MP for Morley and Outwood.
An invention, pure and simple.
Indeed ... I am a well respected charity, you promulgate information, he lobbies.
As a matter of interest, will you be going to the cinema to see 'Rush', or is that too far before your time?
http://www.rushmovie.com/
Memory's funny - I was only three at the time, but I can swear I watched that season on TV. That is strange, as I think the BBC only started showing all the races in 1978.
Which just shows how much it's passed into folklore.
I think my oldest cast-iron F1 memory was Carlos Reutemann winning the tragic and chaotic 1981 Belgian GP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Belgian_Grand_Prix
An invention, pure and simple.
Er no. If the Treasury do not normally factor in these things then they are not presenting a real cost. . What we are interested in is how much it is actually going to cost in the end. Unless you are claiming that government projects are somehow immune to inflation and pay no VAT?
My oldest F1 memories are Schumacher and Hill fighting for a title or two.
Rush looks like it could be good, not sure if I'll go and see it, though. F1 history is interesting but regulation and technological changes mean it's not very relevant for modern F1.
Most hotels and many B&Bs and self-catering already have to charge VAT which is far higher in the UK than the rest of the EU for such services. Again no homework done by Labour and what do they want to use the money for anyway?
Country Hotel VAT Normal VAT
Austria 10% 20%
Belgium 6% 21%
Bulgaria 9% 20%
Cyprus 5% 15%
Czech Republic 10% 20%
Denmark 25% 25%
Finland 9% 23%
France 5.50% 19.60%
Germany 7% 19%
Greece 6.50% 23%
Hungary 18% 25%
Ireland 9% 21%
Italy 10% 20%
Malta 7% 18%
Netherlands 6% 19%
Norway 8% 25%
Poland 8% 23%
Portugal 6% 23%
Slovenia 8.50% 20%
Spain 8% 18%
Sweden 12% 25%
UK 20% 20%
'Does Alistair Darlings intervention on HS2 presage a Labour shift, with most of the PB Tories silently and sullenly opposing the govt position?'
Does anyone in Labour take Brown's poodle seriously?
1) VAT is often reclaimed for construction - as it was apparently for Crossrail and HS1. So including it is a large cost inflation.
2) AIUI, the reason why inflation is not included is that we have no idea what the inflation rate will be in a couple of decades time, towards the end of the project. Again, not including it is apparently standard.
So wrong on both counts.
The point is that HS2 should be judged and costed by the same method as all other big projects. Inventing a scheme that applies to HS2 only does not allow fair comparison or CBA.
Worse: there will be a time when there is a large project that you will be in favour of, and people will use exactly the same bogus practices against them.
I don't think that anyone is seriously opposed to some form of licencing system for professional lobbyists although there are clearly issues at the margins that need some consideration.
One of the nonsenses of recent elections is that we have fairly strict rules about spending and then trade unions spend very large amounts of money on phone banks, advertising and canvassing, particularly in marginal constituencies. This is not a level playing field and if we are to keep spending limits it seems unreasonable to me to discount the cost of a poster beceause it is paid for by Unite instead of Labour itself. This spending is somewhat akin to PACs in the US which have also distorted spending there, usually to the right in that case.
On the other hand there are enough people alienated from politics in this country without discouraging more participation. If Union members believe that Labour being elected is good for them why should they not come together and combine their efforts? I think the answer is to include the spending if it is promoting a single party (as opposed to some other TU idea) but to look at the spending limits.
Having up to date membership lists for Unions may be an ideal but I frankly don't understand why it is thought to be so important. Maybe I am missing something.
The meat of the bill is the second section. We read a lot of smug statements on here about Labour's superior ground game but very few acknowledgements about how it is paid for and organised. The way ahead to me seems obvious but hey, what do I know?
1. Third parties (charities, lobbyists, whatever) acting in a way helpful or unhelpful to any candidates will be limited in the 12 months before an election.
2. There is an absolute limit of £390,000 nationally.
3. If you want to spend more than £32,000, you need the permission of the party or parties who may be benefiting from your activities, since it can count against their spending limit. If they refuse it, you need to shut up or stop saying things which could be interpreted as favouring them.
The purpose of this is, I think, to prevent third parties getting round spending limits on parties by campaigns that clearly support one or another party - vote for a party that will legalise hunting, or support public services, or whatever. However, the wording appears to go well beyond that and hit anyone who has an opinion on anything controversial.
For example, if X favours HS2 and Y opposes it, and you are a group very interested in railways and strongly favour or oppose it, you will be be deemed to be helping one party and damaging the other, even if you only talk about HS2 and don't mention the parties or the election. If you spend £32,000 including staff time, you need the permission of X or Y to continue to express your view. They may not be keen since you might say something that they don't quite like - if they're well off, they might prefer to spend their allocation themselves.
It's certainly true that the larger charities and campaign groups are concerned and that it doesn't really address the more obvious lobby issue of the professional bloke throwing champagne dinners for MPs on behalf of his clients.
From what I have seen on other blogs, this bill sucks ass. The intention is obvious: to ensure that someone (eg the Unions or a rich Tory donor) cannot set up a parallel fund to the political parties and use it to effectively circumvent expenditure rules during an election year. But the mechanism for doing this seems not only excessive but wrong in principle. Everyone, at any time, should be free to express political opinion, unconstrained by the State and even more so by private organisations.
I particularly like the screen shot taken from Ridley Scott's 1984 Apple commercial because I was in the studio with RS when it was shot.
(Carlotta-thanks for the link to the Miranda court case intro. Very interesting)
Taking the Tax Payers Alliance as an example this might get quite tricky. They support lower spending which generally makes them sound like tories but they are frequently critical of the tories for, err, spending too much or increasing taxes. When and how the spending should count may well be difficult but my preference would be for a fairly broad definition of the support and fairly high limits on the spending.
PS. Forgot the link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNy-7jv0XSc
"To Mike Smithson. how much longer is this site going to allow Henry Manson to air his left wing drivel. a lurch back to non partizan would be the professional way forward."
No need for the sock puppet . I'm sure you will have exhibited yourself as a jerk already using your usual username
Other news (breaking): Russia calling on Syria govt to cooperate with UN.
GDP: The economy expanded by 0.7 per cent in the second quarter of 2013, up from an initial 0.6 per cent estimate, the ONS says. #c4news
POLWAS
Tory Treasury @ToryTreasury
Government output grew by 0.9% in Q2 while government spending fell by -1.5%. More for less
UK Q2 industrial output +0.6%; manufacturing production up 0.7%, services output +0.6%, construction +1.4% all compared with Q1
I've expressed myself less strongly than Henry, who has the job of provoking us into lively exchanges. A party man, I might quite like the idea that if the unions want to support Labour, they should give us lots of money, not spend it themselves in a semi-supportive campaign. But it does seem to me to be an entry into a swamp full of landmines without a map.
Those who have been campaigning for lobbying and political funding to be regulated by legislation are now, slowly, beginning to understand the implications. What is sauce for the Ashcroft or Murdoch goose is sauce for the McCluskey, Rusbridger or League against Cruel Sports gander.
At the moment we have the unions effectively able to by-pass limits on candidates' spending by claiming it's not Labour spending the money, but the unions.
Now here's a suggestion: why don't we all agree to forget about the whole nonsense and let people spend money and time on whatever campaigns they like?
Living standards is the new game in town.
Growth was only a good thing when Labour had it, like in spring 2010, when we were spending £175bn more a year than we were taking in to achieve it.
Of course, a £175bn deficit was never going to have an adverse effect on future living standards.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-23797832
http://twitpic.com/d9toi6
LOL - what was it that they used to say about principles??
Seems principles like taxes are only for the other people.
2) AIUI, the reason why inflation is not included is that we have no idea what the inflation rate will be in a couple of decades time, towards the end of the project. Again, not including it is apparently standard.
So wrong on both counts.
The point is that HS2 should be judged and costed by the same method as all other big projects. Inventing a scheme that applies to HS2 only does not allow fair comparison or CBA.
Worse: there will be a time when there is a large project that you will be in favour of, and people will use exactly the same bogus practices against them.
No the point is that people are sick and tired of these big projects being costed up ina favourable way to get them approved and then running vastly over budget. And there will large parts of the HS2 project which will not be reclaimable for VAT. So it is reasonable to include that part at least in the costs.
And this all ignores the basic point that the government has been massively inflating the supposed benefits and no one now takes them seriously about this any more.
Sauce for the goose etc.
Groups either linked to one party or another should operate within them. One of the reason that the parties are hollowing out is the general abdication of responsibility from people who are happy to comment, criticise and campaign on single issues but leave the business of direct involvement in the political system to others. Political parties are an essential part of the system as they provide the key link for the accountability of the government to the electorate.
Journalists and campaigners who seek power, and power without responsibility should read what Kipling via Baldwin had to say about that.
Chris Williamson @WilliamsonChris
UK exports surged 3.6% in Q2. Expect good Q3 too as overseas markets (even eurozone) pick up bit.ly/17Nk7mU twitpic.com/d9qddi
At least this government is attempting to tackle the deficit. Brown hadn't moved from denial stage, despite the pleadings of Alistair Darling.
Osborne won't wipe the deficit out in five years and the road is bumpy and difficult, but he has changed the mindset and just about everybody out there realises that money is tight and should only be spent wisely.
It may all still end in tragedy, but I feel a lot more comfortable under a government who - despite their own travails with spending - accept we are heading to disaster than under one who were extremely reluctant to accept the direness of the economic situation at all (and many among the Labour hierarchy still don't - go read Labour List).
(1) Would it be OK for Lord Ashcroft to spend, say, £500K of his own money, quite separately from the Conservative Party, to buy advertising, deliver leaflets, and hire staff to canvass voters in Broxtowe, in a bid to persuade people to vote for Anna Soubry rather than Nick Palmer?
(2) Would it make any difference if it wasn't just Lord Ashcroft, but a club of good citizens of Broxtowe who, quite separately from the Conservative Party, organised themselves to raise the money?
(3) Would it be OK for Unite to spend, say, £500K from its political fund, quite separately from the Labour Party, to buy advertising, deliver leaflets, and hire staff to canvass voters in Broxtowe, in a bid to persuade people to vote for Nick Palmer rather than Anna Soubry?
At the moment, (3) already happens, albeit not to the tune of £500K in a single constituency. If, unlike me, you think there should be a cap on political spending, this is an outrage, right?
Crossrail looks as though it will be on time and on budget as well (so far):
http://www.constructionenquirer.com/2013/05/31/crossrail-a-third-built-and-on-time-and-budget/
Unless we do the stupid thing HS2 opponents did with HS1 as mentioned above, and say Crossrail's costs have increased from £300 million (a 1974 Crossrail scheme).
"And this all ignores the basic point that the government has been massively inflating the supposed benefits and no one now takes them seriously about this any more. "
Evidence?
But if there isn't a blanket exemption, but it depends on the case, then we're back with trying to guess what the courts will do. And uncertainty is usually worse than bad law.
False memory has always been an essential part of Ingsoc.
But unless we wish to allow the same nonsense as they have in the US with super PACS, some form of control on political expenditure by those not directly taking part in elections is required.
We cannot have the restrictions on fund-raising and campaigning by political parties so easily circumvented.