My Lords, while I very much welcome the fact that this policy is under review, I hope your Lordships will agree, in view of the great interest that has been expressed in this subject
outside this place, that we take the opportunity to express, at least in summary, the very grave concerns that some of us have about this part of the Bill.
In that spirit, I shall speak briefly to the five stand part notices in my name, signed also by my noble friend Lord Carlile, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. They would leave intact the enhanced tier, which I believe to be of real value for our national security, but if carried they would remove Clauses 66 to 70, the so-called primary tier of FIRS.
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These clauses bring to mind the saying of Jonathan Swift:
“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”
Foreign Governments are exempted from having to register their foreign influence arrangements, even when their attempts at persuasion are covert. But the full range of other foreign organisations do have to register, even when they have no connection whatever with their Government and are entirely up front about what they are asking.
Nor is it only foreign principals who are caught. As the Minister just said, the obligation to register, on pain of imprisonment, falls on any person who is directed by a foreign principal to exert political influence or even to arrange for it to be carried out. That includes trying to influence an MP, Peer or political party on any subject whatever, and any communication to Ministers or senior officials attempting to influence a decision, for example of BEIS, HMRC or FCDO, even when the identity of the foreign principal is well known to all. I refer to my interest in the register as a trustee of a peacebuilding charity. Like many charities and international NGOs based in the UK, it is very concerned by this proposal.
With registration comes a continuing and open-ended obligation to disclose whatever may be required by an information notice. There are exceptions for legal professional privilege and confidential journalistic material but nothing to protect commercially confidential dealings that a would-be investor might have, for example, with BEIS or the CMA. Whatever global Britain might mean, this is surely the opposite.
The Schedule 14 exemptions are eclectic. There is a big one for foreign news publishers, whatever their country of origin. Political parties are exempt but only when they happen to be in government. There are no exemptions, as there are in Australia, for bodies active in the charitable, religious or artistic fields; industry representative bodies; or firms acting as tax agents, customs brokers, liquidators and receivers. The specificity of some of those exemptions surely demonstrates how, relatively speaking, careful the Australians were to look at the evidence. There is not even an exemption for commercial or regulatory contacts. Instead, we have that sure sign of a rushed job: a delegated power to provide for additional exemptions, to add to the very few in the Bill.
At Second Reading my noble friend Lord Carlile described this scheme as an architectural concept drawing, and so it is. Nothing like it was consulted on last
summer. It first arrived when the Bill was in Committee in the Commons. Part 3 of the Bill was further substantially amended on 16 November, the last day of its passage through the Commons.
In view of the blizzard of opposition that has come in since then, to which the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, has referred, the Government are planning to react. The Security Minister—to whom I am grateful, as I am to the Minister today, for discussions with them and their officials—inherited this mess and seems, if I may put it this way, to have two broad options.
Option 1 is to revert to the Australian model by applying this scheme not to all foreign organisations but only to those controlled by foreign Governments, and by introducing a wider range of exemptions. It could also be focused, this time in distinction to Australia, on covert rather than overt influence. The amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, which I have supplemented with my own Amendment 92B, amount to a very preliminary sketch of what that option would look like.
That would certainly make the primary tier less harmful, but it would not make it into good law. Working up that preliminary sketch into a viable system would require detailed consultation, the identification of a clear goal and the testing of proposals against the desired outcome—processes which a proper legislative procedure cannot skip but for which there is really no time now. That testing process would have to take full account of experience with FITS, the Australian scheme, which has produced not a single prosecution in its four years of operation but which has been publicly attacked by one of those subject to it, Kevin Rudd, as imposing huge compliance costs for no obvious benefit. Noble Lords might have seen his open letter to that effect. It would also have to acknowledge that the Australian model, even if it worked well in Australia, cannot simply be imitated in a country that depends to a greater extent on its global connections, the majority of them entirely benign.
Option 2, the clause stand part propositions in my name, acknowledges that the repairs to these clauses are too extensive to be done in-flight and that they are an unnecessary part of a necessary Bill. Yes, our lobbying laws need tightening, but this is not the way to do it. These clauses risk diminishing our national standing without enhancing our national security. We can attempt a last-minute fudge, but I wonder whether that could really be a substitute for a clear and considered plan. We should keep the enhanced tier by all means—it is important—and put the primary tier out of its misery.