My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 74 in my name. It deals with the definition of “foreign powers”, which clearly is a key part of the overall Bill.
However, I first need to talk about this part of the Bill in relation to FIRS, which we will cover next week—or maybe the week after, or the week after that, given the rate at which we are going; I hope not. I need to do that because the definition of a foreign power in Clause 32 determines who will be covered by the scheme we will come to later. In doing so, I make it clear that I greatly welcome the changes to FIRS contained in the government amendments, which again we will come to later, as they take account of the arguments made in Committee.
However, there is an anomaly that remains which particularly worries me. Many external political parties, including those from friendly states—not only NATO, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, mentioned, but New
Zealand and Australia—will find themselves subject to registration and reporting requirements on issues completely unrelated to Government policy, let alone security issues. This is the National Security Bill we are discussing, not a lobbying Bill. These states will be caught on issues that have nothing to do with government policy or security.
Clause 32(1)(e) defines a foreign power as a political party whose members form the Government. At the moment, that would mean, for example, the Democrats in America, the Labour Party in New Zealand and Australia, and En Marche!—or whatever it is now called—in France. The Minister will know better than I do which of the Conservatives’ close associates are also in Government in various countries and therefore would be caught by this. The definition in Clause 32 covers the whole Bill, which might be appropriate for some parts of the Bill but certainly not for Part 3. The registration and reporting of activities in Part 3 has an enormous number of requirements—if we leave this definition to cover that—for political parties on non-security issues.
Assuming the Minister’s amendments go through, perhaps most worrying is the new Clause 70(3)(d), which means that FIRS covers any communication by a relevant overseas party—one whose members form the Government—which could affect, or is about,
“the proceedings of a UK registered political party”.
Stop and think about that. This will cover a political party in a friendly country having to register its activities in this country. The Minister will immediately pop up and say, “No, not if they do it directly—only if they do it through a third party”, but that is what happens, as we do these things through third parties. For us, it means if a fellow member of a sister party that is in Government—I do not know if the Conservatives call their friendly parties “sister parties”, but we always use the phrase—uses a consultancy, for example, or a PR firm, to ask us to support the change in the venue for the next Party of European Socialists Congress, or our work on the environment or an equality manifesto, the publication of something in a newspaper, an ad about a disaster or anything completely internal to our party-to-party relationships; but if is done by an intermediary, it becomes reportable to the Government, not of our political persuasion at the moment, of course, and published.
I doubt that is what the Government want because this is not about transparency now. We are into Big Brother land. I ask the Minister whether, if members of a party in Government, not the Government itself, contact any of us—if you look at Schedule 14 it could be not only us but, for example, councillors, even candidates, mayors via a conference organiser or a public affairs adviser—about any issue, such as a free trade agreement or a completely non-government issue such as an upcoming internal seminar being run between parties, where we tend to use intermediaries such as conference organisers, and they want to invite a party member as a speaker, it would have to be reported because it is via an intermediary. That is how I have read it and it is what he said when we had a very helpful meeting: if you use an intermediary, it is reportable.
Similarly, if party staffers from the party in Government organise a stall or a workshop at a party conference, and do so via a conference organising company, they are paying these intermediaries; therefore, they are acting under their direction. Those were the very helpful words the Minister gave me. They are therefore doing it on the order of the sister party in that other country. They are being directed by that party; the party is paying them to contact us to appear in a seminar or whatever it is. Is that reportable, and is there a criminal penalty if they fail to do it?
If they use an intermediary, who could be an interpreter or a translator, and they pay for that expertise, and they are again directing that party as to what they should do, would that be reportable—not just reportable, but reportable, for us as the Labour Party, to a Conservative Secretary of State, and a lot of this published? Non-governing parties are not covered, so the French socialists can come over and do what they like with us, and that is fine because they are not in Government, but it applies if we start holding seminars which the German Social Democrats, for example, set up using an intermediary such as a conference facilitating company.
For the Minister’s own party, some of their sister parties would also be covered by this when they go to Birmingham, or wherever the Conservatives have their party conference. I doubt very much that, at the beginning, it was the intention of the Government for their definition of foreign influence to get down to this level.
Over the weekend, or perhaps on Monday, some of us were sent very helpfully all the draft regulations and the forms that have to be filled in with people’s private mobile numbers and all sorts of details about what is going to happen, the dates of it, its purpose, the desired outcome, the individuals involved, contact details, the contact for the intermediary, and the invitations and which MPs they are going to. For possibly one meeting on the fringe of a party conference, or a TV interview, or the drafting of an article done by a party via an intermediary, all this would need to be reported.
I am not asking Ministers tonight to redraft this. I am asking—and I think there may be some willingness to do it—for the Government to look hard at whether it is really the intention that FIRS should include this party-to-party relationship, or party-to-politician relationship, where it is done via a third party. I hope that we can get some satisfactory answers or an undertaking that we could perhaps meet, and, if necessary, that some further tweaking might happen to this part of the Bill.
8.45 pm