BYM warns on Lobbying Act’s effect
Britain Yearly Meeting has backed a report about the impact of the Lobbying Act
Quakers have backed a report claiming that the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act is limiting the charity sector’s ability to campaign.
Paul Parker, recording clerk of Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM), spoke out about the Lobbying Act’s ‘chilling effect’, after research published on 4 June by the Sheila McKechnie Foundation showed that over half of the charities surveyed said that the act prevented them from fully pursuing their charitable purpose.
The report was based on feedback from ninety-two voluntary and charity sector campaigners and senior managers, with eighty-six per cent working for registered charities.
Paul Parker wrote in an article on 4 June on the Quakers in Britain website that the ‘flawed’ legislation had ‘introduced a series of tests, registration requirements, spending limits and significant bureaucratic headaches for charities that campaign within a year of any UK election’.
He said that complying with its requirements cost BYM around £3,000 and a month of a staff member’s time for the 2017 general election. It was ‘making civil society cautious, when we should be bold’.
Comments
It is good news that the Government has caught up with those charities which use their privileged status to avoid the restrictions which apply to registered political parties. The Lobbying Act would not affect BYM were it to confine itself to its objective of sustaining the spiritual life of the Religious Society of Friends, rather than campaigning on controversial issues of the day.
Those Friends with political concerns have ample opportunity to pursue them in the secular domain through any number of political parties, think-tanks or lobbying organisations. The message in A&Q 34 is that those who care about politics should get active in the political world. There is no need for Friends who have political concerns also to bring them into the Society, because that tends to factiousness.
The Lobbying Act is an opportunity for BYM to take an honest look at excessive politicisation of the Society.
By frankem51 on 14th June 2018 - 17:49
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