Understanding how the Lobbying Act will work (with coffee and pastries to help)

Earlier this week we held an early morning breakfast seminar on the Lobbying Act. The event was extremely well attended, demonstrating once again how much charities and voluntary organisations are concerned about the new rules and their possible impact on campaigning activities.

The aim of the seminar was to provide participants with as much information as possible about how the rules will work in practice – not an easy task given the amount of new regulations and the remaining ambiguity in many issues.

The Electoral Commission itself is now in the process of developing guidance, which will be available at the beginning of July.

In the meantime we are doing all we can to provide as much information as possible about:

• the existing PPERA rules that will continue to apply;
• the key changes to the law made by the Lobbying Act and what implications these will have.

The presentations of the morning are available here:

• my explanation on the Lobbying Act’s background and progress through Parliament, with the key amendments that were made
• the Electoral Commission’s outline of the key changes to the law and its approach to developing guidance.

There are also audio files of the various sessions:

listen to Karl Wilding’s background to the campaigning environment:

listen to my presentation on the Act and the changes it went through in Parliament:

listen to the Electoral Commission’s presentation on their plans for writing guidance on the Lobbying Act:

Our next step is to produce an FAQ document on the basis of the questions raised by participants. Although neither we, nor the Electoral Commission, are yet in the position to provide all the answers on how the Act will work in practice, we hope this will help charities and voluntary organisations understand the key issues and the likely implications of the new Act.

If you have something you’d like us to address, please email me.