Consultation on proposals for a Lobbying Transparency Bill

Shelter Scotland helps over half a million people every year struggling with bad housing or homelessness through our advice, support and legal services. We believe that everyone has the right to a safe, secure affordable home and that housing is vital to people and families being able to flourish in their communities. We provide direct services to people facing bad housing and homelessness and we campaign to prevent it in the first place.

We have a long history of engaging fully, successfully and legitimately with the Scottish Parliament and elected members and agree that "lobbying is a legitimate and valuable activity". A key part of our role, and that of many third sector organisations across the country, is to stand up for and ensure that the voice of our clients and vulnerable groups is heard in the parliamentary process.

A key principle underpinning the Scottish Parliament is equality of access both to parliamentarians and the process of law making. This openness must be preserved for everyone. We support the goal of increasing transparency and feel that a register of lobbying organisations (as opposed to individuals) would be a straightforward way to keep a comprehensive list of who is engaging in lobbying activity across Scotland.
We do not however, support the proposed method of reporting activity and believe that the process of each individual submitting a 6 monthly return would be ineffective, overly burdensome and unnecessary.

We believe the best way to achieve transparency would be through the publication of MSP diaries on a monthly basis via the Scottish Parliament website. This would capture the same information in a more consistent way but be less complex. It seems appropriate that the burden of disclosure should be with the elected members.

We fear that compliance to new regulation may detract from the critical business of providing direct support to our clients, lobbying and engaging productively with elected members and may even preclude some people/organisations from becoming involved with the Scottish Parliament. Above all else legislation must, if introduced, ensure that access and openness are maintained and the barrier to entry is not too high. Compliance with new legislation should not hinder genuine and legitimate engagement or prohibit smaller organisations or those with greater restrictions on their resources.

Our response to this consultation is primarily from our own perspective as a third sector organisation with an in-house policy and public affairs team but who have a range of staff who engage with parliamentarians. We do believe however that in the interest of fairness, any regulation brought in by forthcoming legislation should treat all lobbyists in the same way regardless of sector or role.

If legislation is taken forward then there are many specific issues that would need to be addressed and further consultation would be necessary. It would also be necessary to 'launch' any new legislation with an awareness campaign alerting all those implicated of the new duties on them and making information and guidance widely available.