UK Parliament / Open data

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

My Lords, I add my support for the amendment. Orwell has been mentioned, and I have mentioned Kafka—but now I shall give a more homely sort of picture. One of the children says, “Mummy, what does Daddy actually do?” and Mummy replies, “Well, he’s an assurer.” I think that after that Mummy might have a bit of difficulty and wonder whether she had actually answered the question.

Let me apply the provision to electoral rolls. This is one of those phantom tasks on which you could expend the whole resources of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and still not solve the problem. The Minister has said that there is a problem with churning, and people moving house and so on, so we are to have more of the Central Committee investigatory branch investigating and then doing something about it. I do not know what it would be able to do if it is true that the rationale for the action, and the analysis of why there is a problem, is the changing nature of the economy and the churning of people in the trade unions. When would you have won the game? If that is the analysis you can never win the game. To use a different metaphor, you can always move the goalposts.

I hope that the Cross-Benchers in their massed ranks, between now and Christmas or a bit after, will be able to decide whether we are right or whether the Government are right in this way of stating, or inventing, a problem and begging the question to which there is not an answer as there cannot be an answer to the problem as stated.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
749 c555 
Session
2013-14
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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