My Lords, this amendment and the subsequent ones, such as that carefully drafted by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, give me the opportunity of raising an issue of concern to a number of charities. Much has been said about the role of charities in respect of lobbying activities
and a number of reassuring comments have been made during early stages of this Bill. However, I am particularly concerned about the activities of all-party groups within Parliament. Many of these groups are in the medical research field and are serviced and provided with financial, secretarial and other support by charities. They are dependent on this to a considerable extent. Of course, one would say at once that if they are all-party groups and their membership includes Members of the Commons and of this House from all parties, surely they cannot be construed as lobbying in search of electoral success. That is an entirely reasonable conclusion to draw. However, there is always a possibility that a particular all-party group may be so dominated by members of one political party that its attitude to an approaching election could change quite significantly.
I want to give noble Lords an example. I speak as the life president of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign. I served on an inquiry by the All-Party Group on Muscular Dystrophy, which conducted a lengthy inquiry over a 12-month period, rather like an inquiry by one of your Lordships’ Select Committees. It took a great deal of written evidence and held public meetings to which a number of witnesses were called. The Muscular Dystrophy Campaign covered the costs, including the expenses of those giving evidence. We discovered in that inquiry that boys with the most severe form, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, who, when I started work in that field in 1950, were dying, often grossly deformed, in their teens, were now, with greatly improved care, living into their 30s and some even into their 40s in places such as Newcastle, Oxford, Queens Square in London, Oswestry and a number of other centres, with wonderful rehabilitation and respiratory support.
However, that inquiry demonstrated that in the south-west many of them were still dying in their teens. That was also true in the north-west. When we produced this report, which went to all the major health bodies across the country, and it went to the South West Strategic Health Authority, the executive director, Sir Ian Carruthers, was so shocked that it immediately put another £1 million into care for patients with muscular dystrophy and other neuromuscular diseases in that area. Mike Farrar, then the chief executive of the North West Strategic Health Authority, said that anything Ian Carruthers could do, it could do better, so it put money into those services in that area.
That was clearly lobbying with a view to improving services and influencing the activity of health service organisations. There are number of people working on that and many other charities to do with things like stroke, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, and another inquiry into Parkinson’s disease has just been conducted, demonstrating a similar unevenness of standards of care across the country. The question is whether the all-party groups serviced by these charities are at risk under the Bill. It is crucial that we have an answer from the Minister about this. Many of the charities which service the all-party groups have expressed serious concern that their activities might be adversely influenced by the provisions of the Bill.
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