Charities working to uphold democracy

The charity sector has raised concerns in recent years over a raft of government legislation and rules they fear are eroding democracy.

 

Gagging clauses in government contracts, confusing laws around election campaigning, and the introduction of voter I.D. are among the core concerns.

 

Meanwhile, public order and policing legislation has sought to restrict charities and others of the right to peacefully protest, campaigners warn.

 

Elsewhere, culture wars have seen government ministers and M.P.s seek to silence charities looking to address atrocities from the U.K.’s colonial past and their own role in the slave trade.

 

Civicus, which monitors democratic trends worldwide, put the U.K. on the same alert as Poland, Hungary, and South Africa in its 2023 State of Civil Society report.

 

According to campaigners, charities can be more effective in tackling such threats by working with other organisations to raise awareness of the importance of democracy. Such partnerships should be with other charities, across sectors and involving politicians from all parties.

 

We look in detail at the latest threats to democracy in the U.K. and what charities can do to tackle them by working in collaboration with each other and others.

 

 

Partnerships needed

 

A report released in August 2023 by campaign groups the Sheila McKechnie Foundation (S.M.F.) and Civil Exchange is calling on charities to develop stronger partnerships to protect democracy in response to cumulative threats over more than a decade to vital elements of our democracy” in the UK.

 

They urge charities to “build alliances within and beyond civil society and work with others to create a shared vision” for tackling threats to democracy”. This should encompass partnerships with a range of political parties too.

 

“It is possible to find common ground across political divides on big issues like integrity, accountability, and transparency,” adds their report, called Defending our democratic space: A Call to action.

 

A focus of these partnerships should be lobbying to encourage all political parties to “step up and commit to policies that will protect those precious aspects of U.K. democracy that enable people, and those who represent them, to have a voice and a say,” said S.M.F. Chief Executive Sue Tibballs.

 

For their report S.M.F. and Civil Exchange interviewed more than 30 charity sector representatives. “If you join up the dots between the various things that are happening, you have what amounts to a very serious threat to democracy itself,” said one respondent.

 

 

Threats to democracy

 

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 gives “extensive and unprecedented new powers” to the police to restrict protests, says S.M.F. and Civil Exchange.

 

The Public Order Act 2023 further empowers police to restrict protests “effectively criminalising certain kinds of peaceful protests”, warn campaigners. Police can ban named people from participating in demonstrations and enact protest-related stop-and-searches. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says the law is “deeply troubling”.

 

The Elections Act 2022, introduced voter I.D. despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud. An Electoral Commission study in June 2023 found 14,000 people were denied a vote, with disabled voters and those from minoritised communities disproportionately affected.

 

M.P.s in September 2023 found that it “disenfranchises more electors than it protects”. This Act also gave the government the right to direct elections regulator The Electoral Commission, which had previously been independent.

 

The Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014 (commonly known as the Lobbying Act) was introduced to clamp down on secret corporate lobbying but has created a chilling effect for charities, who are left confused as to what they are allowed to campaign on in the run up to an election.

 

A review in 2016 concluded it should be amended to exclude day to day advocacy by charities, but the government has not acted on this recommendation.

 

Since 2016, the government has introduced anti-advocacy, so-called ‘gagging clauses’ to its public service delivery contracts for charities. According to campaigners, “some aspects were subsequently softened after widespread criticism”, but “these still effectively prevent the public sector from funding charities to advise them on policies, a standard practice up to that point”.

 

Complaints made by Conservative M.P.s to the Charity Commission about charities including the National Trust and the Runnymede Trust for highlighting racism and the impact of colonialism have been “ill founded”, according to S.M.F. and Civil Exchange and subsequently rejected by the regulator. 

 

Campaigners are concerned that democratically elected M.P.s in parliament are being side tracked through the UK government limiting debates, most notably on Brexit. This included the proroguing of parliament to limit debate, which in 2019 was judged unlawful by the Supreme Court.