The select committee that is examining the draft lobbying bill which has raised hackles throughout the voluntary sector, said yesterday that it had only received submissions from two charities so far and that more should send in evidence for MPs to look at.

Graham Allen, chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, told yesterday’s session on the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill that the committee hadn’t exactly been “inundated” with charities’ concerns.

Only the NCVO and Action for Children had submitted evidence so far, he said.

NCVO’s head of public policy, Karl Wilding, who gave evidence at the hearing, pointed out that the letter sent to minister for political and constitutional reform, Chloe Smith, outlining the sector’s concerns about the bill, had been signed by 200 charities and umbrella bodies – signalling the degree of unease within the sector.

The bill is due to have its second reading in the House of Commons on 3 September.

Charities are particularly worried about the government’s plans to make it a criminal offence for charities and other non-political parties to spend more than £390,000 on campaigns affecting European, national and local elections. NCVO has already warned that the bill’s definition of election campaigning is so wide that ordinary charity activities could be caught by it and therefore outlawed.

The Electoral Commission echoed some of the sector's concerns in its own submission to the Committee.  It wrote:  "The bill creates significant regulatory uncertainty for large and small organisations that campaign on, or even discuss, public policy issues in the year before the next general election, and imposes significant new burdens on such organisations."