Clause 1
Charities Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Martin Horwood (Shadow Minister (Environment), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Cheltenham, Liberal Democrat)
Mrs. Humble, I echo the comments of the other Front-Bench spokesmen and express my gratitude for your chairmanship, which I am sure will enlighten what may in some respects be a heated debate. I congratulate the Minister on the tone of his introduction to our proceedings and on his approach to the Bill generally. It is much appreciated. Like the hon. Member for Isle of Wight, I think that, although members of the Committee will undoubtedly disagree on certain matters, the general tone of the debate will be constructive and intended to improve the quality of the Bill.
Amendment No. 70 would remove subsection (2), which seems to lock inconsistency into charity law. That raises a general issue for many charities, particularly those membership and fundraising organisations that often confer minimal benefits, such as newsletters or membership of a scheme, in return for otherwise charitable donations, and which in the past have struggled with numerous definitions of what is and what is not charitable.
For example, let us suppose that a membership organisation or another organisation wished to launch a fundraising scheme—not a formal membership drive, but a fundraising scheme that is designed to attract members and which offers in return some modest benefit, such as visits to premises or a newsletter. The mere fact that it is a charitable organisation would not in the past have been sufficient to convince the Inland Revenue or Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise that the proposed scheme was fully charitable. It would have been necessary for the charity to go through another set of hoops to satisfy the Inland Revenue and qualify for gift aid, and through another, different set of hoops to persuade Customs and Excise that it should not carry VAT.
The merger of Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue into Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs seemed to offer the prospect of ironing out that type of inconsistency. That was an encouraging sign of joined-up government, but I talked to a fundraiser the other day who said that, if anything, the situation seems to have got worse since the merger. There is clearly an issue for the Government to address, if not through the amendment then by other means, and I would be grateful for the Minister’s comments.
Amendment No.1, tabled by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight would insert:
“the promotion of the efficiency of the police service or the advancement of welfare for police officers or former police offers and their dependants;”
That is a worthy cause, which should be regarded as charitable and which deserves our complete support. My only slight reservation is that we already have 13 heads of charity. If we added everything that we can think of, we could end up with a list that is hundreds long.