Clause 1
Charities Bill [Lords]
11:45 am
Tom Levitt (PPS (Rt Hon Hilary Benn, Secretary of State), Department for International Development; High Peak, Labour)
Surely, the purpose of the Bill—the biggest review of charity legislation in the past 400 years—is seen in clause 2(2) and the other provisions are subservient to it. Clause 2(2) contains a list, established through case law and other sources, that will form the definition of a charity for the Charity Commission and others to use. The value of clause 3 is that it helps to define one of the words used in clause 2(2)—“religion”—the meaning of which has changed fundamentally over the 400 years since the concept of charity law was first produced. For the first 350 or so of those years, there would have been a narrow definition of the use of the word “religion” in the common law on charities: it would have meant Christianity and nothing else.