Clause 3
Charities Bill [Lords]
4:45 pm
Andrew Turner (Shadow Minister (Charities), Home Affairs; Isle of Wight, Conservative)
I cannot judge the size of the mountain, but we should remember that those charities that do not have to register are still obliged to demonstrate public benefit. As for the small charities, if I give money to the Isle of Wight bat hospital, I know where that money is going, because I can go to that hospital and see the bats; the same is the case for the Isle of Wight Steam Railway Co. There is a difference between a small, local charity and a large charity that requires auditors, business plans and goodness knows what.
I remind the Committee what happens when a charity is not delivering public benefit; that is particularly significant to an educational charity. The document from which I quoted earlier, “Public Benefit—the Charity Commission’s approach”, sets out what happens then. It states:
“our action might include helping the charity change its stated purposes or its activities so that it is benefiting enough of the public to show public benefit”—
that is fine—
“We might also use our regulatory powers to enforce change if the trustees are not co-operating with us, although we anticipate we would need to do this in only in a few cases.”
That, too, is excellent.
“However, in extreme cases, where the trustees are co-operating with us but the organisation simply cannot in all the circumstances provide public benefit, our action might include removing the charity from the register and making a legal scheme where necessary to ensure that any charitable assets of the organisation will in the future be applied for other charitable purposes close to any purposes that have ceased to be charitable.”
That suggests that there are some activities that will cease to be deemed charitable, and that the charities concerned will therefore lose their assets. I am worried principally that the abolition of the presumption of public benefit will put an additional burden on charities and on the Charity Commission that they are ill placed to meet.