Clause 6
Charities Bill [Lords]
5:30 pm
Andrew Turner (Shadow Minister (Charities), Home Affairs; Isle of Wight, Conservative)
I was about to confess as much, Mr. Gale. It was defective. None the less, this is the clause on which we debate the accountability of the Charity Commission. On Second Reading, the Parliamentary Secretary, kindly said:
“Labour Members are sympathetic to the notion that there needs to be rigorous Select Committee scrutiny of the work of the Charity Commission. The Home Affairs Committee has a lot on its plate.”—[Official Report, 26 June 2006; Vol. 448, c. 98.]
The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound) then intervened and took him down a completely different avenue, so the Parliamentary Secretary was unable to say what I anticipated: that he accepted that it was a jolly good suggestion, and that he would incorporate it into the Bill forthwith, by means of an amendment of his own. He did not have the opportunity to do that, but I give him that opportunity now.
A number of representations have been made that there should be parliamentary scrutiny of the Charity Commission. The Joint Committee said, at paragraph 181:
“The other side of independence from Government is that the Commission should be accountable to Parliament. We were concerned that more needs to be done in this regard. There seems to us to be an ‘accountability gap’.’
Paragraph 186 went on to
“recommend that the Home Affairs Select Committee have an annual evidence session with the Charity Commission.”
The Joint Committee made further recommendations, too. I support that recommendation; indeed, I went slightly further, and proposed specifically—