Schedule 1
Charities Bill [Lords]
6:00 pm
Martin Horwood (Shadow Minister (Environment), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Cheltenham, Liberal Democrat)
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s great experience in the voluntary sector. The joke is beginning to wear a little bit thin, though, as we have now heard it four times during this debate, and I am not sure that it was entirely fair the first time, let alone the fifth or sixth.
The hon. Gentleman is correct up to a point, but I am not sure that it is always automatic that such an exalted body as the Charity Commission will necessarily represent the interests of users and beneficiaries. It is sensible and almost inevitable that it will represent people who know how to run a charity. Such people might be in the old mould and represent, if I might use a slightly pejorative phrase, the rather patronising traditional approach to charity as something done to people rather than something shared with people that empowers them.
We are moving toward a different understanding of charity that is about empowerment and giving the users and beneficiaries of charities the right to some say in how those charities are run. That is the kind of change that I am seeking to effect.