Clause 15
Charities Bill [Lords]
11:30 am
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman makes my point. If he will be a little more patient, I shall come on to that.
As I say, one set of circumstances is where a gift was given a long time ago on a very narrow definition that no longer applies. The other set of circumstances in which there may be restricted funds that are now difficult to use is where money was raised for a particular piece of work and that piece of work has been completed, but it was not as expensive as anticipated, so some of the restricted funds remain.
I must apologise, Mr. Gale, as my spidery handwriting was slightly misinterpreted. In fact, I intended that amendment No. 134 should read “when the work for which the gift was made has already been completed”, not
“whether or not the work for which the gift was made has already been completed.”
In the cases where the restriction is so tight that the money can no longer be used for the purpose for which it was originally intended, money is sitting in the bank. That is obviously wasteful and it sometimes means that voluntary sector organisations raise extra money to do new pieces of work that they would not need to raise if they had greater flexibility.