Charities Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth, Labour)
Mrs. Humble, may I say what a pleasure it is to sit under your discipline this afternoon for the second part of my speech?
I was explaining that I have deep reservations about schedule 7. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will take away my reservations and consider amending the Bill on Report. My objection is that the schedule incorporates a pointless acronym into law. It not only incorporates it but repeats it, so that in my view those who wrote this part of the Bill are guilty of a serial offence.
It is a dreadful habit of Whitehall to turn everything into acronyms. The issue is important, because language and communication are important. An acronym can do two things: it can damage communication because the acronym label is not comprehensible and does not mean anything, and it can exclude those who are not anoraks.
Anyone who has served, as I have, at DEFRA and DTI will know that it is possible to have whole sentences that contain few words and little meaning because acronyms are used all the time. When I was given responsibility for chemicals, it took me a little time to adjust to the fact that the CIA that was referred to in the Department was the Chemical Industries Association. I think it is right to say that the Federation of British Industries changed its name to the Confederation of British Industry to escape association with an American institution. It is certainly not always clear whether one is talking about the Food Standards Agency or the Financial Services Authority when the initials FSA are used. The tin lid was put on all that for me when I heard officials describe the rural affairs forum as “the RAF”. I made the point at that stage that although the rural affairs forum was an important way of communicating with rural communities in England, we did not intend to bomb anyone into submission in the course of our deliberations.
In this Bill, which is in other ways such an excellent piece of legislation, we have the dreadful acronym habit of Whitehall being incorporated into primary legislation. It is an absolute outrage. I hope that my hon. Friend will accept my point and cleanse the Bill with amendments on Report.
Exclusive language is damaging, and we now have the initials used in schedule 7. I had something of a battle to persuade officials that community interest companies should not be called CICs, because the word CIC does not communicate anything whereas the title community interest company tells one exactly what it is. It would be simple for my hon. Friend to introduce an amendment into paragraph 1 of schedule 7, in page 114, line 30, to delete “a ‘CIO’” and to insert “an incorporated charity”. We would then all know what we meant by the term, and the label on the bottle would be clear. In the age of the computer, it cannot be claimed that typing the term “an incorporated charity” is onerous compared with using initials.
I do not want to delay the Committee on this point, but I do not believe that it is trivial. The Government have done a good job in making available different models, such as the community interest company and the incorporated charity. Those two options are available for organisations that want to pursue worthy purposes but want the protection of incorporation, apart from industrial and provident societies and the other options. To have that range of options and refer to them simply so that people can make decisions based on the best model for them to deliver the value-led outcomes that they want to achieve will be a major step forward. I hope we can take that step forward with clarity, and not with an acronym settled into primary legislation. I regard that as an outrageous proposition and the one defect in an otherwise excellent Bill. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will have sympathy for the fact that, as a Welshman, I am trying to protect the English language from this outrageous intrusion.