Clause 51
Charities Bill [Lords]
9:00 am
Martin Horwood (Shadow Minister (Environment), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Cheltenham, Liberal Democrat)
How good it is, Mrs. Humble, to see you back in your regulatory function.
How topical can we be? I struggled last week to find a newspaper story relevant to our deliberations, but we are now discussing fundraising and the newspapers have pages on the subject. I am sure that it would be a good idea for political parties to follow the rules and self-regulation that we are discussing today in the context of charities.
Amendment Nos. 146 and 147, which are similar, relate to the way in which the Charity Commission may apply additional regulations and conditions relating to the issuing of public collections certificates. We completely support the process of issuing national certificates; it seems a good and sensible way to tackle the broader spread of public collections that the Bill puts under the commission’s remit. However, I am concerned that the commission should not get carried away when imposing those regulations or conditions.
We have discussed a number of times the risk that regulations and other provisions might be rather onerous for some charities. In my experience, large organisations would not have much of a problem with the presumably well-intentioned conditions and regulations that might relate to public collection certificates, because they tend to have professional fundraising teams with the time and expertise to look into such matters; indeed, if they are wise—or unwise—the charities might even employ fundraising consultants. The risk is that smaller or middle-sized charities might find it a little difficult; when presented with the regulations, they may begin to think that the exercise is not worth while.