New Clause 10
Charities Bill [Lords]
3:00 pm
Edward Miliband (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Cabinet Office; Doncaster North, Labour)
The new clause is about delegation, some of which I suspect has already taken place from Lord Phillips to the hon. Gentleman.
The first subsection of the new clause is unnecessary, because the law already allows charity trustees to delegate appropriately. The Charity Commission’s publication “The Essential Trustee: What You Need to Know” puts it like this:
“Trustees can generally delegate certain powers to agents or employees, but will and must always retain the ultimate responsibility for running the charity.”
In the context of section 36 of the 1993 Act, it means that in practice, trustees must personally make the initial decision to sell a property and the final decision to sell it on particular terms. In between, the trustees may and routinely do delegate the administration of the sale to their staff. That balance is right.
The second subsection of the new clause would remove important safeguards on sales of property worth less than £500,000. Since the hon. Gentleman appears to want to allow charities to sell their property without having it properly valued, one wonders how they will know how much it is worth in the first place. However, the serious point is that although he, as the beneficial owner of his own house, is free to sell it at whatever price he likes, the trustees of a charity do not have similar freedom. They must obtain and consider a written report from a qualified surveyor, and they are under a duty to dispose of their land only on the best terms.
The objection to the new clause is that essentially the duties on trustees to take expert advice and to sell only on the best terms reasonably obtainable should not be disapplied as the new clause suggests. They are important safeguards for the disposition of charity lands. However, I have a piece of good news. I understand the amendment’s deregulatory intent, and I undertake to review the regulations that set out what a surveyor’s report must contain. They were made in 1992 and may be seen as over-prescriptive, especially for smaller sales. Our review would aim to reduce the level of detailed prescription in the regulations.