New Clause 15
Charities Bill [Lords]
3:15 pm
Peter Bottomley (Worthing West, Conservative)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Cheltenham principle has been cited many times, but not by me; it will be now. The Bill is riddled with the substitution of the words “the commission is” for the words “the commission are”. That is Cheltenham all the way through.
I now turn to something rather more serious. I tabled the new clause very late, and so the Committee ought to know that if the Minister gives any kind of response, I do not intend to push it to a vote. Secondly, many of us have had correspondence from Benedict Birnberg, Uri Davis, Roland Rance and David Wolton. Those who have read the correspondence will know about the issue that they had in mind, but I do not think that it is appropriate for the Committee to become involved in that in any sense whatsoever.
The new clause is about human rights compliance, and I am relying quite heavily on a letter that Benedict Birnberg and his colleagues sent to the Minister, dated 26 June. I shall also be quoting from a letter sent to the Charities Bill team on 3 June. The proposed new clause
“is framed to make it clear...that English charities may not engage in activities which, were they committed by a public authority, would be inconsistent with Convention rights as defined in the Human Rights Act 1998 and to mandate”—
to require—
“the Charities Commission to investigate and take appropriate action against charities which are alleged to do so by exercising its statutory powers.”
The allegation by itself should not be sufficient. The wording of the proposed amendment by which I have been assisted was based on the advice, I am told, of a senior member of the judiciary.
The letter dated 3 June is from correspondence with the Charity Commission and the charities unit, which has now moved to the Minister’s Department from the Home Office. It has been put to Benedict Birnberg and his colleagues that existing charity law is sufficient to empower the Charity Commission to take action to deal with the abuses that were alleged when a complaint was put forward against a particular charitable trust. In fact, the petitioners, if I can put it that way, supported the view that the law was sufficient. That is why they wrote to the commission, seeking the investigation of the activities that they alleged contravened international human rights laws.
The Charity Commission rejected the complaint, taking the view that it operated within a statutory framework that precluded it from undertaking such an investigation, let alone from having the power to cause any remedial action. The petitioners considered, as they argue in the letter, that there was a gap in charity law that needed to be filled, namely the deficient powers, as they saw it, of the commission to monitor and intervene in the affairs of a UK charity alleged to be engaged in activities that would be incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998 were it to be a public authority.