Clause 70
Charities Bill [Lords]
1:15 pm
Andrew Turner (Shadow Minister (Charities), Home Affairs; Isle of Wight, Conservative)
There are two purposes to these amendments. Amendments Nos. 47 and 48 would require a degree of proportionality in the Secretary of State’s activities. I am concerned about regulation being introduced through the back door. However, it is likely that I shall accept suitable assurances from the Parliamentary Secretary in that respect.
Amendments Nos. 49 and 50 deal with how Governments—not just the present one—sometimes feel the need to set up a charitable vehicle to undertake part of their activities even though there might already be a suitable vehicle to undertake the work. The example I have in mind is the Experience Corps, the purpose of which was to encourage more people to get involved in charities, particularly people close to or beyond retirement age. I had a conversation with the director of one organisation who questioned whether her organisation would not have been equally capable of doing exactly the same job, without the establishment of an organisation that began to look like a Government vehicle rather than a genuine charity and that cost a huge amount of money.
In a parliamentary answer to me on 12 September 2005, the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Paul Goggins), then a Home Office Minister, told me that the Experience Corps
“received approximately £20 million from the Home Office”
and that its
“target was to recruit 250,000 new volunteers”.
However, as of December 2003, it had only
“recruited over 153,000 volunteers”.—[Official Report, 12 September 2005; Vol. 436, c. 2633W.]
Even my arithmetic is up to calculating that that works out at £130,000 per volunteer. Sometimes we ought to ask the Government whether they could not have acted more efficiently. That is the purpose of amendments Nos. 48 and 50.