I beg to move amendment 34, page 14, line 4, leave out ‘in cash’.

This amendment allows for gifts made by contactless cash card and mobile telephone transactions where it is impractical to obtain a gift aid declaration.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 35, page 14, line 5, leave out ‘of cash’.

Consequential on amendment 34.

Amendment 36, page 14, line 9, leave out ‘“cash” means coins and notes in any currency’.

Consequential on amendment 34.

Amendment 22, page 14, leave out line 9 and insert—

‘“cash” means coins, notes, cheques and money donated electronically in any currency.’.

This amendment seeks to include non-cash donations within the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme.

Amendment 2, page 14, line 9, after ‘currency’, insert ‘and any equivalent electronic payment as may from time to time be prescribed by the Treasury by order.’.

To future proof the Bill by enabling the Treasury to allow electronic payments to be treated as allowable donations.

Amendment 37, page 14, line 16, leave out ‘cash’ and insert ‘gift’.

Consequential on amendment 34.

The last time the House debated the Bill, I raised the challenge of new ways of donating to charity. The purpose of the amendment is to take account of changes in the way people donate to charities, recognising the sea change that has occurred over the past 10 years or so in how they donate and the fact that people increasingly donate small amounts through text message giving. The technology driving us in that direction is developing rapidly. Conversely, and perhaps somewhat paradoxically, the amendment would also allow charities to benefit more from small donations made by cheque.

The thinking behind the amendment is derived from work done by the Institute of Fundraising. In a previous life, when I worked in the charity sector, I worked closely with the institute and so pay tribute to the immensely valuable research it undertakes to understand how and why people support charities in order to promote good charity governance and support large and small voluntary sector organisations alike.

The reality is that technological developments, especially with smart phones and tablets, mean that the number of electronic cashless donation options is growing. For instance, I am sure that many of us watched and donated to the BBC’s “Children in Need” appeal a couple of weeks ago, many of us doing so through text message donations. The use of mobile phones as cashless wallets is growing, and I think that the Bill would benefit by reflecting that. UK high street banks are already working on a mobile payments scheme to create a common infrastructure to link bank accounts to mobile phone numbers. That will help keep account details more secure, but it also heralds further changes in how we conduct transactions, including charitable donations.

There are now more than 30 million contactless cash cards in circulation, contactless functionality is now available on an increasing number of mobile phones, and 68 national retailers are already live with contactless payments, including the Post Office, Marks and Spencer and W.H. Smith. There are 135,000 terminals across the UK where donations can be made. I have to confess that I personally have not yet caught up with this technology beyond automatic top-ups for my Oyster card. However, I am aware that the Cabinet Office is working with the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts to explore the possibility of using Oyster cards for spontaneous charitable giving through the “Chip In” project. We should encourage this kind of small electronic donation, as it has significant advantages over bucket-rattling. These donations are a lot more secure, they are significantly more auditable, and they are substantially less susceptible to fraud, particularly the small-scale fraud that has always been a risk associated with spontaneous cash donations. The upper limit of payments by contactless cash cards is currently £20, which would potentially provide a nice compliance with the Bill.

Another aspect is online transactions, which continue to grow. Between 2007 and 2012, the number of adults buying goods online increased by 9 million to 37.6 million —74% of the UK population. It would be valuable for the Bill more overtly to keep pace with these significant changes in behaviour. The Government’s impact assessment for the Bill suggests that current text giving systems make it easy to comply with the gift aid scheme, but I am not convinced that this is borne out by the evidence. Fundraisers say that only 20% to 25% of donors properly complete gift aid declarations for text donations, but some charities report that the figure is as low as 5%. That compares with 85% of sign-ups for online donations.

The Institute of Fundraising points out that when a text donation has been made the provider usually sends a bounce-back text message with a link to a website page that the donor needs to visit to make a declaration. This is because the donor needs to complete their full name and address and to provide a declaration statement, which is a rather long thing to include in a text message. We do not have typical texting rates across the sector because providers do not give that information, but we do know that charities that have spoken out on the issue are concerned about the amount that they lose through people not completing this rather cumbersome bureaucratic process. Nevertheless, those forms of giving are auditable and would fit quite closely with the spirit of the Bill with regard to cash donations in recognising that, as time moves on, more and more of us are using different forms of contactless payments to make donations.

JustTextGiving does not give people’s phone numbers to charities, so if someone does not respond to the initial text bounce-back there is no other way for the charity to get the donation, and declaration rates therefore remain very low. Where charities get the details, they will typically call the donor back if they have not had a response to the bounce-back. However, we have to bear in mind that if it is a mobile number, it might be a fairly expensive phone call, and if the donation has been only the £1 that the donor would otherwise have thrown in the bucket, we have to measure the cost-effectiveness of that relative to the amount of gift aid that might come back. This only really works for higher value donations.

In its evidence to the Committee, Camphill Scotland said that as a charitable organisation it frequently uses the newer methods of collection, and that it was keen that the Bill should start to explore the possibility of new ways of enabling donations by text messages. It went so far as to say that

“the Bill as drafted would either discriminate against those choosing to use this technology, or discourage charities from making use of this technology.”

My amendment—this is somewhat ironic—would also cover small donations made by cheque. Very often, cheque donations are made by donors who are already known to a charity, but cheques handed over at one-off fundraising events or plate collections at funerals, for example, might not be so easy to identify, and it might not be worth the administrative costs of chasing up the donor. In some circumstances, filling in the gift aid declaration is a time-consuming process, and therefore not something that everyone will be able to do.

Another reason why the amendment would strengthen the Bill is that younger people have different giving habits from other parts of the population. The Charities Aid Foundation, with Bristol university, commissioned a report entitled, “Mind the Gap—The growing generational divide in charitable giving”, published in September 2012, which identified a widening gap in giving between the over-60s and under-30s. Of course, many young people do give very generously to charity and are very involved in charitable activities, but a lower proportion of younger people are giving than older people. Making electronic giving more relevant and attractive could be one way to help to reverse this decline.

Reputational risk is one of the greatest threats to charitable giving. A failure by one charity is felt by other charities in the same sector. While collection cans still have a valuable part to play and are a very effective means of raising money quickly, they carry an inherent susceptibility to fraud. Electronic giving diminishes the opportunity for money to go astray. It is a win-win situation. The amendment would strengthen the Bill, increase the benefits to charities, and help legislation to keep pace with the accelerating changes in technologies. I therefore commend it to the House.

I support many of the points made by Dr Whiteford. I am trying to achieve a similar end result with amendment 2. Having recognised that the Government have some problems, I tried to find a way of future-proofing the Bill so that in a couple of years’ time, when they saw the trend for cashless donation going beyond even what the hon. Lady set out, they could introduce an order to allow electronic donations to count for these purposes.

We have to be careful. The world is moving on. Only a few weeks ago, my credit card company sent me a strange thing that I can stick on the back of my mobile phone. Apparently, I can make payments with it. I have to say that I was not quite ready to go that far. I thought, “What happens if I lose my mobile phone? I will not only have lost all my contact details but my credit card as well.” However, we can see that this direction of travel is with us. I suspect that in many ways the Treasury is quite keen for us all to become even more cashless. Tax avoidance is made much harder if everyone starts to make payments by an electronic traceable means rather than through cash. The UK is the EU nation with the highest propensity to use cashless technologies, and I think that that trend will continue.

In its evidence to the Committee, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution said that it was not yet ready to replace its cash collecting tins with electronic swiping points. I accept that. However, I suspect that in a few years’ time that system will become rather more common and people will be out there with a placard saying, “Swipe your card here and donate a fiver to this charity.” We heard ideas about how people could swipe their Oyster cards to make small donations and how that might help Transport for London to get fundraisers off its stations. I gave the example of how an Oyster card that someone had finished using and that had some cash left on it could be used to donate to the Railway Children charity. At the moment, there is no way in which such a donation could be traced to see whether the donor was willing to give gift aid.

The Minister argued in Committee that there is no need to take account of that type of giving because it is not that widely used and, where it is, it is still easier to get a gift aid declaration. I am not sure that that argument will stand firm in the next couple of years. We will start to move towards that type of giving and people will see it as an alternative to the quick cash donation. They will think, “I’ll swipe my card and give you £1, £2 or £5, and I don’t fancy stopping to fill out a gift aid form any more than I do with cash. I don’t fancy having some e-mail come from my card provider saying, ‘If you click here you can have gift aid on that.’” We need to try to future-proof the Bill so that in two or three years’ time we are not faced with charities moaning and saying, “Look, we’re getting more and more donations by some electronic means that we can’t use to claim gift aid. Can’t you change the Act?”

I have tried to find an easy compromise for the Minister and to assuage his concerns that this is perhaps too risky, not popular enough, or not needed. I suspect that it is quite unusual for a Back Bencher to offer a Minister the power to make a change in law by order. Usually Back Benchers—I am one of them—say, “I’m a bit concerned that the Government are taking too much power to change this, and we don’t want them to have that power.” Today, I am offering the Minister a power. He does not have to use it now, this year or next year, but at some point, if this became something that would help charities and fit with the aims of the scheme, he would have a nice simplified method of making the change without needing to come back to the House with primary legislation. He has already tabled amendments to give the Treasury powers to change things by order, and none of us had a problem with that. My amendment is a gentle, helpful one, and I commend it to the House.

Many of us who served on the Bill Committee or listened to the Second Reading debate and have heard the representations made by the charitable sector have a degree of sympathy with the comments made by Dr Whiteford and Nigel Mills, particularly in relation to ensuring that the Bill does not become out of date before it gets under way.

The hon. Lady made some powerful arguments. Indeed, her case is reflected in our amendment 22, which relates to some of the difficulties involved in getting information from those who have made donations by means other than cheques, such as JustTextGiving, or—this issue was raised a number of times in Committee—if they have placed a cheque on a plate or in a collection box at an event such as a funeral.

We had hoped that the Minister would give an indication—he may well do so—that he would at least be minded to consider this proposal at some point in the future. I understand that there may be technical reasons against that at present and that the Cabinet Office is engaged in ongoing work on the different methods of making donations and on following up on gift aid. Although I support the principles of amendment 34 and want action to be taken—that is why we have tabled our own amendment on the issue—I understand that there may be some difficulties. It would be odd, however, if the Minister said that at no point would he consider moving in the direction suggested, particularly when the Cabinet Office is engaged in those schemes.

I hope that the Minister will be able to comfort us by saying that he will consider the proposal at some stage. I also hope that the order-making powers that the Government will adopt under the Bill could, if necessary, be utilised at some stage to extend the way in which donations can be made. It seemed odd during Committee that, while someone can donate using whatever currency they choose, donations by electronic means do not count.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. I hope that he will take account of the persuasive case that has been made and that he will take a further look at the proposals in the amendments tabled by the hon. Lady and in my amendment 22.

I thank Cathy Jamieson for her comments, and I also thank Dr Whiteford and my hon. Friend Nigel Mills for their contributions. I will try to respond to their points, which they made very well.

The amendments would do slightly different things, but, in general, they all seek to broaden the gift aid small donations scheme to include not only cash donations, but donations in the form of electronic payments. Amendment 2 seeks to do that by introducing a power to allow the Treasury, by order, to broaden the scheme, whereas amendment 22 and the group of amendments 34 to 37 seek to expand the scope of the scheme immediately. I thank my hon. Friend for his original amendment on the issue and for all his contributions on this particular topic in Committee.

It might be worth reminding Members of the scheme’s primary objective, which is to provide a gift aid-style top-up payment when it is difficult or unduly burdensome to collect a gift aid declaration from the donor. The most obvious examples are when a charity is making a street collection or when a religious group is passing around a collection plate during a service. In such situations it would be difficult to ask everybody who makes a contribution to fill out a gift aid declaration form. They would have to stop, confirm they were a UK taxpayer and then fill in a form with their name, address and other details. I think we would all agree that that would be unrealistic for a donation of just a few pounds. As a result, charities are missing out on potential gift aid on such donations. That is exactly why the gift aid small donations scheme is being introduced—that is what it is designed to tackle. It will fill the gap in gift aid for donations for which it is difficult or unduly burdensome to collect the necessary paperwork.

Giving by using digital technology means that the donor is already providing some or all of their details to the charity. If any extra information is needed to make a gift aid declaration, it will be relatively small. When a charity has an ongoing relationship with a donor, they should use gift aid, if at all possible. Compared with a bucket collection on a busy street, it is considerably less burdensome to ask someone to provide their details if they are donating through a website or a text message. It is easy to use gift aid when making a donation through a website and it is also possible to attach gift aid donations to a text message.

I want to sound a note of caution about complexity. Text messages and internet donations can be made from anywhere in the world, but I hope Members will agree that the UK Government should not make a top-up payment on donations made from outside the UK unless there is firm evidence that the donor is a UK taxpayer or resident. Introducing other forms of giving to the small donations scheme would make it more complicated. In order to make a top-up payment on UK donations only, charities would need to keep records of the donation’s origin. That is comparatively straightforward when rattling a tin on a UK high street, but it would become much more burdensome, if not impossible, for some charities if donations were made through texts and website visits from around the world.

Hon. Members mentioned the possibility of making the gift aid system easier via text giving. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun will be aware that the Government are in discussions with a number of charities and their representative organisations about how we can do just that. The discussions are going very well and have been constructive. The Government are open to the possibility that, eventually, we might have to pass legislation to make the gift aid system easier and we are working with charities to try to achieve that.

It is possible that new forms of electronic giving will be developed in the future that are completely anonymous. Indeed, my hon. Friend mentioned the possibility of using Oyster cards, which are anonymous. It is very early at this stage, however, to understand what technology might come along in a few years’ time, so it would be difficult to set out the circumstances in which the power he proposed could be used. Without complete knowledge of Oyster cards or other developing technologies for giving, it is difficult to know whether they would fall under the scheme’s scope and rationale. It is, therefore, possible that the power could never be used.

I understand my hon. Friend’s concerns and he has made some important points, so I want a review of the forms of giving to be undertaken when we review the scheme after its first three years. If people are able to make completely anonymous electronic donations, we shall look again at whether the scope of the scheme should be extended. That is the Government’s commitment.

It is harder for charities to collect gift aid declarations in the street or at a religious meeting than through other channels. That is why the focus of the scheme is on cash donations. I accept that things may change, so I am committing the Government to review the situation after three years. I therefore ask hon. Members not to press their amendments to a Division.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I am sure that you will be as pleased as other Members to hear that I do not intend to detain the House for long.

We have heard a few contributions on this group of amendments. Nigel Mills was on the same page as me in looking to the future and in considering ways of giving that are already developing in the charitable sector. Cathy Jamieson alluded to some of the technical challenges that the proposals might meet and pressed the Minister on amendment 22, which she tabled.

I have listened carefully to the Minister and heard his commitment to review the forms of giving after three years. I am sorry that he did not go further, but I do not intend to press the amendment on the basis that there will be an opportunity for the “Chip-in” pilot scheme to be evaluated. I suspect that the technology will have moved far beyond that by the time of the review. I urge him to recognise the technological advances in giving that have already taken place.

Making a £1 text donation is like throwing a pound in a bucket. That is how we will give in the future. It will provide a better way for charities to create an audit trail. We do not know whether the people who give to someone who is shaking a bucket are taxpayers. Many of them may not be for one reason or another, whether they be pensioners or overseas students. In the same way, people making text donations may or may not be taxpayers, but I am sure that it is not beyond the wit of humanity to work out where the phones are or where the numbers are registered. Just as we are allowing this scheme to work in a proportionate way for cash donations that are collected in a bucket, we should respect the spirit of the Bill for contactless payments.

I look forward to the review in three years and hope that the Minister will take those points on board. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Third Reading

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

It is a pleasure to move the Third Reading of the Bill. It has been many months in development through consultation, drafting and a fair amount of discussion in Parliament. In a way, I am sad to say goodbye as it heads off to another place, subject of course to Members’ support for its Third Reading.

I am sure that everyone will agree that the Bill leaves the Commons in good shape. We have considered a lot of amendments and the Government have introduced amendments where we have agreed that there was room for improvement. Not only have we introduced the amendments that Members have accepted today on reducing the eligibility period to two years and lowering the matching rate to 10%, but we were active in Committee as well. We have listened to the concerns of charities and Members, and have brought forward a number of amendments to reflect them.

I am pleased that the Bill has reached this stage and that we are able to move towards the introduction of the gift aid small donations scheme, for which the Bill provides the legislative framework. The scheme was announced as part of a significant package of measures in Budget 2011 to encourage charitable giving and philanthropy by donors from all walks of life, from the largest donors to those who give small amounts to charity bucket collections.

The gift aid small donations scheme is at the heart of that package. Its purpose is to enable charities and community amateur sports clubs to claim a gift aid-style payment on small donations of up to £20, for which it is often difficult to obtain a gift aid declaration. Eligible charities and CASCs will be able to claim top-up payments on up to £5,000 of small donations each year. The scheme does not require individual donors to complete a gift aid declaration, nor does it require the charity or CASC to collect and provide the donor’s details with their repayment claim, as under gift aid. The aim of the scheme is to complement gift aid, not to replace it. It is for donations for which a gift aid declaration is too difficult to collect.

Tax reliefs for charities and charitable giving are an important source of income for charities, totalling more than £3 billion a year. Gift aid is the single largest relief and is worth more than £1 billion a year to charities. We estimate that the gift aid small donations scheme could result in additional Government funding of about £100 million a year for charities and CASCs. That represents a significant boost in income for the sector and will be especially valuable to smaller charities.

We have worked closely with the charitable sector to try to get the scheme right. Concerns have been raised on the details of the Bill, and we have debated those points throughout the Bill’s different parliamentary stages. In developing the scheme, we have had to ensure that it operates as fairly as possible, but we have also had to ensure that it remains affordable and protected against fraud. We want the money to go to real charities that do good work, and not to fraudsters and others who would try to abuse the scheme.

That is why we have introduced safeguards—the community buildings rule is one such feature of the Bill. We want to ensure that charities that do similar work at a local level but have different historical structures get allowances under the scheme that are not hundreds or even thousands of times different from one another. That is why we have introduced the community buildings rule. The charity sector has raised concerns about the complexity of the rule. It is true that, to obtain a simple result, we have needed to introduce detailed rules, but I am sure hon. Members will agree that that is preferable to disadvantaging some charities just because of how they have been set up.

In conclusion, the Bill represents a potentially significant new opportunity for charities and CASCs. When it is up and running, it will give them a new stream of income and provide £100 million of new funding to the sector. It therefore represents an important part of our strategy to support charitable giving across the board.

I thank the Opposition and Members on both sides of the House for their support of the Bill, and for the constructive way in which they have scrutinised it. Together, we have improved the Bill. I hope hon. Members join in me in supporting this important new scheme and I commend the Bill to the House.

As the Minister has indicated, this is an important Bill. I hope the Opposition have delivered on what we undertook to do on Second Reading, in Committee and on Report. At the outset, we said that we would attempt to ensure that the Bill came out of the process in better shape, doing more to support charities than the original Bill. I do not say that to be critical of the Bill as it was introduced. The Minister came into things at that stage. He has since listened to a number of the points we have raised and introduced appropriate amendments.

The Minister said that he was sad to say goodbye to the Bill. Perhaps all members of the Bill Committee were sad when the Bill moved on. There was much agreement across the different political parties in our debates. We did not always agree—we sometimes split on party lines and we were disappointed that some of our amendments were not accepted in Committee—but we can safely say that the Bill is in better shape as it leaves the Commons. More charities will benefit more from the Bill as a result of the scrutiny. The fact that charities will benefit from an additional £100 million per annum is positive. The Minister and his team have a responsibility to ensure that the uptake is such that every penny of that money ends up in the coffers of charities and CASCs, which is where he intends it to end up—it is worth emphasising that CASCs will benefit, because we have not spoken about that in great detail and it is none the less important. The Opposition were concerned at different stages that the Minister was focused more on the potential for fraud than on the potential for take-up. We are therefore pleased at the amendments that have been made tonight. They enhance the opportunity for charities to use the Bill.

I noted that the Minister gave Dr Whiteford a strong assurance on a review. It would be churlish of me to say that I wish that some other areas would be reviewed, and I will do my best to remain positive at this stage. I welcome that commitment and I am sure that the Minister will be as good as his word when he says that all aspects of the Bill will be reviewed in order to ensure that any changes that can be made to assist charities will be undertaken.

The Bill also saw the trying of new ways to deal with legislation as it goes through Parliament. For example, explanatory statements on all the amendments were included, which was helpful to the Opposition in unlocking some of the language with which the parliamentary draftsmen deal daily. It certainly put the onus on the Opposition to ensure that we were clear about the purpose of the amendments that we tabled, so that we could summarise it in 50 words—no bad thing. We also had the public reading stage and the consultation. It took a little time to get that consultation going, and the website was perhaps not as clear or accessible as it might have been, but I am sure the Minister will want to look at that and provide feedback for colleagues in the Cabinet Office. We eventually got a lot of very good information from organisations through that process.

Several bodies engaged with us on the Bill and helped us to scrutinise it effectively and properly. They also supplied the information that we needed to table various amendments. They included the Institute of Fundraising, the Charity Finance Group, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and the Law Society of Scotland. They all gave us information and campaigned tirelessly on behalf of the constituent organisations that they represent and of the charity sector. The Charities Aid Foundation, the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action and the Foundation for Social Improvement also provided invaluable help, support and advice at various stages. Notwithstanding the efforts that the Opposition have made, the Bill is undoubtedly a better one as it leaves this place because of the input of those organisations and their commitment to do the best that they can for the charitable sector.

This is a very important Bill. It may have seemed a small Bill, but we gave it thorough scrutiny in Committee—perhaps more scrutiny than the Minister would have liked on some points of detail. As the Bill leaves this place, we can be assured that we have done our best in making representations. The Bill will make a difference to charities and perhaps changes will be made after the three-year review. I certainly hope that we will continue to look at what additional support we can give.

I thank people for their work in Committee, including the Chairs, the officials and everyone else who gave us inspiration and comments at various stages. All of the organisations in the charity sector and those who will benefit in the future will be glad of the amount of effort that has been put into the Bill. I am happy to support Third Reading and to join the Minister in commending it to the House.

The process of the Bill from start to finish, including the pre-legislative stage—as my hon. Friend Cathy Jamieson mentioned—was very important. It is good to see that things can change. We sometimes become very rigid in this place—people take up positions and then cannot dig themselves out very easily without feeling a loss of face. A lot of improvements have been made, although some issues remain. The following may or may not prove to be the case; we will see how it works out in practice. During the pre-legislative scrutiny we attempted to grapple with the imbalance between organisations, whether national or regional in scope, which operate in such a way that each of their branches is a separate charity, and those which do not operate as a separate charity. Clearly, the Government listened to the concerns expressed, particularly by some churches, and made important changes. The by-product is a remaining complexity and an obstacle for organisations that cannot quite fit themselves into the model that has been adopted.

I hope that the ongoing review that the Minister at various times assured us will take place—regardless of whether there is a formal review built in for certain parts of the Bill—will look carefully at whether that model can be modified. It is genuinely difficult for some organisations to meet the requirements on where the money has to be collected and the reference to community buildings—linking not only where the collection takes place, but where the charitable activity takes place. There are numerous examples of organisations that do not fit into the model that has been adopted. It clearly fits the church model, where the charitable purpose takes place at precisely the same time as the donations—the collection—but constituent elements or branches of other charities that cannot fit that model may still be unable to take advantage of the provisions, even though they are collecting money and making exactly the kind of efforts that the Bill is designed to encourage.

Even though Opposition amendments and our suggestion of a clear review process have not been accepted by the Government—of course, it depends on what happens to the Bill in the other place; further amendments and suggestions may be made about how some obstacles could be smoothed further and ironed out—I hope that some of these issues will be looked at in coming years to ensure that the Bill does what we all say we want it to do and allows small charities, which take fairly low levels of collections that are critical to their operation, to be able to take advantage of it.

I have been following the Bill with great interest, as have my constituents. It is a pleasure to be here for the Third Reading of one of Her Majesty’s Government’s most progressive measures. I look forward to its being passed from this House imminently.

The most generous people are often those with the least means. If we look at the income distribution of people who give charitable donations, we see that those who give the largest proportion of their income are the poorest. It is unfair that those who are the richest should get the biggest tax break, as it were, in the Government top-up on their donation through gift aid and by the myriad other schemes that we have discussed in this Chamber in the past year, and that people who might give £20 or £15, which would be much more than £50,000 to a rich person, should receive less of an advantage. The Bill, therefore, is a progressive and forward-looking reform of tax legislation, which will help give the same benefit to people who give little amounts of money, which for them is a great deal, as to those who might give a lot and not think so greatly about it.

The Bill is not just good for small donors; it is also good for small charities. In all our constituencies, the people who really pull our communities together are those in the small charities, whether they be churches or charitable groups looking after the disabled, the sick or children. The Bill will make a real difference to those charities, not only because they will get more money from the Government, but because it will help bind them to their donors and, importantly, facilitate the sense of community that arises when people give what they can both in time and small amounts of money. It will help to build communities and make them better places. For that reason, I support the Third Reading of this fantastic Bill put forward by Her Majesty’s Government.

Question put and agreed to .

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.