I beg to move amendment 31, in clause 9, page 6, line 19, at end add—

(a) The Treasury must, within 24 months of this Act coming into force, prepare a report assessing the impact of the community buildings provisions on the ability of charities to benefit from the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme and lay it before the House of Commons’.

This amendment seeks to require the Treasury to assess and report to the House of Commons on the impact of the community buildings provisions on the ability of charities to benefit from the GASDS within two years of the Act coming into force.

I noted during the last discussion that the hon. Member for Congleton was speaking in the very important debate in the Chamber. I am sure that she will be pleased that Opposition Members represented her position in her absence and that the Minister seemed to take account of that.

With amendment 31, I want to refer to a number of the general points that the Minister has already raised in the course of debate. This is a simple amendment. It would add at the end of clause 9 a new subsection (8)(a). I would be tempted simply to refer hon. Members back to a number of the points that the Minister made today when he talked about and understood the complexity of the scheme and gave us assurances that guidance will be drawn up and that HMRC will work on producing more documentation and ensuring that, as he wishes, every charity has the opportunity to benefit. However, we have also heard a number of very legitimate concerns from hon. Members, particularly about the impact on charities of the community buildings provisions. That has been one of the areas that charities have had most concern about.

Without wishing to repeat all the detail of the earlier discussion, I remind hon. Members that there were suggestions from the charitable sector that this whole aspect of the Bill should be taken away—struck out—completely redesigned and brought back in a different form so that it more usefully or perhaps more perfectly fitted the good intentions of the Government and caused less confusion. As I said earlier, we chose not to do that. We have tabled a number of amendments to probe the Government’s intentions. We heard some warm words from the Minister. We did also hear some clarification from him about what he intends. Some of the newspapers have been suggesting in the past week or so that he may not be long for this job but may be moving on to greater things in the Treasury. Who knows? But we do want to take up the Minister’s point that whoever was doing this role in the Treasury would of course want to follow up on the commitments that he has made today to review the overall operation of the Bill.

I think that the Minister did indicate that he would, after three years, be willing to look at all this, although he does not want to see anything in the Bill. Again, I understand why he will be getting all sorts of advice not to put something in the Bill—it is not necessary and so on. I would have hoped that, as a concession and as a signal to the wider world that he is indeed listening, he would at least give serious thought to accepting this amendment on the community buildings provisions, because it would mean not having to wait for the three-year point, when the overall operation of the Bill would be examined. I am talking about the connected charities provisions, the levels of the top-up itself and all the other aspects of the Bill that people have raised concerns about. This amendment specifically focuses on the point two years into the operation of the Bill as the point at which to look very particularly at the  community buildings provisions. I shall explain the opportunity that that would give us, should the Minister choose to accept the amendment.

From day one, the operation of the community buildings provisions would be under scrutiny. There would be an opportunity not just to have a working group to look at drawing up the rules and regulations in the first place, but to have ongoing meetings with charities or to review things with the charitable sector and to have something formal at the end of two years that could then make recommendations on whether further changes were required. It could examine how the provisions had operated in practice. There would be an opportunity to feed into further deliberations and discussions in relation to the overall operation of the Bill when the three-year point was reached.

If the Minister was minded to accept the amendment, we would of course want to be helpful. We have already identified a number of areas on which he might focus attention. Does the definition of community building fit the real world, or can some amendments be made? There is also the serious issue around provisions on the residential sector. I welcome his warm words about hospices and so on, but if HMRC came up with something where we had not quite got the wording of the Bill right to meet his intent, I want to be sure that we could do something about it.

My fear when reviewing legislation is that we may have the best of intentions but another Bill, another Minister—maybe another Government—may come along before this legislation is reviewed. Given that he accepted the complexity, that there is more work to do, and that he wants powers in the Bill to allow him to use secondary legislation to make the changes, all I ask of him is to include the amendment to ensure that a review is undertaken and, importantly, laid before the House of Commons. We on the Committee have got into the fine detail and followed it all the way through but other hon. Members, when in discussion with the charitable sector, may later find examples in their constituencies that raise problems and issues. They will want a way to focus on that.

Rather than wait two years and then decide to do something, I would like to see the Minister, with the resources at his disposal, monitor this and bring forward that report in 24 months after the Bill has been put into operation. I sincerely hope that he will understand that the proposal is made with the best of intentions to represent the concerns and issues raised by the charitable sector. I look forward to his response.

Amendment 31 seems to arise from concern about the impact of the community building rules on charities. We have had quite a few stimulating debates on those rules today. I am sure that hon. Members will be glad to hear me set out again the rationale for the community building rules. The purpose of the small donations scheme is to enable every charity to claim a top-up payment of up to £5,000 of small donations.

We have brought in the community building rules to help prevent the worst unfairness that could result between charities doing similar things where one charity is structured differently from another. We decided that we would introduce a way for the charities worst affected to be able to claim allowances at local group level.

I understand that, having seen the opportunities offered for extra top-up payments, other charities would like extra top-up payments. However, as I have explained, we have to draw a line somewhere and we think we have drawn the line in the right place. I understand the hon. Lady’s amendment but I am not sure what it is expected to achieve. Let me explain why. It seems that she wants the Treasury to carry out an impact assessment of the community building rules 24 months after they come into force. That will mean that it will have to be done a full two years after the scheme is in place. The Treasury would have to deliver its report in a time frame to meet that two-year deadline. That would mean in practice that it will have to start preparing the report when the scheme has been operating for a year or a little more. After that time there is not much useful information that the Treasury can give.

Again, I hope to be helpful to the Minister. I understand that there is a particular way in which the Treasury tends to deal with reports, and reports are not followed and laid before the House. That may, generally speaking, apply to impact assessments. He should read the amendment carefully. It states:

“within 24 months...prepare a report assessing the impact...on the ability of charities to benefit”.

If he were so minded, it could be a fairly straightforward report that looked at gaining information from the charities, which could be done on an ongoing basis. I do not see why everything has to stop, then start again and a report be brought forward. We are genuinely trying to be helpful.

The amendment is well intentioned, but would it have much material impact and would it turn out to be so helpful? In trying to meet the deadline that the amendment would set, the information that HMRC could put together within that two-year time frame would be quite limited. We could say that after the scheme has been running for a year and a bit, X number of charities have made top-up claims, which include donations of Y pounds from Z number of community buildings. I am not sure how helpful that information, after such a short time, would be.

In the impact assessment that was published in June, the Government stated—and I have already repeated it a number of times, including during the evidence session—that we will review how the scheme is working after three years. The hon. Lady rightly pointed out that I have made a commitment as the Minister, but that Ministers change. Perhaps what she has in mind is the fact that in 2009 under the previous Government, there were three Economic Secretaries in three weeks during the course of the Finance Bill. This Government is a lot more stable.

Order. We are straying from the Bill.

Mr Robertson, I accept your guidance. The review will take into account all the provisions in the scheme once it has had time to bed in and is running normally. I fail to see what value amendment 31 would  bring to that review. It would be premature, uninformative and potentially disadvantageous to charities that would benefit from the community buildings rule to hold a review too early in the life of the scheme. I urge the hon. Lady to withdraw her amendment.

I had hoped that we would arrive at some consensus but, sadly, the third Economic Secretary to the Treasury that I have had to deal with my in my short time as shadow Minister—

Not in one week.

Perhaps not in one week, but I was going to say two in one debate.

To return to the point, which is important, my amendment sought to ensure that we did not simply pass the Bill and leave it to HMRC to go away and write the rules and regulations, albeit in the context of doing it with the charitable sector, but still effectively in isolation while all hon. Members go away and forget about the measure until a problem emerges or people from the charitable sector come to our surgeries. I wanted to encourage a different approach and to ensure that the Treasury would not wait until two years hence and then move backwards, but work with the sector and perhaps gather that information and present it to hon. Members by filing a report.

The wording of the amendment was careful, so “prepare a report” could mean a number of things, whether a few pages—simply giving the information, which the Minister feels might not be helpful—or something far wider, including information from the charities. I did not specify. Indeed, I left it to the Minister as to how to progress the proposal. I find it disappointing that he will not give any concession on some of the information being helpful or useful.

I recognise that the Minister has said some warm words about a review after three years, but it is important for the charitable sector to be involved in contributing information in any process over that period. HMRC is gathering information, preparing it, looking at it, analysing it and possibly making recommendations. Without that process, how could the Minister be apprised of what is going on in the real world and ensure that any changes he makes through secondary legislation using the powers that he wishes to take under the Bill make a difference? Simple. We want the Bill to include a way to ensure that that happens.

I am disappointed but, as we shall shortly be having a Division in the House, I will not labour the point, other than to ask the Minister to consider our amendment. There will be other opportunities to scrutinise other amendments to do with reviews and I hope that he will give them more consideration than he appears to have done on this occasion. We may come back to the issue, but at this point I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned—(Greg Hands.)

Adjourned till Tuesday 30 October at five minutes to Nine o’clock.