Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Lord Bridges of Headley) (Con) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, the House will be aware that I am now the Minister in charge of this Bill, rather than my noble friend the right honourable Lord Taylor of Holbeach. I am grateful to him for introducing the Bill when I was unable to. I am happy to assure the House that I, too, believe that the provisions of this Bill are compatible with the convention rights and would have been content to sign the necessary statement had I been in a position to do so when the Bill was introduced.
It is with the greatest sense of honour and humility that I stand before your Lordships today, and I also put my arguments to the House with some trepidation. Some 22 years ago, I was sitting in the Gallery of your Lordships’ House watching a debate on which I had written a brief for Conservative Peers. The noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, had been passed a copy of my brief and proceeded to dismantle and shred its arguments one by one, with grace and charm, paying tribute to the brief’s author along the way. As they say in Sicily, it was nothing personal, just business. It made me realise the great contribution that this House makes to public debate by scrutinising policies and testing the arguments that underpin them. In our fast-moving world, where the digital revolution is accelerating the pace of change, the temptation to act quickly is greater than ever. Now, more than ever, we need the chance to deliberate, review and kick the tyres of policy—and that brings me to the Bill before your Lordships today.
Like so many of your Lordships, I am a trustee of a charity, the Foundation Years Trust. Set up by Frank Field, its purpose is to understand what more can be done to help disadvantaged children in the first, all-important years of their lives. Among my fellow trustees is the noble Lord, Lord Hall of Birkenhead. I mention that not simply to declare my interest but to observe that charities are organisations in which a sense of shared purpose overrides political allegiances.
Down the generations, long before Lord Beveridge and the foundation of the welfare state, people have formed little platoons to battle against the five giants of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness, at home and abroad, overcoming great challenges, sometimes at risk to life and limb. Only today, I read that the readers of the Sun knitted, for the charity Loving Hands, an amazing 500,000 items of clothing for children in need around the world. Quiet acts of generosity like this show that charities still have a very special place in people’s hearts, at a time when the public’s trust in so many other institutions and professions has plummeted. A recent opinion poll revealed that charity workers are among the most trusted and respected in society today. I am sorry to add that, according to this poll, the least trusted in our society are government Ministers, narrowly beating journalists and bankers. Having worked in banking, in journalism and now in government, I am somewhat concerned about what this says about me.
Charities must earn the public’s trust and generosity. They must never take it for granted. The vast majority of charities know this full well and are run responsibly and competently. It is in their interests, and the interests of society as a whole, that the charitable sector is properly regulated. Furthermore, charities must have the freedom to innovate and find new ways of fulfilling their mission. That is the purpose of the Bill before your Lordships today: to strengthen the public’s trust in charities, and help charities to do more.
Before I outline the measures in the Bill, I would like to pay particular tribute to my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbots. He has laboured hard, over a number of years, to help charities flourish. This Bill implements some of the recommendations from his thorough review of the Charities Act 2006. His insight and advice have proved invaluable, and long may his wise contributions continue. Likewise, I would like to thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, for ably chairing the Joint Committee on the Draft Protection of Charities Bill, and other noble Lords on that committee for their helpful pre-legislative scrutiny. Many others in your Lordships’ House have also helped to shape this Bill today, and I am sure that it will provoke further debate. My door is always open to meet and discuss its measures.
The bulk of the proposals in the Bill relate to the Charity Commission’s powers. As I am sure noble Lords will know, the Charity Commission registers and regulates more than 164,000 charities in England and Wales. In 2013, following a high-profile regulatory failure, the National Audit Office reviewed the commission’s regulatory effectiveness. Its report found that,
“the Commission does not do enough to identify and tackle abuse of charitable status”,
and,
“is not regulating charities effectively”.
The NAO made a number of recommendations to improve the commission’s regulation of charities and to strengthen its powers. Further calls for stronger powers were made by the Prime Minister’s extremism taskforce and the Home Affairs Select Committee. When the NAO published its report, the previous Government published proposals to give the commission new powers. After public consultation, these proposals were refined and a draft Bill was published. Following pre-legislative scrutiny, further changes were made. Thanks to all of this and the contributions of so many noble Lords, the proposals have been well scrutinised and the Bill before your Lordships today is much improved as a result.
The measures in the Bill are, of course, just one strand of a much-bigger strategy to improve the commission’s regulatory effectiveness. The commission now has strong leadership; it has set itself new priorities; and it has received an additional £9 million over three years. This will help it move more of its services online and, crucially, bolster its capacity to identify and tackle abuse and mismanagement in charities. The NAO has followed up its report and acknowledged that good, early progress has been made.
However, there is no point in the Charity Commission working harder to seek out abuse if the commission cannot act effectively when it finds abuse. So the bulk of the Bill is devoted to ensuring that the commission has new or extended powers, of which I would like briefly to highlight five. First, a new official warning power would enable the Charity Commission to take a more proportionate approach to low-level misconduct and mismanagement. The Charity Commission already can and does engage with charities when this happens, but it finds that up to 30% of charities contacted fail to respond adequately to its guidance.
Secondly, the existing criteria, which automatically disqualify a person from being a charity trustee, would be extended to include people with unspent convictions for money laundering, terrorism offences, bribery, misconduct in public office and perjury, and individuals subject to a terrorist asset-freezing designation. Disqualification would be extended to senior management positions as well.
Thirdly, the Bill would give the Charity Commission a power to disqualify individuals whose conduct makes them unfit to be a charity trustee. The commission would be able to act subject to three tests: criteria would have to be met relating to the person’s past or present conduct; the commission would have to consider the person unfit to serve as a charity trustee; and the commission would have to be satisfied that disqualification was expedient in the public interest. The power is accompanied by several safeguards, including for the tribunal to consider the matter afresh on appeal.
Fourthly, the Bill would give the Charity Commission a power to direct that a charity be wound up following a statutory inquiry; and fifthly; trustees have been known to resign from a charity before the commission removes them, and then to become trustees of another charity. The Bill would close this loophole.
I know that, like me, your Lordships will want to be satisfied that there are appropriate safeguards governing the use of all these powers, so it is worth reminding the House that, under the Charities Act 2011, the Charity Commission has a duty to act in a way which is proportionate, accountable, consistent, transparent and targeted only at cases in which action is needed. Furthermore, the exercise by the commission of all of the proposed powers in the bill regarding trustees is open to legal challenge, principally by a right of appeal to the Charity Tribunal.
The second purpose of the Bill is to help charities to make social investments so that they can fulfil their mission in new and innovative ways. Traditionally, charities with money to invest have either sought to maximise financial returns or made grants to further their charitable mission. Social investment is different because it involves investments that both further the charitable mission and expect to generate a financial return. At present, charities have over £60 billion of assets under management, but just £100 million of those are in social investments. By clarifying the law and trustees’ duties, the Bill aims to give charities the confidence and certainty to invest in this growing sector. I should express my thanks to the Law Commission for England and Wales for looking at this point and recommending the new social investment power, which the Bill would implement.
To conclude, the charities in this country deserve our heartfelt thanks and support. They embody all that is great about our nation and bring out the best in our society: a generosity of spirit and a willingness to make sacrifices to help those in need. The Bill will strengthen the public trust and confidence in our charities so that they can do better still. I look forward to hearing your Lordships’ views, and I beg to move.