Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Barker and Baroness Pitkeathley

Monday 6th July 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, it may be useful if I speak to Amendments 21 and 22. Like the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, we are seeking to make the concept of social investment clear in legislation. Part of the aim of doing so is to make sure that social investment policies sit alongside the overall investment policies of a charity and are treated in much the same way.

Our first amendment, Amendment 21, seeks to delete “social” in subsection (3) of new Section 292C. This is one of those cases where a deletion is meant to lead to more inclusivity, so in fact we are suggesting that all a charity’s investments should be the subject of a periodic review. Amendment 22 seeks to ensure that trustees are under an explicit duty to make their investment policy available publicly to their donors and beneficiaries.

One of the big challenges of social investment is that, by its very nature, most of the time it is unlikely to bring about significant financial return. For example, if a charity invests in a business to be carried out by its beneficiaries—for example, former prisoners and so on—any such business is unlikely to turn a profit in the first few years of its existence. Therefore, it is doubly important that charities are able to do double accounting—that is, they have to be able to explain to the public what has happened to the financial return and also how they have calculated the social return or the return in terms of the benefits to them in furthering their charitable objects.

I happen to be of the school that says that there ought to be a greater degree of transparency overall regarding charity investments. Sometimes in our sector, charities can be somewhat fearful of being attacked for the sorts of investments they have to make in order to obtain a financial return. With the development of social investment, there is a need for charities to up their game across the board, and therefore such transparency would be helpful.

I also agree with some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie. The term “from time to time” is probably a well-understood legal phrase: it is something that should happen but it is difficult to put an exact timeframe on it. Some investments will take place over a long time, and therefore an accounting period of three years would not make sense for charities. Equally, the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that they must be reviewed stands. Therefore I, too, shall be interested to hear the Minister’s reply, and I hope that between us we can flesh this out to make it just a bit clearer.

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support all these amendments because they encourage trustees to focus more attention on the progress of social investments and to review them regularly. I, too, think that “from time to time” is a bit vague, although I understand that it has a legal meaning.

There are two reasons why I support the amendments. The first is that I think they will make the position of trustees and their responsibilities clearer. Social investment is a fairly new concept and trustees on the whole are not very familiar with it. We are trying to encourage them to be more so, and I believe that these amendments would help in that. The second reason—and here I declare an interest as chair of the Big Society Trust—is that I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, that the financial return on these social investments is often not realised for some time, although the social return may be obvious at an earlier stage. To some extent, charities and trustees are learning as they go in this area, so any further guidance or direction we can give them would be of benefit.