Philanthropy

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, I first declare the same interest as I did in the charities sector debate on 5 October. I have set up two trusts, one for lay causes and one for ecclesiastical causes, under the Charities Aid Foundation’s admirable and efficient umbrella. It is a happy element of our conventions in your Lordships’ House that on occasions such as this we thank and congratulate the initiator of the debate on securing it for us, and on his or her opening exposition of the issues. I do that unreservedly in the case of the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, whose introduction was exemplary. In the words of Milton’s “Lycidas”, he and I—though not simultaneously—were,

“nursed upon the selfsame hill”,

at a school in Wiltshire, founded in 1843 for the sons of clergy. It is a felicitous coincidence to follow him on this subject.

I also congratulate the House of Lords Library on the comprehensive briefing it produced on the very large subject for this debate. It is a rich quarry for the future, as well as for today. The depth and quality of the Library note’s bibliography is an index of the increasing global attention being given to this subject, although it is a marginal coincidental disadvantage that the CAF and NCVO’s annual research report, UK Giving 2010, will be published tomorrow, rather than yesterday. We are rolling the pitch for tomorrow’s news.

Six-minute speeches on such a subject tend inevitably towards a scattergun technique, but the variety of components that this debate will generate will also constitute a rich quarry for your Lordships’ House’s continuing dialogue on these matters. The Library note was particularly helpful in demonstrating how multifaceted is the projected agenda, with genuine arguments on either side of particular developments. Thus, I shall identify sub-agendas still ahead of us as well as asking some questions.

I am familiar with the growing need for increased capital, as well as revenue, to enable charities and causes to pursue particular projects imaginatively. I recognise the importance of lifetime legacies as a topic. That seems a particularly good subject for a Question for Short Debate in your Lordships’ House, unless it falls outside our rules. Another such is the present state of payroll giving within the corporate framework, as the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, mentioned, the origins of which now go back some 25 years. The present national revenue outturn of £9 million a month might seem modest, but since the number of payroll givers is approximately the same as the overall shortfall in donor numbers in the UK between two recent years since the recession began, the fact that payroll givers are individually contributing £12 a month is a good base on which to build this philanthropic conduit, especially as its nature implies sustainability.

At the level of SMEs, when I was in a privately owned firm, we set aside a proportion of profits for charity, with the whole membership of the firm—one man and one woman, with one vote each—voting on what we should spend the outcome on. I like the look of the Government’s intentions towards increased giving set out in the DCMS business plan, which was published in November in advance of the Green Paper from the Government as a whole. Although the DCMS business plan I allude to understandably did not major on online gift aid, which is primarily a Treasury issue, I detect that on this matter, which is so important to increasing the gift aid yield, movement may be occurring in Whitehall.

I can foresee for intellectually respectable reasons that we shall be revisiting the arguments about additionality, which fuelled the lottery debates in the early 1990s, in the context of the relationship between increased charitable giving and the spending cuts, and, indeed, in the context of the big society itself. It seems particularly important that we should secure the same common ground that changed the position on the National Lottery etc. Bill 17 years ago between Second and Third Reading, so that at least the Front Bench of the official Opposition voted in favour of the Bill at Third Reading.

On the Government’s new agenda on personal and national well-being, the CAF’s World Giving Index has demonstrated a clear correlation between the giving of time and money and overall well-being. It would be no bad thing if this effect of philanthropy being a contributor to personal well-being became a focus in the new campaign, with its relevance to social capital. I hope the Government and the Office for National Statistics will accede to the CAF’s suggestion that charitable giving becomes one of the indicators for well-being in the planned index.

Finally, beyond or within the debate on additionality, I hope we can also pay attention to whether philanthropists working with the third sector can provide more flexible and responsive targeted public services. I give an example from rural housing. There is a putative scheme in the south-west where a social entrepreneur has seized on the problem by securing house-by-house projects in pockets of land at odd corners of like-minded landowners’ land, to be developed in line with increased local employment opportunities. It is a case of “many a mickle makes a muckle”, but in a genuinely sustainable direction. However, it is also clear that it does not readily fit into the public housing arrangements of the previous Government’s most recent Housing Act. I am not making a partisan point but I seek to get houses built in a part of our economy that is badly in need of them. While on the rural economy, has the Prince’s Countryside Fund now become a cause to which we can contribute across a post office counter?