Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this amendment and speak as the former chief executive of Carers UK, a very successful campaigning organisation, which, arguably, could be credited with making caring and carers, once an entirely private matter, the public issue that we all recognise today. I submit that that came about almost entirely through the campaigning of the carers’ organisations. I very much agree with my noble friend that there is now confusion, since the lobbying Act, about what is legitimate and what is not so far as charities are concerned at election periods.

At present, we do not have the maximum clarity which my noble friend has called for. I draw the attention of your Lordships to the lack of profile which charities had in the recent general election. In the past, it was commonplace for charities or groups of charities to hold hustings at which all parties could set out their wares. We heard very little of that in the last general election.

I hope that the Minister will confirm that he supports the rights of charities to campaign for policy changes which will benefit their client group. Of course, that could be called political—changing policy is political—but it is very much small-“p” politics, not party politics, and charities are very much aware of that.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very glad that this amendment is before us but I noticed that in introducing it my noble friend emphasised very heavily that it was not endorsing in any way the concept of charities becoming involved in party-political activity. I was glad that my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley also made that point.

I want to speak very honestly as a former director of Oxfam in the 1980s, when we were campaigning very hard to get a change in charity law. We had quite a skirmish with the Charity Commission at the time. It was done in a gentlemanly way but very firmly by the commission, which was quite right, and in the end the laws on campaigning were rewritten and we could have almost dictated word for word what the new regulations said because they were exactly what we were after.

What was happening in Oxfam, as I saw it, was that the charity was maturing and growing up. It was saying, “We can’t go on simply alleviating poverty or whatever because in doing that we may be condoning the causes of what we are dealing with. We are repeatedly putting fingers in the dyke without seeing that it is the dyke itself that is crumbling or which is the problem”. There was a very strong feeling developing among staff and trustees—and the trustees held very firm on this, which I found very encouraging—that we were being dishonest: that in our work we were coming up against the real causes of the issues we were encountering and, in order to not just alleviate the consequences but deal with the causes, we had to spell out what we had come to see as the causes.

I think I have shared this personal anecdote with the Committee before so I hope I can be forgiven for mentioning it again. Once when I was on a visit to Latin America at a very difficult time to visit our programme there, I had a very long and interesting conversation with the Bishop of San Cristobal, who was bravely standing up for the Indians in Chiapas who were under terrible pressure. He was being denounced by the Government of the time and so on. It was quite ugly, with people disrupting his church services and standing outside his little house shouting all night, but he was just getting on with the job. He spoke fluent English; he was a really strong man. I asked him, “Have you got a message that you would like me to take back to the UK, to my staff colleagues and my trustees but also more widely in Britain?”. He said, “Yes, I have”. He made several points but the point I shall always remember is that he said, “In situations of this kind, you cannot be neutral. I believe that solidarity is the real meaning of charity”. If you are getting into a position of solidarity with the people you are trying to help, you must recognise that they are talked about a great deal, they are talked to a great deal, but in the major debates that are taking place that affect policy who talks for them? Of course, that is one step short of talking for themselves in those debates.

I was very privileged to have held that post in Oxfam. I came away from my time in it absolutely convinced intellectually and emotionally that if a charity was to be true to its purposes and was dealing with really severe social problems, one of its most important tasks and one thing it should never equivocate about was advocacy—to speak out about the issues that it had discovered in its work were the real issues. Of course, that is not always comfortable but it is absolutely essential to integrity. We received terrific support. We relied in those days on a widespread constituency support, and regular giving from the wider public increased while we were making this stand. Clearly many people in the country agreed with our position. It is a tremendous achievement and of great credit to the Charity Commission of the time that it took the point and amended the laws on campaigning. We must stand firmly by that because it could become easily eroded.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my name has been mentioned in this debate and perhaps I should intervene. I spent a good two months of my life much preoccupied with this issue and I came away from it content with the law as it stands. It is quite clear that there is a line between advocacy—which is an entirely appropriate and proper part of what charities should do—and moving too close to party-political campaigning. This is not purely a matter of, as it were, good-works charities on what one might describe as the left, but also about think tanks on the left and on the right. I can think of one or two think tanks which have got quite close to the line of moving from research to a highly partisan presentation of the research they provide. Having worked for 12 years in a think tank, I am conscious of the lines that one has to draw.

In speaking to 50 representatives of different charities, I certainly came across the advocacy point. Some first- class charities raised public awareness of mental or physical conditions, the problem of women unnecessarily in prison and so on—all of which are entirely within charity law. I also came across a small number of organisations which appeared to want to get a little too close to party campaigning, including on one splendid occasion meeting a group of rather large charities, one of which said, “We do not want to have to register for this because the little old ladies who give us money would not want to know that we were doing it”. That seemed to be a recognition that they were indeed moving towards a line that they should not be too close to.

I am happy with a restatement of the position as it stands. I think we all accept that advocacy is a part of what charities do in furtherance of their charitable purposes, but that they should not move too far into the party-political area. Anyone who has been involved in the think-tank world knows how conscious they have to be that that is a line they should not cross.

[Lord Judd]

Does the noble Lord agree that this is not altogether simple? He and I clearly agree on this important matter, but it is not simple because if a charity finds itself strongly advocating a position and a political party is doing the same, that is open to misinterpretation. We have to be absolutely clear that the way in which the law is administered is also transparent. There have been arguments that campaigning should be curbed in the last year before an election. It is absolute nonsense for a charity, which feels strongly, passionately and morally obliged to put forward a case because it wants policy change, to have to lay off in the year of a general election. That would be condoning something they believe is wrong and that is not what any of us would want to imagine happening in Britain. It is very important that the Charity Commission is held to account; that the whims of a particular commissioner are not prevailing and that, from an objective, analytical position, very strict rules are fairly observed.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, I am happy to be associated with this probing amendment. As I suspected, there is scope for talking at cross-purposes about the commission’s present understanding of “political”. I have been at the receiving end of an objection on the grounds of that word. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, whose attention I do not have at the moment, equates “political” with “party-political”. As I understand it, that is not the Charity Commission’s feeling about the word. I have been at the receiving end of criticism that this is political, but when I speak to Amendment 15 no one would think there is anything party-political about it.

I will give one illustration from the press in the last six or nine months, to show why there is a need for a minimum of clarification on this question. We all get round-robin emails from organisations: we agree with some and disagree with others. This is one about a breakfast discussion to be held on Wednesday 15 October 2014, arranged by a Eurosceptic organisation concerned with EU regulatory issues called the CSFI; someone will probably know what this stands for. It said that the CSFI was,

“now accepting online donations via the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF). This is the most cost-effective way for the Centre to collect one-off donations online, which can also be GiftAided. To support the Centre, please click here”.

That clearly establishes that this is an all-singing and all-dancing registered charity as I understand it, or else it could not enjoy the benefits of the gift aid scheme. The first sentence by the director, Mr Andrew Hilton, states:

“As I am writing this, the Commission’s new gauleiter”—

being the European Commission—

“Mr. Juncker, is busy trimming the edges of the various portfolios he has offered individual Commissioners”.

Noble Lords who speak some German will know that, until 1933, “gauleiter” was a pretty everyday word, with “gau” meaning “area” and “leiter” meaning “leader”. But since 1933, no one would think that “gauleiter” was without very strong connotations and, I would say, strong political connotations. On the basis of what I have come across, this should be viewed by the Charity Commission as being out of bounds because it is political.

The Minister has a very sharp brain, so my question to him is this: does he acknowledge that there is an issue here? How should the commission go about its business if an organisation which can get gift aid refers to the President of the European Commission as the new gauleiter, while in other areas it says, “You cannot get Charity Commission registration because you are political”? That is my question.