Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Viscount Eccles and Lord Hope of Craighead

Tuesday 23rd June 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Hope of Craighead]

I have a point to make on the wording of the amendment, although it is not quite the same as the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, thought it might be. It is about Amendment 11, and it is a rather technical point. I am aware that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott of Foscote, who knows much more about drafting trust documents of this kind than I do, may have a different view. The point that troubles me is the phrase,

“who are direct beneficiaries of the charity”.

As I understand it, to qualify as a charity, individuals as such are not direct beneficiaries. That is the creature of a private trust, where a trust is framed to confer a defined benefit on a particular individual. It would meet the noble Baroness’s point if the rather less attractive phrase,

“who are within the objects of the charity”,

was substituted. That would then bring in the point that she is considering people on whom the trustees would focus as possible recipients of benefit. That would be the kind of phrase that I would use myself, but I am conscious that the noble and learned Lord may know more on this than I do, although he is shaking his head. It is a point on wording, which would arise if the Minister was attracted by the amendment.

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

I shall add a thought. I think that we are talking about charities that are deliberately set up to benefit children and added-in vulnerable people, but may I move to museums for a minute? I refer to a registered museum that allows children under 16 to enter free, for example. Let us say that somebody gets into a fracas, one child hits another and somebody else enters in. Widening the responsibilities of the Charity Commission and the trustees of that museum as the amendments propose is completely unrealistic. If there are remedies to be sought, they should be sought under another piece of legislation and not under charity law. We have already had reference to the chilling effect on people volunteering to be trustees if they see that the responsibilities are made so wide and so difficult to adhere to. We really have to be careful. The Minister referred to the limited resources of the Charity Commission. Under existing circumstances, it is not likely that those resources will be added to, to any great degree, at least for a while. We need to be very careful about what responsibilities we place on the Charity Commission and trustees under this proposed legislation.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Viscount Eccles and Lord Hope of Craighead

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, it is very risky for a non-lawyer to intervene in such a debate, but I would be most grateful if my noble friend on the Front Bench and, indeed, my noble friend proposing the amendment, would relate new subsection (5), which Clause 15(5) will substitute for Section 85(5) of the 2002 Act, to new subsection (6) because, if I have read it right, new subsection (6) attempts to define “new matter” in a rather narrow way and not in one that means that just anything can be considered by the Secretary of State to be a new matter and therefore referable back to the beginning. I feel that I need enlightening on the relationship between those two proposed new subsections.

[Lord Hope of Craighead]

The reason why I suggested the word “previously” is because that is in new subsection (6) and would link in new subsection (5) with new subsection (6) to show that what one is talking about is exactly the kind of matter being referred to in the definition in new subsection (6).