Small Charitable Donations and Childcare Payments Bill

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Committee Debate: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Jane Ellison]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but I think it relates to how we can make giving under the gift aid scheme even easier; I do not think it is as germane to the issue of how to improve the small charitable donations complement to gift aid. However, I hope what I have to say about contactless will be closer to what he wants to hear. I confess that my familiarity with paragraph 1.8 of the document he mentions is not as great as his own, but I will familiarise myself with it when I get back to the Treasury.

As I said, draft regulations about making gift aid donations through digital channels easier are out for consultation; I am sure Members will have a look at them. As for contactless donations, Members may ask how they differ from other forms of electronic donation. The difference is, quite simply, speed. On Second Reading, the Minister for Civil Society used the example of commuters passing through the ticket barriers of a tube station to demonstrate just how quick contactless technology is—we are all familiar with the Oyster scheme, for example. That speed of transaction means that donations collected using dedicated contactless collection terminals have a lot of the same practical issues as bucket collections. Individuals can donate as they pass by a fundraiser without having to stop and talk—it is almost instantaneous. Fundraisers therefore do not have the opportunity to engage donors and solicit gift aid declarations. That is not the case with other methods of electronic donation, as I have explained. A lot of work is going on, as the Minister for Civil Society said in the debate. Big charities are already showing significant advances in technology: their terminals replicate the simple cash payment as nearly as we can imagine, and we expect to see them in use pretty quickly—they are already being trialled.

As for cheques, I understand that they remain a popular method of payment, particularly among older people, but writing a cheque is not an instant process. The payer needs to write the date, the payee’s name and the payment value, both in words and numerals, and then sign it. Our contention is that, if a donor has the time to stop and write a cheque, it is not unreasonable to suggest that he or she also complete a gift aid declaration. We are all familiar with those small envelopes with the simple form on them; they have only a fraction of the number of items to fill in that a cheque has. Moreover, by writing a cheque the donor is already providing some of their details to the charity, so the additional information needed for a declaration is relatively small. We believe that it is entirely feasible to obtain a gift aid declaration in those circumstances.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Perhaps I can suggest a scenario that may help the Minister. If an elderly person in their home sees something on television for a charity and they then sign a cheque and put it in the post, with no details about how to contact them on it, how does the charity get back to that person?