Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, this is a minor and technical amendment to the commencement provision in Clause 15. At present, subsection (3) of the clause provides for the Bill to come into force on whatever day is specified in regulations made by the Minister. Subsection (4)(a) states that the regulations may specify,

“different days for different purposes”.

The amendment would amend subsection (3) so that Clauses 14 and 15 come into force on the day the Act is passed; that is, on Royal Assent. Clause 14 imposes a duty on the Minister to review the operation of the Act. This should apply to the Act regardless of when other provisions are brought into force, so there is no need to delay commencement following Royal Assent. Clause 15, “Short title, extent and commencement”, contains general provisions, and it is good practice for Acts to make it clear that such general provisions come into force on Royal Assent. The remainder of the Bill would, as now, come into force on the day specified in regulations made by the Minister. This allows for commencement of the substantive provisions of the Act at an appropriate time which, in accordance with the convention, will be at least two months after Royal Assent. I commend the amendment to the Committee and I beg to move.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister may say that it is a minor amendment but I happen to have a very long speech here. However, he will be pleased to know that I rise only to thank him for introducing the amendment. When we started on day one, my noble friend Lord Watson wished him well in the Committee stage and promised that we would deal with him gently. I hope he agrees that we have done just that.

This is an opportunity for me to thank the Minister for his patience and thoughtfulness, although maybe not his flexibility, in responding to our amendments. Of course, that has enabled us to hear all the Government’s arguments against our changes, which I hope will fortify and sharpen our case as we bring some of them forward on Report on 20 July.

I also take advantage of this moment to thank, in particular, my noble friends Lady Jones and Lady Pitkeathley for their contributions at this stage. I also give particular thanks to my noble friend Lord Watson for the heavy lifting on many of the amendments. It is the first time that we have worked together in this capacity, but I hope it is not the last. For the moment, we are happy to support this very minor amendment.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I am very grateful that that was not the speech that the noble Baroness was about to give. For one moment my heart sank and I wondered what I might have missed at this late stage. She has been very kind and has indeed dealt with me very gently, as has the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for which I am very grateful. I also extend my thanks to everyone—the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, my noble friend Lord Hodgson and the many others who have made this debate extremely fruitful. I said at Second Reading that this would be a very good opportunity to kick the tyres of this policy—although I know that it has been kicked for quite a long time—and we have certainly done that. We have had some good debates on a range of topics, some in the Bill and some not, and those debates have been incredibly well informed.

I put on record that I have agreed to meet a number of noble Lords between now and Report in two weeks’ time. I look forward to meeting, for example, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, to discuss her proposal to extend automatic disqualification to sex offenders, something on which I am very sympathetic. I look forward to dancing on the head of a pin with the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and my noble friend Lord Hodgson as we define social investment still further. A number of other points on the Bill were raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, which I will look forward to discussing, as I will the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bew, and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on unincorporated charities. As I said, I also intend to meet my noble friend Lord Moynihan to discuss his proposals on sport. So all in all it looks as though I have a very busy couple of weeks ahead of me.