Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee of my interests as a trustee of a number of quite small charities. In moving Amendment 2, I shall speak also to Amendment 7, both in the names of my noble friend Lord Watson and myself. As with the next group, these amendments are to improve the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults, particularly in regard to sexual abuse.

Amendment 2 concerns the power for the Charity Commission to check on disclosure and barring service checks undertaken by charities. It follows concerns raised by Mandate Now, a pressure group supported by the Survivors Trust, which lobbies for mandatory reporting of abuse, and is led by adults who experienced child abuse in establishments that were also charities. Mandate Now told us of a charity providing education; in its inspection report, there were references to failure to return—that is, notifications—but the staff concerned went on to abuse elsewhere. They also told us about a charity providing education where the press reported that the head in that case had phoned a receiving establishment to warn it of an abuser who was applying to work there. However, no formal notifications were found that might have ensured the known abuser would not offend elsewhere, and—this is the important thing—the trustees do not appear to have challenged the head.

In 2010, an inspection report on another educational establishment registered with the Charity Commission said that there was no,

“established policy for reporting directly to ... the Independent Safeguarding Authority, responsible for such referrals … The advisability of making such referrals is now clearly understood even when there may not be a strict legal obligation to do so”.

Our concern is that it is advisable only—there is no compulsion. In the case that I have just mentioned, neither the management nor trustees made any referral to what is now the DBS, which meant that it did not lead to any action. No action was taken about those trustees for not making those reports.

I think we can all agree that notification should not be an optional extra. More than that, the Charity Commission should be able to check that the system is working as intended. Relying on trustees always to do the DBS checks obviously does not always work.

Another example occurred in an educational establishment which happened to be run by a religious order, where the head ignored the enhanced check, which showed a history of child abuse offences for the new chair. It appears to be rather discretionary as to whether trustees act on information provided by the DBS, when there are no independent checks by a third party that the correct procedure is happening. Amendment 2 gives a power—not a duty—to the Charity Commission to undertake such checks.

Amendment 7 covers perhaps the most glaring anomaly in the current law, which is that someone who has got into debt and is subject to an individual voluntary arrangement, or a person with financial misdemeanours behind them, is automatically excluded from being a trustee, but people on the sexual offenders register, who have surely done far worse than run up their credit card debt, can happily serve as a trustee. To date, the Government have said that when something comes to light, or in areas covered by the DBS, such people should be identified. That is not good enough. We do not want to wait until something has happened, or until other trustees get suspicious and then have to act, possibly against someone with whom they have been working closely on the trust. Nor is it sufficient to deal only with charities which obviously are in contact with children, and thus covered by DBS. There may be other examples, such as a church hall that gets used by guides, or for children’s parties. That would not have been covered.

An alcohol misuse charity could decide to run a special programme for the children of problem drinkers or, similarly, a cancer group could offer support to the children of cancer patients. They would not be covered by the current safeguarding regime. Who would think to check on the background of someone, particularly if they were offering to be the treasurer of such a charity? It is a thankless task, as I know. Trustees are all too willing to sign up a suitably qualified person without a thought for their wider background. Indeed, I have had dealings with an accountant who, unbeknown to the trustees using him, admittedly as an adviser rather than a trustee, had been convicted, although not imprisoned because he was having a kidney transplant, as he had been found with more than 1,000 images and videos of child sex abuse on his computer. None of the trustees knew about it.

I know that many trustees are very sympathetic to our proposal to add sexual offences to the criteria that trigger automatic disqualification from being a trustee. Of course we would want a waiver for charities working with ex-offenders which need that input to help them in their work. Those charities would know of the record and there would be no secret.

We also know that many smaller charities, particularly parish charities, depend on hard-pressed volunteers and already find the expanding vigour of the Charity Commission guidelines and reporting somewhat burdensome. Expecting those trustees to think and risk-assess before they approach a new trustee is quite a burden to put on them. Surely the onus should be on the person on the sex offenders register to know they should not, without a waiver, be a trustee. We should not to leave it to chance that someone else would spot it and consider whether it makes them a risk.

This is an opportune moment to add being on the sex offenders register as a category for automatic exclusion, subject to waiver, as this Bill adds terrorism, money-laundering and bribery to such automatic exclusions. I assume that the Government are as concerned about safeguarding children, women and other vulnerable people as they are about debtors and money-laundering. I am therefore very hopeful that this amendment can be accepted. I beg to move.

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, talked about concentrating the mind of trustees. The main attribute of my noble friend’s amendment is to work further on that concentration of the mind. Contrary to the assumptions often made that charities regulated by the Charity Commission are the large household names which have skilled, informed trustees who are offered training and induction, most charities are not like that. They are small, with governance that can be a bit hit and miss for some of the reasons we have heard: the difficulty of getting volunteers and so on. I venture to suggest that the majority have no idea about the Charity Commission and its powers and have a very hazy concept of collective responsibility, which we will discuss in the next group of amendments. History shows us that we cannot take the protection of children too seriously. We must also be aware of the serial, repetitive nature of some sexual offences and of the great skill in deception that sexual offenders often have. I therefore very much support these amendments. However, I am wary of the need for balance, which the Minister reminded us about, so I am very pleased that the amendment acknowledges that some charities need positively to seek trustees with experience of, even convictions for, these offences so that they can be helped in their work of rehabilitating offenders.