Charities

Lord Grenfell Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I strongly agree with the noble Baroness. We are also looking at the difficulties of payroll giving. The Government want to encourage it. A small number of, by and large, large companies make that easy for their employees. We would like to see an expansion of payroll giving. The figures suggest that older people are now much more generous than the younger generation, and we do not entirely know the reasons. Again, that is not entirely fitting. I trust that all Members of this House are giving at least 10% of their income to charity.

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, I spent some years living in the United States. I was always struck there by the efficacy of the system that they have, in which where contributions to charities are fully deductible. The US Treasury seems to have worked out that the more that is given by individuals, the less the eventual burden on the taxpayers because they are taking up a lot of the strain from the taxpayers. This is not rocket science. Successive Governments here never seem to look at this as a serious proposition. Why not?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I do not entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell. I have a relative in the United States who managed, by making donations of various sorts to his university library, to avoid paying almost any tax the previous year. One wants to encourage people to be generous. The Small Charitable Donations Bill, which we will be dealing with next week, is part of that. We need to consider how one asks for larger donations and makes them tax-beneficial. I remind people that legacies are also important, but a charity which I was talking to last week said that the problem with legacies is that people offer them to you, then stick around for many years.