Charitable and Voluntary Sector

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Thursday 30th April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I too commend my noble friend Lord Addington on securing this debate and I similarly declare an interest as a trustee and patron of a number of charities, including a small charity supporting the families of children with complex and additional needs.

I am contributing from the rural Scottish Borders. Rural areas like this are beautiful, but they are often a burden for vulnerable people and the charities that support them due to their isolation and distance from specialist centres; for example, for some here it would be more than a four-hour round trip to a Covid-19 testing centre, with limited public transport. There are often connectivity problems, and many are low-income areas; fundraising for small rural charities is therefore more limited.

Government support through additional funds for the National Lottery Community Fund across the nations is welcome, although limited, as my noble friend Lord Addington mentioned. Its online portal makes clear that the fund has major capacity issues with processing. For the next six months, non-directly linked Covid-19 applications are likely to take three months to be processed. Ongoing economic and public service pressures will mean that small rural charities, more dependent on funds such as these, will be impacted disproportionately. There remain too many discrepancies between business support packages and support for small charities, and there are concerns that charities will still be asked to carry out burdensome applications for much in-demand local authority support, which often asks for match funding that will simply not be available.

Lastly, small charities rely heavily on self-employed people to support them and to work for them. They will have to wait at least three weeks from now before being contacted by HMRC to learn whether they can apply for support, and first payments are over a month away. Will the Government ensure that there is specific, directed support for small rural charities and fast-track support for self-employed people, especially for the mothers and other women who support charity activities? The needs of small rural charities in particular, with the extra barriers they face, will be great, well into the future. If the Government can address these points, charities’ ability to help the people most in need will be helped.