Charities: Funding

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of requiring greater transparency in sources of funding for charities based in the United Kingdom.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government understand that there is a tension between transparency and donor anonymity. We encourage greater transparency across the charity sector as a matter of good practice. However, it is our assessment that the current level of legal transparency regarding sources of funding for charities is appropriate.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

Charities are there to serve the public benefit, and I would have thought that that would require a duty of transparency, not simply one that the Government might politely ask. Should the public not know where a charity’s major donations—over £5,000 or £10,000, say—come from, whether from foreign Governments or state-owned companies; sometimes hostile states; religious foundations of different faiths; sponsors of extreme positions on the margins of democratic politics; or from wherever? Is that not something the public should be informed about?