NHS (Charitable Trusts Etc.) Bill

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Friday 6th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on successfully securing this private Member’s Bill and bringing it to the Floor of the House. Her office is next door to mine, so I know for a fact how hard she and her staff have worked on the Bill. I am pleased to be here to support it.

Throughout the country, amazing people are working and volunteering in the charitable sector. In my constituency, local people recognise the invaluable work of our charities, such as St Ann’s Hospice, which has provided care for people with life-limiting illnesses for more than 40 years, and Millie’s Trust, a newer charity that has not only raised awareness of paediatric first aid, but campaigned to change legislation on first aid in children’s nurseries.

Our communities and, it is fair to say, our lives, would be poorer without the tremendous work of our charities. To carry on doing that work, they rely on the selfless efforts of volunteers and the tireless ingenuity of fundraisers, and bequests from caring people, whose legacies provide a lifeline. The bequests made over the years to Great Ormond Street hospital have undoubtedly enabled many children’s lives to be saved. Its groundbreaking research continues to give parents new hope in the treatment of their desperately ill children. We have heard today about a child whose cure from childhood leukaemia was described as a miracle. Wonderful work continues to be done. I should like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to the vital work of the staff, fundraisers and patrons, who do so much to ensure that Great Ormond Street and its associated charity continue to provide the very best care to children and young people.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills noted, Great Ormond Street and its charity are in the unique and fortunate position of having the rights to the royalties from performances or publications of the play “Peter Pan”, an extremely valuable benefit bestowed by the author, J. M. Barrie. The royalties that the charity receives and that, as my hon. Friend noted, Lord Callaghan successfully legislated in perpetuity, enable it to keep up its wonderful work and surely reflect the wishes of J. M. Barrie. I fully support the ambition to ensure that the charity continues to receive that generous settlement, and to give Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity the independence it needs to grow and better support its beneficiaries.

I am pleased that the Bill addresses a number of constraints that the charity has encountered, not least the duplication of governance arrangements that currently complicates the charity’s position. Historically, charitable involvement in the health service has always been welcomed. The Bill will not affect independent charities, but it is important to recognise their continued importance in the sector.

The Department of Health conducted a review of NHS charities in 2011. The response was the announcement of the intention to move towards greater independence and a commitment to a new model. That is what the debate is about. The rationale for the reform reflected concerns raised by the NHS charities and their representative bodies that the NHS legislative framework and its application limited their freedom to grow and raise charitable funds effectively. We must do everything we can to support the valuable work our charities do, and often that means removing red tape and bureaucracy and allowing them to choose their own legal frameworks.

That goes to the heart of the Bill. It is something that charities have asked for, and we should support them, but the complexities of the royalties arrangements for Great Ormond Street hospital require Parliament’s involvement to effect the transfers. I support these measures and the removal of the Secretary of State’s power to appoint trustees. Great Ormond Street hospital for children is well loved and well used by families from right across the country, as has been said, and it is surely in our interests to make it as easy as possible for the charity to operate effectively so that it can concentrate on providing care for children. The Bill does just that, by allowing the transfer of royalties while consolidating the new Great Ormond Street hospital charity as an independent charity, free from Government and ministerial involvement.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady has twice mentioned the need for charities to be free from regulation and Government involvement. Will she study the recent history of Kids Company, which has been accused of many abuses, and certainly a great waste of public money, as a result of lax regulation and the permissive attitude of the Conservative party and the Prime Minister?

[Mary Robinson]

It is absolutely right that the governance arrangements for charities, and any other body responsible for donated moneys, be adequate and robust, and I know that that will be the case here.

Finally, I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing the Bill, which I wish a swift and easy passage. I am confident that with so much support it will be driven into law and will not drift into Neverland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for clarifying the role of trustees. As a trustee of a charity myself, I shall ensure that my copies of the Racing Post— well thumbed as they are—are not brought into any more trustee meetings. It is also important to point out that the Charity Commission will continue to have oversight. I think that that addresses the rather waspish comment made by the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) in an intervention on the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson).

[Paul Flynn]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hoare]

With enormous, enormous pleasure, to waspishness I will give way.

[Paul Flynn]

There are 5,000 leading charities in Britain, and there is great concern about the activities of some of them. The majority do a great deal of good, but we know of the abuses carried out by “chuggers”—which constitute robbery as far as donors are concerned—and the use of call centres to plague elderly, vulnerable people. There is a need not for wholesale deregulation, but for new regulations to control those charities.

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Gentleman has invited me to stray from the immediate purport of the Bill. Let me avail myself briefly of that invitation, and agree with him wholeheartedly. The people who wander up and down our streets waylaying busy shoppers, business men and women and commuters trying to elicit bank details and donations, and those who worry and harass people in their homes with telephone calls seeking charitable donations, are a curse and a menace. I believe that the authorities and Her Majesty’s Government are alert to that, and I rather hope that during the course of this Parliament we shall see some redress in respect of an issue that blights the lives of many of our constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills may wish to clarify the position, but I am not aware that Great Ormond Street raises funds in that way, although I do not think that the issue is crucial to the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend makes an absolutely brilliant and crucial point. We want to get away from jobbery wherever it happens, and it is most likely to happen in areas where one party is in government for a very long time.

[Paul Flynn]

There is a current example of grotesque jobbery in the appointment by the Prime Minister of the Conservative Members of the Council of Europe, and three splendid Members, including the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), have been—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I really have tried to give as much leeway as I can this morning to this debate, but I cannot reconcile Great Ormond Street hospital with the Council of Europe. I am quite sure that, if the hon. Gentleman wishes to bring some kind of analogy from “Peter Pan”, Never Land and the Council of Europe, he can do so, but I must warn him that it will have to be really quite narrow.