Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Rob Wilson and Lady Hermon

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wilson]

What the hon. Gentleman says is quite extraordinary. We had this debate in Committee. It was quite clear, from the reaction to the concerns about the Badger Trust, that the hon. Gentleman and those on the Opposition Front Bench agreed that party political campaigning was actually a good thing. Even today that has been repeated, with regard to the Badger Trust. The hon. Member for Redcar disagrees with the Charity Commission finding that it was party political.

In Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) gave us a very strong warning about new clause 3, which sums it up well and bears repeating. He asked us to look across the Atlantic to America, where charities can engage in party politics and support political candidates, and where wealthy philanthropists can set up organisations with blurred aims. He said we should be careful what we wish for. I agree with that sentiment entirely. The new clause would risk setting us off down a very slippery slope of involving charities in party politics. For that reason alone, I strongly encourage the House to oppose it.

On fundraising, I am sure all hon. Members will be aware of the poor fundraising practices uncovered over the summer. They present a real risk to levels of public trust and confidence in charities. I asked Sir Stuart Etherington to review how fundraising had been regulated in the past and to suggest improvements. The Government accepted his recommendations for a new, stronger self-regulatory body, backed up by the statutory powers of the Charity Commission. This new fundraising regulator is currently being set up by Lord Grade of Yarmouth and his chief executive Stephen Dunmore. The new regulator will establish the fundraising preference service, which will give people who feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests they receive a simple way to opt in. I am grateful to the working party, led by George Kidd and supported by the NCVO, which has already started to draft proposals on how the FPS will work in practice.

As I made clear in Committee, this place owes it to the generous British public to ensure that they are not coerced or bullied into giving their hard-earned money to charity. It is because of this that we brought forward Government amendments in Committee that would enable the Government to step in and compel charities to register with the self-regulator should they fail to do so voluntarily and in significant numbers. Should this still prove insignificant, the Government would have the power to mandate the Charity Commission with the regulation of fundraising.

I truly hope that I and my successors are not put in a position to have to resort to those reserve powers, and that charities seize this last chance to make an independent self-regulatory system work. If self-regulation does fail, however, we need to make sure that we are equipped to step in quickly with effective statutory regulation. In that respect, I warmly welcome Opposition Members’ support for the Government’s approach to addressing fundraising regulation. I give particular thanks to the hon. Member for Redcar for her supportive comments on Second Reading and in Committee.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) for his work as Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. His Committee has played an important role in investigating the poor fundraising practices we saw last summer. I welcome the Committee’s report, which was published yesterday, and I will give it careful consideration before responding fully in due course. As it highlights, the public rightly expect the highest standards from our charities. Like the Committee, I believe that charities should get a last chance to put their own house in order to restore public trust and confidence.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

The Minister will know that people in Northern Ireland give generously to charities. Regrettably, the Bill has been designated as exclusively English. If constituents of mine are oppressed by requests from charities, can they legitimately complain to the Charity Commission and the new regulatory body?

[Mr Wilson]

The hon. Lady is right that the Bill has been certified as England and Wales only. Northern Ireland has a separate devolved process. I suggest that, as her first port of call, she speak to those responsible in Northern Ireland.

[Lady Hermon]

The Minister does not seem to grasp the point. There are national charities across the UK, of which Northern Ireland is a part. Thousands of people voted in the referendum on the Good Friday agreement—the Belfast agreement—to remain part of the UK. The donors and supporters of national charities, such as the Salvation Army, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and others, are also in Northern Ireland, so the first port of call should be here, not Northern Ireland.

[Mr Wilson]

The hon. Lady makes her case strongly, and it is absolutely right that she should do so here in the UK Parliament. I hope that she will also make her case strongly to the devolved Administration, which many people in Northern Ireland wanted, and got as a result of the actions of subsequent Governments.

New clause 4 would fundamentally change the division of responsibilities between the new fundraising regulator and the Charity Commission. If we were to propose that the commission hold public hearings on matters of charitable fundraising, this would effectively amount to a form of statutory regulation. The commission does not believe that it currently has the resources effectively to exercise the power to hold hearings on fundraising, as suggested in the new clause. It can, in theory, already hold hearings in relation to statutory inquiries under section 46 of the Charities Act 2011, but it does not do so because it would not be an effective means of undertaking its casework. Unlike with other powers in the Bill, the commission does not ask for this ability.

I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex may have intended in new clause 4 to offer to witnesses giving evidence to the Charity Commission in public hearings on charity fundraising the protection of not having their evidence used against them in other proceedings, rather than legal professional privilege. Legal professional privilege protects the lawyer-client relationship and is not what I think he is looking to achieve. However, the proposed hearings would be proceedings undertaken by the commission, not proceedings in Parliament, so parliamentary privilege would not be appropriate, either. The reserve power to regulate fundraising in section 64A of the Charities Act 1992 is a power to make secondary legislation that is necessary or desirable or in connection with regulating charity fundraising. If the commission were to assume statutory responsibility for the regulation of fundraising and this included holding public hearings, we would need to consider, at that point, what protection for witnesses would fall within the scope of the power.

My hon. Friend’s new clause 5 would prematurely task the commission with becoming the primary regulator for fundraising activities. The Government have provided for this already, but through the stronger reserve powers we introduced in Committee. We would also risk undermining public confidence, if self-regulation were to fail while under the oversight of the commission, particularly if the solution to that failure was statutory regulation by the commission. We would also need to do a lot more detailed thinking about whether, and if so how, witnesses could or should be protected by an equivalent to parliamentary privilege, which is what I think he might have been seeking with the new clause.

However, I completely agree with the finding of the Select Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs that

“It would be a sad and inexcusable failure of charities to govern their own behaviour, should statutory regulation became necessary.”

Perhaps I can reassure hon. Members that, under the reserve powers in the Bill, it would be possible for the Charity Commission to be given statutory responsibility for the regulation of fundraising, but to deliver that through a third party such as the fundraising regulator. New section 64C(2) of the Charities Act 1992, as introduced by clause 14, already specifically enables that.