Draft Charitable Incorporated Organisations (Consequential Amendments) Order 2017

Steve Reed Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 General Committees

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. The draft order is clearly a very sensible reform that the sector has awaited for some time. We support its principles. I put on the record my thanks to the Minister for giving me the opportunity to meet her and her advisers informally to talk through the changes and their implications.

Is the Minister reassured that the Charity Commission has the resources to deal with the workload once conversion becomes possible? As she will be aware, it has recently faced considerable reductions in funding. It estimates from its own consultations with the sector that approximately 10,000 charities—roughly 25%—will wish to convert to CIO status. That additional conversion work will come on top of the existing pressures on its workload from the increase in CIO registrations, of which a higher number than anticipated have not fully met the filing requirements. The question is not whether the draft order is a good reform, but whether she is confident that the commission has sufficient resources to carry out its work as she would wish, without creating a backlog in applications for conversion.

May I also raise a wider issue? The House of Lords Select Committee on Charities published a report in March with a number of recommendations for the future governance of charities. Could the Minister give us an idea of when the Government intend to respond to that report?