Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to the Charities Act 2022: implementation plan, published April 2022, what plans do the Government have to bring sections 15 and 16 of the Act into force.

The Government is deferring the commencement of sections 15 and 16 of the Charities Act 2022 until we fully understand the implications for National Museums and other charities. When Parliament debated the Charities Bill, enabling national museums to restitute items from their collections based on moral grounds was neither considered, nor agreed on.

Deferring the commencement of these sections of the Act, which were initially planned to be in the first tranche of commencements in autumn 2022, will have no impact on the implementation of the other sections in the Charities Act 2022.