Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Hope of Craighead
My Lords, I shall add a few words based on the Joint Committee’s report. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is right that this is the clause which caused the committee most concern. We have before us, among other things, a very carefully worded memorandum from the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, the meat of which is set out at pages 96 to 97 of the Joint Committee’s report. That Delegated Powers Committee draws attention to a number of problems that subsection (4) of new Section 178A gives rise to, including the risk of retrospective legislation bringing in offences that were not in the purview of the section when they were committed, without any provision for what would happen to people who were unaware that this might cause them to be disqualified. The committee considered various other aspects, but overall its conclusion was that subsection (4) of the new section should remain in the Bill.
Although the Joint Committee discussed this very fully, we reached the same conclusion, which was put in the report. We were content that the order-making power should be available in the form and subject of the procedures that were proposed, but I draw attention to paragraph 208, which contains the recommendation, that,
“when using the power, the Minister should be required to consult fully on whether it is appropriate and proportionate to include an offence within the list of disqualifying offences”.
The process of consultation would be directed to the variety of problems discussed by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in its report. There is a question as to whether that requirement should be statutory, or whether it is enough that the Minister would be prepared to say that he would be content to follow what the Joint Committee recommended: that he would consult fully on whether it was appropriate and proportionate to include an offence within the list of qualifying offences. I speak only for myself, but if the Minister was prepared to give an assurance of that kind, that would go some way at least to meeting the noble Baroness’s concerns.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, it is a sobering day even to discuss something with the word “terrorism” in it. I note that the House of Commons had a moment of silence at 3.30 pm, which maybe is a lesson for all of us.
On the amendment before us, the Committee will know that we have always been a bit jumpy about Henry VIII powers. However, it is very important to have this provision in the Bill because I did not move Amendment 7, which we dealt with on the first day of Committee last week, when we dealt with our attempt to include people on the sex offenders register on the list of those who are precluded—which, frankly, I take more seriously than someone who has got into a bit of debt and has an IVA. The Minister did not think that that was appropriate, and I hope very much that he is right and that we will not have a trustee who is on the sexual offenders register and then abuses someone, which would show that I was right and he was wrong. I do not want to be in that position, for fairly obvious reasons. However, if we find that the evidence is that we should have added those on the sex offenders register to those who are precluded from being a trustee, unless there is a waiver, this provision would allow the Minister, at that stage, to put right—unless we win the vote on Report—what would be an omission from the Bill.
There is always a problem with retrospective legislation, which would be the same now for people convicted for other things. Therefore, it will be important that the implementation date of any regulation is in good time to notify people so that they do not suddenly find themselves acting as a trustee and putting a charity at risk because of some new provision that then comes in. However, if it was something such as someone being on the sex offenders register, that is a known register and they would be able to be notified pretty easily that they could no longer act as a trustee. As a failsafe, albeit that any new measure should be by the affirmative procedure, we are content to see this power in the Bill.
Lord Bridges of Headley
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, for her explanation of this amendment, which was typically reasonable and eloquent. Subsection (4) of new Section 178A, inserted by Clause 9, would enable the Minister by affirmative procedure to make regulations to amend the list of criteria for automatic disqualification by adding or removing an offence.
The Joint Committee that undertook pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill recommended that there be a requirement for any such regulations to be consulted on. The Government agreed and made provision, in subsection (21) of Clause 9, for there to be a requirement to consult on draft regulations where they add an offence.
The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s first report of this Session stated that the committee was satisfied with the delegation and level of scrutiny in relation to this power when it had advised the Joint Committee on the Draft Protection of Charities Bill. It recognised that the Cabinet Office may in future need to take urgent steps to specify offences that should result in automatic disqualification, and considered that the affirmative resolution procedure would provide an appropriate safeguard.
The DPRRC, however, has raised a question about the commencement of new Section 178A and any regulations made under it. The last Government’s response to the Joint Committee’s report on the draft protection of charities Bill stated that we,
“commit to ensuring that sufficient time would be allowed before the commencement of such provisions”.
I will, therefore, happily provide a commitment to your Lordships that a disqualification would not take place under new Section 178A in relation to a person previously convicted of a specified offence until at least two months after enactment of the section and, in all but exceptional circumstances, until at least two months after the date that any regulations are made under subsection (4). We would want to ensure there was sufficient time to notify charities of the new offences.
When the Bill becomes law, we will publish an implementation plan that will set out when the different provisions of the Bill will be commenced. This will include the timetable for commencement of the automatic disqualification provisions under new Section 178A. The Charity Commission has said that it is planning a wide-ranging communications strategy in order to give those affected by automatic disqualification a fair opportunity to learn of the relevant changes before they come into force. Where we undertake any consultation, we will ensure that it is compliant with the compact.
I know that the Lords Constitution Committee has also considered the power to add offences. Its second report of this current Session states that this power to add new offences is not explicitly constrained in its scope, so perhaps I can provide some assurances to your Lordships on how the power would be used, and address a number of the points made.
First, while it may be considered unnecessary, I should nevertheless point out that there are no plans to exercise the power. Its purpose is to enable Ministers in future to amend the list of offences as new criminal offences are created which may be identified as appropriate for automatic disqualification, or criminal offences currently listed may no longer be appropriate, meaning the list needs to be updated. The prospect of a power to amend the list of offences was raised in consultation last year and was generally well supported by respondents, provided the power is subject to the affirmative procedure.
It should go without saying that, in considering any new offence to add to the list, there would need to be a clear rationale for adding that particular offence. The offence would have to be relevant to a person’s fitness to act as a trustee. We would set that out in consulting on the addition of any new offence. That consultation is a statutory requirement. Of course, the safeguards of the public consultation and the affirmative resolution procedure in Parliament—a point my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts raised—should also provide a significant measure of assurance.
I hope that I have been able to give sufficient assurances to your Lordships on how this power would be used, and invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
“Disposal of assets
Charities may not, and may not be compelled to, use or dispose of their assets in a way which is inconsistent with their charitable purposes.”
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, Amendment 12 stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Watson. It effectively just states the existing legal position. It is here to remind trustees of their existing duties for when the Government later mandate them to sell their charitable property under right to buy. As the Minister knows, the Opposition are not against right to buy. Indeed, we want those who desire to be home owners to achieve that. Likewise, the National Housing Federation and housing associations want to help tackle the housing crisis, but in their view a compulsory right to buy would make it more difficult. It is not the right way to achieve it.
In his maiden speech, the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said that forcing charities to sell off their property is wrong in principle and in practice. At a subsequent event, he said it would work entirely counter to the overwhelming priority of promoting new supply. The debate in the Chamber on Thursday saw Tories, Lib Dems and Cross-Benchers line up to condemn the proposal, and surely that will make the Government think again. Housing associations, which are mostly charities, provide 2.5 million homes for some 5 million people on affordable rents. They are rented privately, and many enable people with disabilities or care needs to live independent lives. Others are for shared ownership to help those on lower incomes to buy their homes. Housing associations build 45,000 homes a year and would like to build 120,000, matching what private builders are able to do. This aim could be undermined by them being forced to sell off their stock.
We know that civil servants warned Downing Street about the cost, which I think is at least £5 billion but could be more, and about the difficulties of replacing those sold, leading to a shortage of affordable homes. We know that in local government terms only one in 10 homes sold under RTB were replaced. Furthermore, any diminution of housing stock can harm housing associations’ borrowing powers. As the NHF has said:
“With a nation in the throes of a housing crisis, it is key that housing associations are in full control of the assets against which they borrow to build homes”.
The NHF obviously wants to increase home ownership, but it is concerned that the right to buy will make it more difficult to tackle the housing crisis. Right to buy could make it harder for the housing associations to deliver their charitable objective, which is, of course, providing for people in greatest housing need.
We know that housing associations lever in private finance in order to meet their charitable objectives and to manage their assets effectively. Forcing them to sell properties would give them less control over these decisions and, importantly for this Bill, would make it more difficult for them to meet their charitable purpose.
The National Housing Federation also worries that such interference sets a dangerous precedent for government intervention in independent charities. It cannot support giving government a role which should be the preserve of housing associations’ own charitable trustees. The NCVO similarly fears that the compulsory sale of charity assets through right to buy sets a worrying precedent of government interference in the running of independent charities. It would also, says the NCVO, contradict the rule that charities cannot dispose of assets other than in pursuit of their charitable objectives—in other words, using such assets for charitable rather than for political or private benefit. Hence, the NCVO supports Amendment 12.
There are other concerns about the policy, such as whether any bequests could be invalidated in the circumstances of a forced sale. We should remember the history of major providers of social housing. Peabody, close by here, was founded in 1862 by an American banker, diplomat and philanthropist, George Peabody, to,
“ameliorate the condition of the poor and needy in this great metropolis”.
Peabody’s mission remains much today as it was in 1862: to help make London,
“a city of opportunity for all”,
by helping people have a good home with a feeling of belonging which grows from involvement in the neighbourhood and the spirit of togetherness. Furthermore, Peabody strives to ensure that the landlord service is tailored to the individual, and residents are supported in their daily lives and in their aspirations. So not only would the forced sale of this property counter the bequest’s terms but, as those houses were sold on—perhaps let to the private sector—the charity’s aims could not be met.
During Second Reading, the Minister said that there was a precedent for housing association tenants accessing discounts to buy their own home. However, the preserved right to buy, which I assume he was referring to, applies to homes transferred from a local authority—and which thus have been built with public money—to a housing association. Charitable law is overruled in that case only because the charity was aware when it acquired these homes that right to buy applied. It is therefore a little misleading to suggest that this is similar to what is now being proposed, which will cover all housing association homes, whether donated to the charity, perhaps by special deeds setting out the purpose of the gift, or funded by money raised to house a particular client group.
The policy would reduce the supply of affordable homes. Given that such right to buy for housing associations would be funded through the forced sale of council properties, this would itself reduce the number of affordable homes. There are 2 million people on waiting lists due to the dearth of homes at affordable rents for low earners. Expecting the sale of a council home to both fund its replacement and reimburse the housing associations sounds to me like double-counting, and in London, of course, a complete impossibility.
The National Housing Federation, which is, of course, the expert in this field, calculates that the taxpayer’s money could be much better targeted at ending the housing crisis. On its assumption that there will be about 220,000 eligible tenants who could afford to take up the right to buy, the discount would be £11.6 billion—for 220,000 people. That amount could provide 660,000 homes for shared ownership, which would give three times as many people a foot on the ladder. Housing associations already help people to buy their own homes, with some 250,000 now in shared-ownership homes.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. The Minister should really thank us for doing this now. If he has not picked up that this measure is going to be one of those things that will be extremely hard to get through this House, then he has heard nothing. I realise that he is new to the House, but if he listened to what was said on Thursday, including from his own party, he will know that this one ain’t going to happen. Therefore, I think that he will in the long term be grateful to us for having given due warning and enabled him to steer his colleagues off a track which will be highly bumpy for them.
If the Minister hears nothing else from today, he should listen to what my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours said. These homes were built not just for one lot of lucky people; they were built not just for one generation but in perpetuity. He has given no answer on that point, because once you sell them off, they are gone. I was disappointed that the Minister said that it was all about income. No, this is not about income; it is about communities. They could be homes rented out, for example, to a community of retired actors or retired nurses—I think that there is a housing association near Bournemouth where all its residents were in nursing and worked in that community together. If you sell that off, you do not just sell off a house and have the money back; you no longer have that shared understanding of the people who have been given a stake in that way. No, it is not just about money and I am sorry that the Minister used that phrase.
This issue is not just about charities; it goes wider. Loan sharks are already circulating. Most of the people who can take advantage of this measure have to be fairly rich, because, even with the £100,000 that the Government are going to give you from local government, you still have to get the other £100,000. On the whole, you have to be fairly rich; it is not the £15,000-a-year earners that my noble friend referred to. So it is already the top end of that market who can use it. For the ones below who cannot, the loan sharks are there saying, “You’re going to get £100,000 if you get this, so how about this? I give you the money, you get the mortgage for the other £100,000, you take the £100,000 that is coming, and in three years’ time I’ll be back and we’ll share it out. I’ll get £50,000 and you’ll get £50,000”. We know those people are there. That is not particularly about the charity aspect, but if the Government do not understand that that is what happens, they have learnt very little.
“Regulation of fundraising
(1) All fundraising charities must be members of the Fundraising Standards Board and abide by their Code of Fundraising Practice.
(2) In section 64A of the Charities Act 1992, as inserted by section 69 of the Charities Act 2006 (reserve power to control fund-raising by charitable institutions)—
(a) in the title omit “Reserve”;(b) in subsection (1) for “may” substitute “must”.”
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, this amendment is also in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Watson of Invergowrie. When we are discussing it, we refer to it by the shorthand “Olive’s Law” as it arises from the complaints about somewhat overpushy fundraisers in the wake of the tragic suicide of 92 year-old poppy seller, Olive Cooke.
As the Minister knows, hundreds have since reported how they, too, came under pressure, with particular concerns about the elderly, some with dementia, being targeted. At Second Reading, I referred to the Mail on Sunday story of the underhand methods of a private company which appeared to break every rule in the book to make money for itself as well as for charities that were employing it. Cold calling is a particular curse of the housebound and risks damaging trust in charities. We also see charities, having secured one donation, ratcheting-up demands, leading people to fear that if they give they will just be asked for more.
The issue is whether the existing self-regulation is working. Our view is that it is not. A third of fundraising charities are not even members of the Fundraising Standards Board, and charities or the private companies they use can continue to fundraise even if expelled from the board.
The Fundraising Standards Board self-regulation system, which is effectively funded and run by and on behalf of those it seeks to regulate, has, we say, failed to work. It has not done the monitoring to check up on its members. Indeed, without the tragic case of Olive Cooke and the exposé by the Mail, we might know nothing of these practices other than from the anecdotal complaints we all hear about in our personal lives. I was with some elderly friends last night, and without me even raising the question it was one of the things that kept coming up in conversation. However, it was not coming to us from the board that should have monitored this.
The Fundraising Standards Board has not publicised its existence, meaning that those with complaints never took them to it, and it has not outlawed unacceptable practices. This, of course, is not just my view. The Minister for Civil Society, Rob Wilson, calls this,
“a critical time for charity fundraising”.
He concludes:
“Charities’ hard won reputation is at serious risk”.
His “last chance saloon” warning was for charities to show that their fundraising was “beyond reproach” quickly, as they,
“do not have the luxury of time”.
He called on the sector to respect the wishes of householders who do not want to be disturbed at home and to respect “no cold caller” stickers on doors. He also acknowledged that many of us question the self-regulation model. Although it appeared that he favoured one last period of grace, he warned that the,
“window of opportunity … may not remain open for much longer”,
and advised the sector to change rather than,
“allow others to do it for you”.
I do not think that Minister had it quite right with that final warning, but I think he may have moved on since then.
We have concluded that the time has passed for charities to be able to choose whether they want to join the Fundraising Standards Board, or to abide by the code of conduct set by the Institute of Fundraising, by which the FRSB adjudicates complaints, and to put their own house in order—hence, the first part of Amendment 13, which would oblige large charities to belong, thus making their expulsion a matter for Charity Commission intervention. We do not have all charities in mind, but those raising more than, say, £1 million a year. On Report, we will find a form of words to either include a specific figure, or to have the figure set out in regulations, but the principle is clear.
The NCVO, which obviously speaks for many charities, usually prefers effective self-regulation to statutory regulation, as, normally, do we, because it is flexible, responsive, and cost-effective. However, it accepts that the regulatory regime must secure public trust and agrees that there is clear public concern over fundraising. It therefore agrees that self-regulation should be strengthened,
“to a point where an objective observer would say beyond doubt that the interests of the public are sufficiently represented”.
Sir Stuart Etherington of the NCVO said that,
“the correct regulatory regime is not one that is convenient for those who are being regulated, but one that … balances the interests of the public and the regulated … fundraising self-regulation can be successful … but … only … when it is … sufficiently robust and seen to be sufficiently robust”.
The NCVO concludes that change is required, including giving the Fundraising Standards Board a remit over large fundraising charities. It therefore supports Amendment 13, which would require charities to be members of the Fundraising Standards Board, and to abide by the code of fundraising practice. Crisis—which I think of as Crisis at Christmas, although it is a long time since it was called that—one of the charities which would be covered, favours a greater investigative role for the fundraising regulator, with action taken on identifying and dealing with bad practice. It would therefore favour the institute’s code of conduct applying to all large fundraising charities.
The public are with us. More than two-thirds agree that charities should be regulated more. That was before Olive’s case was publicised, so they already had concerns. We are not the first to identify the need to strengthen the regime. There is already a reserve power ready and waiting that allows the Charity Commission to regulate fundraising. It is time to implement this, hence the second part of the amendment, on which we have reason to believe the Government have now reached the same conclusion. Yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph reported that:
“Charities have been given until the middle of this week”—
tomorrow, 30 June—
“to curb their pressure selling techniques to raise money or face action from the charity regulator … Section 64A of the Charities Act 2006 gives”,
the Minister,
“a ‘reserve power to control fund raising’, including imposing ‘good practice requirement’ on charities”.
We want good charity fundraising to continue. We salute the British public, who give more than £12 billion a year—more than the Government’s aid budget. However, we owe it not just to Olive, but to all the many hundreds who have been hassled by charity fundraisers to stamp out malpractice. This amendment is the way forward. I beg to move.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I have listened carefully to the noble Baroness, and I understand the frustration and disappointment that underlines much of her speech. Before I go any further, I remind the Committee of my tangential connection to Pell & Bales, which is involved in the charity fundraising sector.
My review had a whole chapter—15 pages or more—concerning fundraising. It is one of the areas which caused the most angst, difficulty and comment. The conclusions were that we need to drive forward ways to improve self-regulation because that is probably the most flexible and cost-effective way of regulating the sector, that there needs to be changes in the way that public charitable elections take place and that there needs to be a clear programme for implementing change and monitoring progress towards it.
I shall be making some relatively disobliging remarks about the charitable fundraising sector in the next few minutes. However, before doing so, there is a case for the defence which ought to be put on the record this afternoon. The first point is that charities must have the right to ask. If they cannot ask, then the amount of fundraising that charities will be able to do will fall dramatically. That is balanced by the right of the public not to be unduly hassled. It is that nexus which we are seeking to find in any fundraising regulatory system.
Secondly, the public do not really like any money being spent on fundraising. They would like every pound that they give to go straight to the beneficiary of the charity, not even to be used by the administration of the charity—hence the concerns about the salaries of chief executives in the sector. That is an issue which the sector has not been able to address. There is an argument for explaining to the public that, in order to have effective fundraising, it is possible that you will need to pay someone money for it. The statistics are that a direct debit signed on the street—the so-called “chuggers”—on average lasts for four years or 48 months, and the charities expect to pay 10 to 18 months of that for the work that is done to get the donation in the first place, which amounts to between 20% and 33%. The public would say that it is outrageous that it costs that amount of money, but from the charity’s point of view, they are getting 67p to 80p in the pound that they would not be getting otherwise. There is a difficult philosophical balance to be established.
Thirdly, the legislation is very uneven. The cash collection—the tin-rattling, as we might call it—dates from 1916, and the charitable collections door-to-door regulation dates from 1939, but local authorities have entirely different standards. Some local authorities will give permission in a week or two, others want two years’ notice, and of course in London local authorities do not do it at all as the Metropolitan Police are the licensing authority. Meanwhile, while we are agonising, quite appropriately, about charitable collections, commercial collections have no regulation whatever. They are free to behave as they wish.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Will the noble Lord accept that when I moved the amendment, I said that I was talking about charities that raise £1 million a year? It would be very nice if Mrs—I’ve forgotten her name—does—
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
That is absolutely right. The noble Baroness did say that, but her amendment says, “All fundraising charities”. I know she slightly shifted the ground in the middle of her speech, and I accept that.
What, then, is the problem? There is reluctance in the sector to accept that every problem is everybody’s problem. There is a tendency to push the pea round the plate and to blame another sector, so the chuggers in the street blame the telephone collectors, who blame the direct mail people, and so on. They say, “It’s not our problem—it’s somebody else’s”. There is also reputational pride in individual charities: “We don’t do that sort of thing—other people do that”. Therefore there is a real need for the sector to understand that it is judged by the weakest link, and unless it takes steps to remedy it, the sorts of results the noble Baroness talked about will occur.
Secondly, there is a failure to see that the alphabet soup of regulatory bodies—the IoF, FRSB, the PFRA and the Charity Retail Association—is confusing to the public. They often appear to be acting quite separately; the FRSB’s report on Mrs Cooke said:
“Fundamentally, the FRSB Board believes that the IOF Code must be strengthened”,
as if they are completely separate organisations, way away from each other. It seems much neater to collaborate and work closely together.
There are three things that we should encourage the sector to do. The public need a single point of entry into the system—whether they wish to approach it by phone, by email or by letter—by which complaints or concerns can be addressed. All the bodies involved in charity fundraising regulation and all charities need to pool their sovereignty into a single charity self-regulating organisation, called, say, the charity fundraising authority. That would be tasked with producing national guidelines and model rules with which local authorities should comply. If they do not comply they should explain why they are not complying. They should also provide internal best practice rules for fundraising, in particular about things like passing on names of donors to other charities, because the Olive Cooke case was about the pressure built up by repeated approaches from charities. The Government need to oversee this, either directly or through the Charity Commission.
This will be a challenge to the sector, which has not found it easy to accept change and responsibility for one another. I accept and agree that the situation is not satisfactory and action needs to be taken, but I wish good luck to whoever takes it on and suggest that they pack a tin hat.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I thank the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. Before I respond—I hope I will take only a couple of moments—I have a particular view that some of this forgets who are the people affected. They tend to be vulnerable. It is not just charities that treat them that way. I shall very briefly tell the Committee something that happened over the weekend. I have an aunt and an uncle aged 91 and 93. My uncle’s Alzheimer’s is quite bad, and seven weeks ago he had to move into a home. Two weeks after that, my aunt, who is 91, had a very bad stroke. The NHS was completely brilliant, and she is back home. They are highly vulnerable people. This is not a story about a charity. It is about Barclays Bank, which on Saturday wrote to them informing them that it was going to close their account. It had failed to contact them—actually it had not tried—and was going to close their account. It said that,
“we will not be prepared to offer you any new banking services”,
and would not give them a reference for any other bank. If a body such as Barclays, which is regulated by the FCA, can so mistreat elderly people, my concern is that it is not just charities that are affecting them. The vulnerable are getting this from everywhere. Therefore the standards have to be particularly high. They are not for you and me. I have talked to lots of people around the House since we raised this, and they have said, “I’ve cancelled my standing order. I just can’t do those phone calls any more”. We are robust enough to cancel standing orders, to say boo, or in this case to get on to Barclays, which is emailing me at this moment saying “Please don’t mention our name”, “We promise we’ll put it right shortly” and “We didn’t really mean to send the letter”. It is outrageous behaviour. Like the charitable stuff, it is particularly the vulnerable who we need to protect. I think the only difference between us is whether we are in the last chance saloon. My view is that we are already there, and we need to get out and do something about it. I think what the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, said was actually close to me, although he may not have thought that. By saying that there should be a single point of entry and that the Government should oversee the process either directly or via the Charity Commission—if I have got his words down correctly—that is one stage further on than the last chance saloon. Perhaps he and I should get an amendment together for Report because we really need that extra little bit now.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
The danger about moving as the noble Baroness says is that when in two years from now there is a charge from the Government for regulating the sector, there will be an enormous outcry, so what looks attractive to begin with will be inflexible, expensive and even more unpopular than the present system. It would be better from every point of view, accepting all the points about vulnerable people, if the sector could be persuaded to take up the challenge, find the will, find the money and make it happen, because it will make it happen in an effective way. The problem at the moment is that it has not really accepted that there is a fundamental problem and thinks that if there is a problem, it is not its problem but somebody else’s.
Baroness Barker
My Lords, I would like to follow that up by saying that I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is absolutely right that one of the big issues—in this field in particular, but it is a big issue right across our society that we have not got to grips with—is how we will include people with dementia in all sorts of aspects of our life. This is true in terms of the NHS, and social care, and here.
The voluntary sector ought to be the one place in our society where we can go and talk to the Alzheimer’s Society and ask what a proper code of conduct and practice might look like. It is self-evident from what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said, that the commercial sector has not got this right yet. Organisations such as banks are the bodies in our society that should be at the forefront of dealing with transactions with individuals, even more than government. Banks have millions of transactions every day with millions of individuals, including older people. They clearly have not got it right. We should have one go in our sector at getting it right for everybody else. If that does not work, then by all means go down the route that the noble Baroness wants to go.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
It is clear that the distance between us is very small. My worry concerns the idea that we will not have another charity Bill in this Parliament. If I had an absolute commitment that we would have another Bill in two years’ time, so that if we had not done it we could do it then, that would be fine, but my fear is that this will be the only such Bill and this is the chance that we should take.
Having said that, I agree with a lot of what the Minister said. In terms of his plea—or threat; I do not know—to trustees to take a more active interest in this, his words were well chosen. The words from the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, on a single point of entry were very good, too. However, there must be some way of overseeing that it happens. Even if the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, does not want to come back with a suggestion on Report, we will try to see whether there is a way that puts an extra little voomph—sorry, Hansard—behind this, so that we do not have to wait. The real problem is that we had to wait for Olive to know that this was going on. That showed the Fundraising Standards Board that it was not just a matter of standards but a matter of enforcement. One disagreement that I have with the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, is when he says that it will be very expensive. I think that some money must be spent on this, because the Fundraising Standards Board, even if it is still self-regulated, must do some monitoring, and that always costs money. If we do not do that, the long-term problem will be that we no longer have this very precious sector, which I think all of us agree is one of the great prides of this country.
Having said that, we will seek a way to come back that gets maximum support. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
“( ) The Charity Commission may call for and randomly or systematically check the Disclosure and Barring Service checks undertaken by charities on trustees.”
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I remind the Committee of my interests as a trustee of a number of quite small charities. In moving Amendment 2, I shall speak also to Amendment 7, both in the names of my noble friend Lord Watson and myself. As with the next group, these amendments are to improve the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults, particularly in regard to sexual abuse.
Amendment 2 concerns the power for the Charity Commission to check on disclosure and barring service checks undertaken by charities. It follows concerns raised by Mandate Now, a pressure group supported by the Survivors Trust, which lobbies for mandatory reporting of abuse, and is led by adults who experienced child abuse in establishments that were also charities. Mandate Now told us of a charity providing education; in its inspection report, there were references to failure to return—that is, notifications—but the staff concerned went on to abuse elsewhere. They also told us about a charity providing education where the press reported that the head in that case had phoned a receiving establishment to warn it of an abuser who was applying to work there. However, no formal notifications were found that might have ensured the known abuser would not offend elsewhere, and—this is the important thing—the trustees do not appear to have challenged the head.
In 2010, an inspection report on another educational establishment registered with the Charity Commission said that there was no,
“established policy for reporting directly to ... the Independent Safeguarding Authority, responsible for such referrals … The advisability of making such referrals is now clearly understood even when there may not be a strict legal obligation to do so”.
Our concern is that it is advisable only—there is no compulsion. In the case that I have just mentioned, neither the management nor trustees made any referral to what is now the DBS, which meant that it did not lead to any action. No action was taken about those trustees for not making those reports.
I think we can all agree that notification should not be an optional extra. More than that, the Charity Commission should be able to check that the system is working as intended. Relying on trustees always to do the DBS checks obviously does not always work.
Another example occurred in an educational establishment which happened to be run by a religious order, where the head ignored the enhanced check, which showed a history of child abuse offences for the new chair. It appears to be rather discretionary as to whether trustees act on information provided by the DBS, when there are no independent checks by a third party that the correct procedure is happening. Amendment 2 gives a power—not a duty—to the Charity Commission to undertake such checks.
Amendment 7 covers perhaps the most glaring anomaly in the current law, which is that someone who has got into debt and is subject to an individual voluntary arrangement, or a person with financial misdemeanours behind them, is automatically excluded from being a trustee, but people on the sexual offenders register, who have surely done far worse than run up their credit card debt, can happily serve as a trustee. To date, the Government have said that when something comes to light, or in areas covered by the DBS, such people should be identified. That is not good enough. We do not want to wait until something has happened, or until other trustees get suspicious and then have to act, possibly against someone with whom they have been working closely on the trust. Nor is it sufficient to deal only with charities which obviously are in contact with children, and thus covered by DBS. There may be other examples, such as a church hall that gets used by guides, or for children’s parties. That would not have been covered.
An alcohol misuse charity could decide to run a special programme for the children of problem drinkers or, similarly, a cancer group could offer support to the children of cancer patients. They would not be covered by the current safeguarding regime. Who would think to check on the background of someone, particularly if they were offering to be the treasurer of such a charity? It is a thankless task, as I know. Trustees are all too willing to sign up a suitably qualified person without a thought for their wider background. Indeed, I have had dealings with an accountant who, unbeknown to the trustees using him, admittedly as an adviser rather than a trustee, had been convicted, although not imprisoned because he was having a kidney transplant, as he had been found with more than 1,000 images and videos of child sex abuse on his computer. None of the trustees knew about it.
I know that many trustees are very sympathetic to our proposal to add sexual offences to the criteria that trigger automatic disqualification from being a trustee. Of course we would want a waiver for charities working with ex-offenders which need that input to help them in their work. Those charities would know of the record and there would be no secret.
We also know that many smaller charities, particularly parish charities, depend on hard-pressed volunteers and already find the expanding vigour of the Charity Commission guidelines and reporting somewhat burdensome. Expecting those trustees to think and risk-assess before they approach a new trustee is quite a burden to put on them. Surely the onus should be on the person on the sex offenders register to know they should not, without a waiver, be a trustee. We should not to leave it to chance that someone else would spot it and consider whether it makes them a risk.
This is an opportune moment to add being on the sex offenders register as a category for automatic exclusion, subject to waiver, as this Bill adds terrorism, money-laundering and bribery to such automatic exclusions. I assume that the Government are as concerned about safeguarding children, women and other vulnerable people as they are about debtors and money-laundering. I am therefore very hopeful that this amendment can be accepted. I beg to move.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, talked about concentrating the mind of trustees. The main attribute of my noble friend’s amendment is to work further on that concentration of the mind. Contrary to the assumptions often made that charities regulated by the Charity Commission are the large household names which have skilled, informed trustees who are offered training and induction, most charities are not like that. They are small, with governance that can be a bit hit and miss for some of the reasons we have heard: the difficulty of getting volunteers and so on. I venture to suggest that the majority have no idea about the Charity Commission and its powers and have a very hazy concept of collective responsibility, which we will discuss in the next group of amendments. History shows us that we cannot take the protection of children too seriously. We must also be aware of the serial, repetitive nature of some sexual offences and of the great skill in deception that sexual offenders often have. I therefore very much support these amendments. However, I am wary of the need for balance, which the Minister reminded us about, so I am very pleased that the amendment acknowledges that some charities need positively to seek trustees with experience of, even convictions for, these offences so that they can be helped in their work of rehabilitating offenders.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I believe we are still on Amendment 7. I will deal with that when we come to Amendment 11.
Baroness Barker
I am sorry; I thought that they had been grouped together. I apologise to the noble Baroness.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I will certainly take up that offer. I want to make only a couple of comments. I thank noble Lords who participated in this debate. My noble friend Lady Pitkeathley quite rightly said that this is about concentrating the mind. If we do not get this movement, I hope nobody reading this in a few years’ time says that the Minister was being very complacent. I do not think anyone who spoke was complacent, but the feeling coming across is that everything is fine as it is, and I am not sure that that is correct. It is quite right that the case was five years ago but the charities that have dealt with abused children have been with us this week and last. They retain those concerns and will not be reassured by some of the things that they have heard along the lines of, “Don’t worry, it’s all there”.
I was not suggesting that the Charity Commission had to check that charities were doing their job with DBS; I was suggesting that it has the power to do so. I want to read Hansard very carefully about whether it has that power or not. At one point the Minister was saying that there was a power for the regulators that had not yet been implemented, but at another point he seemed to be saying that the commission could do this. Whether it could, short of an inquiry, I am not certain. Perhaps that is something we could clarify. I think that I read out some of the stuff that was said. The charities concerned have been told that these spot checks, if you like, could not be done.
There is also something beyond the charity itself. We have seen the damage that was done both to the NHS and to the BBC by their complete failure over Jimmy Savile. I would hate to find that a charity where this sort of thing happened then damaged the whole of the charitable sector. That risk remains.
I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, for his comments. I certainly think that the wording of this could be greatly improved. It would be about serious sexual offenders. I think that some of the comments about being on the register for life probably affect other things even more than this particular one, and that is more a question about the register itself. I think that I emphasised the word “waiver” a few times, not only for ex-offenders in general but for here. A waiver to get someone back into charitable work or into civil society is great. As people know, I was and still am very involved in alcohol misuse. If we did not have ex-offenders working for us, we would be rather short of hands to do it, so the waiver is very important.
My concern remains that we are more concerned about money than about people. We are adding money-launderers to the people who will be barred and we are very worried about people’s ability to look after funds, but beneficiaries are probably rather more important.
The issue remains that we do not know which charities these people could be involved in—even, I have to say, a charity working to restore historical buildings and churches. If a woman gets raped in one of those buildings, I would not want to be the Minister who said, “Oh well, that’s a safe charity because it doesn’t see children”. Those are empty properties late at night. As a woman I would be very worried if someone who could have been on the sex register, not for a child but for a serious sexual offence, looked terribly respectable in preserving an old building, and I was the one there late at night. Having said that, though, I welcome the offer from the Minister to discuss this further, particularly Amendment 7, because, as I say, I am very worried that debtors, money-launderers and terrorists, or the people who help to fund terrorism, should be excluded but people with perhaps quite serious findings, not just about children but about women, would be able to be a charitable trustee unknown to all of us. I look forward to discussing that further, but for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Reporting misdemeanours
A trustee must report to the Charity Commission any serious incident that results in, or risks causing, significant harm to their charity’s work, beneficiaries or reputation.”
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, this is in a way part of the same issue—it is about where we put responsibility. In moving Amendment 3, which relates to reporting misdemeanours, I shall speak also to Amendment 11, which concerns the power to disqualify all trustees where there has been a collective failure to protect children or, indeed, vulnerable adults, as the amendment should have said. They are not mentioned in the current wording, but I will come on to that.
The Charity Commission’s guidelines on reporting serious incidents list—I shall keep to the order used—significant items to report. They include loss of money, damage to property and, only thirdly, harm to beneficiaries. The examples given have the same order of priority. They start with fraud and theft, go on to a large donation from an unverified source linked to terrorism, a disqualified person acting as a trustee, then not having a policy to safeguard your charity’s vulnerable beneficiaries, not having vetting procedures to check prospective trustees, and, only lastly, suspicions, allegations or, indeed, incidents of abuse of vulnerable beneficiaries. That order does not seem to give great confidence that beneficiaries rank very highly.
In the same guidance, the commission warns that if trustees fail to report a serious incident, the commission “may”, not “must”, consider this mismanagement and take regulatory action. Therefore, it is possible that trustees could have failed to record an incident of abuse of a vulnerable beneficiary and still no regulatory action would be taken. So not only does abuse of vulnerable beneficiaries rank below big donations or theft but failure to report is only possible evidence of mismanagement.
We should compare that with the duty on auditors, which, again, relates to money rather than to beneficiaries. The Charities Act 2011 places a duty on auditors to report matters of material significance to the Charity Commission, so there is a higher requirement on auditors for anything relating to money than there is on trustees for abuse of beneficiaries.
For that reason, amendments are needed both to make reporting mandatory and also, where there has been a collective failure of a board to identify, report or deal with serious allegations or incidents, to enable—not force—the Charity Commission to replace the whole group. At present, the Charity Commission would have to seek to disqualify each trustee one by one, probably showing evidence of individual responsibility, whereas if on the watch of a whole group of trustees things were seriously amiss and there had been a collective failure, the amendments would enable them to be removed as a collective so that the charity could move forward in the interests of its beneficiaries.
Although, as has already been pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, Amendment 11 deals with a failure of trustees to protect children, we also have in mind other vulnerable beneficiaries, including older people who may be at risk of elder abuse. Perhaps I may cite some examples of why we think that these two amendments are necessary and important. We know of cases in more than one charity where incidents of abuse of children were not reported as serious incidents by trustees. That shows that the general duty is not strong enough and not sufficient. We also know that trustees who may not be expert in child abuse and safeguarding work very much at the behest of the staff, who may have little more than cursory training in safeguarding.
This is particularly the case in trusts which do not concentrate on children. The Charity Commission may be notified by relatives of children that major incidents are not being taken seriously by the charity and the trustees. However, in one such case the families were advised by a government department that the Charity Commission was the only party able to address the failings of trustees to protect children. In that case the Charity Commission disagreed, feeling that it did not have the powers to intervene. It could only trigger the beginning of an inquiry. It appears that it lacks the power either to remove the trustee board as a whole, because it can do it only one by one, or indeed to appoint a new trustee with relevant experience to assist the board with the complex area of child protection.
This need for a power to remove all trustees also arises from the case of an institution where there were several instances of child-to-child abuse. An investigation by families and their lawyers showed that the staff had failed to appreciate the cumulative danger facing children, and they therefore failed to report. The fact of repeated sexual injuries involving different children over time should have led the trustees to ask some very challenging questions of the child protection officer there, as well as of the management, but they failed to do so. In that case the charity finally had to close. However, had the Charity Commission had the power to act in the way that we are proposing and been able to remove several trustees simultaneously, the closure might not have been necessary. Without the scope for agile action, matters can drag on, further damaging not only the children concerned but the charity’s reputation and, ultimately, its future. I beg to move.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I was slightly surprised to see that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, was not going to rise to his feet to take us through the significant words “any serious incident”, as serious incidents obviously can be in the eye of the beholder, the second point,
“results in, or risks causing”,
which requires one to take a view of the future, which is also quite demanding, and the definition applied to “significant harm”. I wonder about the wording of this amendment, which I think would have a pretty chilling effect on trustees and might well lead to them ringing the Charity Commission with inquiries about the nature of particular incidents and whether they qualified under this quite broadly drawn clause, or indeed might lead to a rash of reports to the Charity Commission, which may or may not be a good use of the commission’s time and energy to follow up.
For my part, I go back to my wish to expect trustees to behave responsibly and for the Charity Commission to check them, but not to impose other and further duties. I drew a different conclusion from the noble Baroness about the Charity Commission’s guidance on its website, which seems to be a much better way of dealing with this than putting it into statute. The charity’s trustees would have to be aware of that guidance and follow it. I think that the noble Baroness was slightly unfair to the commission about the order in which it has rated the different offences. Just because child abuse comes a bit further down the list does not mean that it is considered less important; I do not think that is a fair conclusion to draw. It is more important that we should have flexible guidance and that the Charity Commission empower trustees. We should not impose in statute quite wide-ranging and imprecise duties that will be a further reason why people do not want to act as a trustee.
Lord Bridges of Headley
My noble friend makes a very good point about the information exchange between agencies across government, and I am more than happy to pick that up with him in writing or at a later stage.
I turn to the noble Baroness’s Amendment 11. This amendment seeks to empower the Charity Commission to disqualify an entire trustee board where it collectively fails to ensure adequate protections for children who are the charity’s beneficiaries. Later on we will come to debate Clause 10, which will confer the power for the commission to disqualify on a case-by-case basis; suffice it to say that it is one of the most important powers in the Bill. That clause is relevant to this amendment so it may help the Committee if I give a short overview of it now before going on to consider the noble Baroness’s amendment.
Most unfit individuals will be caught by the existing—and, under the Bill, extended—automatic disqualification criteria, but the Charity Commission needs a power to act in cases where individuals are not excluded by automatic disqualification. The whole point of this power is to give the commission the ability to disqualify an individual whose conduct clearly makes them unfit to be a charity trustee, where, if the commission were not to act, there would be a real risk, or at least a reputational risk, to charities.
We carefully considered the report of the Joint Committee on the draft protection of charities Bill, and made improvements to this provision as a result. More detail about the operation of the provision has been included in the Bill, and it is now a three-limbed test: first, one of the conditions A to F must be satisfied; secondly, the commission must consider that the person’s conduct makes them unfit to be a charity trustee, and draft guidance has been published on that; and, thirdly, the commission must consider that exercising the power is in the public interest, to protect public trust and confidence in charities. While the power may be relatively broad, its use would be targeted. The commission has said that it expects to use this power on a relatively low number of occasions each year.
The commission already has the power to act, and has done so, in cases where there has been a collective failure of trustees in relation to systemic governance issues. The powers to remove trustees in Sections 79 and 80 of the Charities Act 2011 do not explicitly or implicitly contain any restriction on removing trustees where that leaves one or none in place. Neither does the proposed disqualification power in Clause 10. There is, therefore, no reason why the commission would not remove all trustees on the ground of ensuring the safety and protection of children, where this was appropriate, proportionate and in accordance with best regulatory principles.
In circumstances where there is an impact on the beneficiaries of the charity, the commission has tended to appoint an interim manager, under Section 76 of the Charities Act 2011, to ensure the continued operation of the charity and to get it back on track before new trustees can be appointed and take over. However, there has been a case—and I will not name the particular charity concerned—where the commission has removed all 10 trustees on the board for collective governance failings.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, made a point about trustees having joint liability. The Charity Commission is required to act proportionately and so, in most cases, would target regulatory action on those most culpable or responsible for misconduct or mismanagement.
The noble Baroness’s amendment deals specifically with collective trustee failure relating to safeguarding. We would not want to cast any doubt on the commission’s existing liability to take action relating to collective trustee failures, or limit that by making specific provision. On the basis that the commission can, and does, already act to address collective trustee failures where it is proportionate to do so, I hope the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I thank the Minister, particularly on that second point. The reassurance that action for collective failure can be taken answers the point we were seeking to make.
On reporting, I have greater concerns. In answer to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott, we know of schools where abuse that was taking place was not being reported. Clearly, the recommendations and guidelines for reporting are not being followed. This is the problem. You have an educational establishment where abuse is going on and it is not being reported. It is that failure to report which gives rise to concern.
The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson said that we expect trustees to behave responsibly. Of course—but this issue is where they do not. I have now heard the phrase “red tape” used twice and I jib slightly every time I hear “red tape bandwagon”. It is not red tape. We are talking about protecting vulnerable people.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
The noble Baroness has used the word “complacent”. She has used the phrase “red tape”. Nobody is in any way complacent about the importance of protecting children. The question is how do we do it effectively and are we getting the right answers to make it happen, or is it coming at a cost that is out of all proportion? One can argue that there is no cost too high, but the reality is that we have to have a system that ensures we get the proportionate, right result. Is this system going to be perfect? I have never said that it would be, but we need not be complacent about it. What we are trying to do is to give trustees the confidence to decide what is best for their charity, rather than saying, “Here is all this wraparound that you have to look at”, which terrifies them and means that people do not become trustees at all.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
The noble Lord is absolutely right. Are we doing it properly? Representatives of abused people are coming to me, saying, “No, it is not working right”. That is the difference between us. We are hearing that there is a failure at present. There has to be a balance. The noble Lord is saying, “No, we have it about right”. The people representing the families of abused children where something did not happen are saying, “No, it is not right”. This is a charity Bill. If they are correct that it is not working properly, this is our opportunity to make it better. This is what we are seeking to do.
The order of the guidelines may be historical, but the issue is that, sadly, we know far more about sex abuse than we used to. It is probably already going on. It happened to my aunt when she was a child—she would be 109 if she was alive. This is not new, but we know more about it. Sadly, we know that it is far more common than we think. We are trying to do something to make reporting and awareness of it better. The only difference between us is that we are hearing from the charities concerned that the policies and the reporting requirements do not seem to be working. We are trying to get it right.
I, of course, defer to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, about whether the phrasing should be “direct beneficiaries” or,
“who are within the objects of the charity”.
We were trying to say,
“those people for whom they provide a service”.
I am not going to try to draft, but we are talking about establishments that provide a service for a group of people where there is some sort of abuse going on and they fail to notice it. It is well hidden; people do not come along in dirty macs to abuse children. Either trustees really do not know because they do not have the qualifications, or they are not dealing with it properly and are not reporting it. We are trying to lift the bar.
Lord Bridges of Headley
I want to make this one point to the noble Baroness. I asked the commission what its communication to the sector would be when the relevant changes on automatic disqualification come in. I completely agree that we need to ensure that not only are these new measures properly communicated, but we take the opportunity to remind all charities of their existing responsibilities, not just on this, but on other issues, although I would suggest especially on this. I will not bore the Committee with the six bullet points that I have been given about e-newsletters, press releases et cetera, but I can assure the noble Baroness that I have asked the Charity Commission to do this. It has given me its assurances, which I am happy to pass on.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
That is helpful. Having been reassured about the ability to take action where there is a collective failure, we probably will not pursue that. We may, however, want to come back on the bar on reporting.
Lord Scott of Foscote
I wonder if the noble Baroness could help me with one point. If a scholarship is set up for a particular school, the money is charitable money and is used to provide scholarships for people who perhaps otherwise would not be able to go to the school. I find it extraordinary to suppose that the trustees of the charity must examine what is going on in the school to see that there are no misdemeanours among the staff towards the boys or things like that. If that is the intention of the proposed new clause, it seems to me that it is full of difficulties. If that is not the intention then the wording is not quite right.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
If they are the trustees of the school they have that responsibility now.
Lord Scott of Foscote
They are not trustees of the school; they are trustees of the charitable trust that is funding the scholarships.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
The wording may not be right, but we are talking about where, basically, they are running an establishment, such as a music school. They are the trustee running the school; they therefore have these responsibilities. They cannot say, “I am a trustee, it is not my responsibility”. They have the responsibility to ensure that they have the right management and that they are trained correctly. It is some time since I have done that, but they have to have those policies in place. This group of people, who are running an organisation either for children or for vulnerable people, has that responsibility.
The bit that we are trying to add is where it has come to their notice—or they have not asked the question right—that abuse is going on in those areas where they have responsibility. We want it to be a duty on them, not just in guidelines, that they should report that abuse. I am not a draftsperson, but what we are driving at is probably clear. It is raising the bar of when they need to report. The guidelines are already there, the duties are on them, and what we are hearing is that sadly some trustees fail to report what they should. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Regulation of Political Opinion Polling Bill [HL]
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, yesterday we had a fairly full discussion in the Moses Room, led by my noble friend Lord Lipsey, about political opinion polling and, from the Labour Party position, the very regrettable failure of the electorate to live up to the forecasting of the polls and the expectations of our candidates. Today we have been fortunate to have further expertise from my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and the noble Lord, Lord Cooper of Windrush, who did not speak yesterday but who enlightened us today with reminders of random sampling quotas, margins of errors, scattering, and things that some of us were taught a long time ago.
Your Lordships will, I hope, be pleased to know that I am not going to repeat what I said yesterday. There is a very full report in Hansard for any who are interested. All I will say is that when pollsters get it wrong, as in 1992, this year, or indeed in the Scottish referendum, it has serious consequences if the reporting of such misleading polls influences either the behaviour of parties or more seriously the behaviour of voters. The motivation behind this Bill is therefore genuine and serious, because of the influence that polling can have and for the reasons that my noble friend Lord Lipsey has just given. There is a special responsibility on pollsters, and on the media that report them, to raise their game.
Whether the answer set out in the Bill is the correct one is a matter for further debate. I certainly share some of the worries about the pre-approval of sampling and other methods, as that could stifle innovation and lead to even more clustering and huddling. I also cannot see that there could be acceptable or non-acceptable questions, and I share the concerns about the stifling of free speech if solid polling research was banned. However, as I said yesterday, there is some urgency to raising the industry’s standards, especially before we have to face the first recall ballot for an MP, where perhaps in a single constituency a vote to trigger a by-election could be heavily influenced by some local, and possibly shoddy, polling. We also need to think about how to curtail the drive for that cheap, headline-grabbing polling, undertaken clearly for commercial rather than for domestic gain—with speed being of the essence rather than accuracy, in the words of my noble friend Lord Foulkes. Furthermore, we should look at how polls are reported; they are often made the lead story rather than background intelligence.
The issues raised by this Bill are too important to be left just to pollsters, because these issues affect what information is placed before the electorate and whether that will change and influence their votes and therefore who forms the Government. I regret that the current inquiry, good though it may be as a first step, has failed to include a much wider source of expertise, both from outside the UK but also from campaigners, candidates and journalists—or perhaps, in the light of what we have just heard, bookies—who also have an interesting take on the use and relevance of polls. It is not just those who put them together who have an interest in this but those who use their outcome.
We are very strict about what candidates can say, especially about their opponents, and how much they and political parties can spend, but we give free rein to newspapers to champion a party or campaign on an issue with no limit on expenditure. A number increasingly give coverage to their own commissioned polls which they then cover as fact. As I confessed yesterday, I was particularly wounded in 1992 and this year by having fallen for the polls, but my disappointment is of no consequence. What matters is if voters were similarly persuaded and if their subsequent vote was affected by that. For this reason, I welcome the debate that my noble friend has engineered today, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Opinion Polling
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, like the right reverend Prelate, I will keep more to the May election. ComRes has been mentioned quite a lot and I read just after the election that it said that it had had been a,
“difficult few days for pollsters”.
They should have tried being in the Labour Party. The nub of the problem is that the pollsters got it wrong, as in 1992 when I experienced the same 10 o’clock shock. I was sitting alongside the then deputy leader of the Labour Party, Roy Hattersley, whose minder I was at the time. I had anticipated him being Home Secretary within a few hours. So I am a bit bitten by this.
While 1992 and 2015 may have been bad for business for the pollsters, it raises bigger issues for the country and for those seeking to run it if the publication of misleading polls alters voting behaviour. Of course, in moments of loss such as I and my noble friend went through that night, we activists feel that blow, and we are reminded of course of Bertolt Brecht’s “Die Lösung”:
“Nach dem Aufstand des 17 Juni”.
Yesterday, therefore, was the anniversary of when the country,
“Had forfeited the confidence of the government”,
making the solution,
“for the government to dissolve the people and elect another”.
The temptation to do that on 7 May was great.
However, the more serious question posed by my noble friend Lord Lipsey is serious, albeit that he has concentrated on a different variety of polling: namely, that commissioned by or for a particular campaign, often with loaded questions. He is, of course, one of the most experienced in the field, having studied, used, commissioned, interpreted and reported on polls since I first worked alongside him in 1970.
The problem we discuss today is an old one: whether our reliance on soothsayers and fortune tellers, or indeed bookies, can affect our actions or policies. Pollsters are not soothsayers, but because of the role that they play in how we as politicians frame our campaigning and even our policies, and in how voters choose to vote, there is a special responsibility on them to raise their game, as there is on the media that report them.
My noble friend brilliantly covered the traps and shortcomings of some polling. While we acknowledge that the polls have often been accurate, today’s debate is about where the sampling, the methodology or the questions failed the industry and the body politic. I would worry about any pre-approving of sampling or other methods, as this could stifle innovation and lead to even more clustering or huddling. I also cannot see that there can be acceptable or, perhaps more importantly, unacceptable questions. However, there is some urgency to improving the industry, especially before we face the first recall ballot for an MP, where, in a single constituency, a vote to trigger a by-election could be heavily influenced by some local—and possibly shoddy or loaded—polling.
However, I wonder whether the industry has the appetite to do more itself. Has enough yet happened in the way of peer reviewing its academic approach in order to raise standards or to guard against the drive for cheap, headline-grabbing polling, undertaken for commercial rather than democratic gain? As my noble friend suggested, I do not perhaps share his faith in the ASA model, but I share with him the desire for improvement and for the industry to take a long, hard look at how it produced its figures.
However, that is only part of the story. As the right reverend Prelate suggested, we also have to look at how polls are reported, not only by newspapers but by radio and TV, which sadly too often take their agenda from the papers and can make the poll a lead story rather than background intelligence. We should also look at how this translates on the doorstep. Part of my own shock at the 10 pm exit poll came from the fact that I had mostly been campaigning in London, where my own experience pretty closely reflected that of the published polls and therefore gave me too much confidence that they were right elsewhere. I would be interested to hear from experienced campaigners outside London whether their feel was different from the published polls and whether voters’ responses appeared influenced by their expectation of the outcome.
The opinion poll inquiry has, I think, been called comprehensive. Sadly, I do not find that. It is very UK-focused, as if we have nothing to learn from elsewhere, and also misses the input of candidates and campaigners; and indeed of journalists, who may have tales to tell of how they were given the data—exactly when, how close to when they had to use them and with what spin. There is also the question of the degree to which news reporting and the polling were so intertwined that there was no independent review between one activity and the other. As the noble Lord, Lord McColl, noted, the inquiry will be holding a public meeting tomorrow afternoon, I think at the Royal Statistical Society. I hope that some of those wider questions can be posed there.
The issues raised today are important—perhaps too important to be left to pollsters. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Lipsey on initiating the debate and on sharing his considerable expertise. I look forward to the thoughts of the Minister, who—I told the House this last week but some noble Lords may not have been there to hear it—placed a bet 12 months ago on a Conservative majority of 12. Perhaps we should just replace the pollsters with the Minister.
Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great privilege as well as a great pleasure to have heard the Minister’s maiden speech—I assume, in this case, written by himself—and to welcome him as a trustee of the Foundation Years Trust, a charity that aims, as he said, to develop and action the findings of Frank Field’s review of poverty, a review that was set up to prevent poor children becoming poor adults. The noble Lord’s work at Santander and Quiller Consultants, which advises multinational companies, may be slightly less relevant to this Bill, but we hope that it will be of use to him on his other portfolio. However, the experience that the House might appreciate most is indeed his time as a political secretary at No. 10, so if anyone can find his way around Whitehall, we trust that it is him. However, what my party would like is some of his political nous. Not only was he involved in the perhaps unexpected 1992 election victory, but a year ago he placed a bet on an overall Tory majority in 2015 of 12. So I congratulate him on his flutter and indeed on his assured maiden over at the crease. We wish him well in the tasks ahead.
Perhaps I may also pay tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, on his pre-legislative Joint Committee report, and to the committee members, including my noble friend Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, who unfortunately cannot be with us today but I know will play an active role later in our proceedings, and my noble friend Lord Watson of Invergowrie, who joins me on the Front Bench for this Bill, along with my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark.
I turn now to my own declaration of interests. I have been the chief executive of two charities and the director of corporate affairs of the country’s largest one. I have been the chair of a small charity and I remain a trustee of two. It will therefore be no surprise that we support independent charities, harnessing as they do philanthropy, volunteering and social commitment. We celebrate the million trustees who give of their time, expertise and dedication to help make Britain a kinder, more interesting and caring society.
I hope that the Minister will be relieved to know that the Bill poses us no problems, and we are content to support its Second Reading. But there are some additional powers for the Charity Commission, and responsibilities for charities that should be added.
Let me start with a concern arising from the recent lobbying Act—it is before the Minister’s time, so he does not have to take the pain for this—which undermines the freedom of charities to speak out on behalf of beneficiaries. I was moved by the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds last week, when he quoted from the Book of Proverbs:
“Open thy mouth for the dumb”,
or, in his words,
“give a voice to the experience of those who otherwise are silenced”.—[Official Report, 1/6/15; col. 209.]
That is what charities have long done, but the Government sought to curtail that in the lobbying Act. We will seek to spell out in the Bill the common-law position permitting charities to speak out on issues in line with their objectives. This will give confidence to trustees that they are free to further their objectives in this way.
We are not against the right to buy, but we query the Government’s plan to force housing associations to sell their assets, against their will, regardless of their trust deed, their source of funds or the decision of their trustees. Ninety per cent of housing associations are charities and their property is not state property, so it is not the Government’s to dispose of. It is private property; it may have been donated for a particular cause, such as providing homes for autistic or disabled people, the retired, the homeless, recovering substance abusers or, indeed, a religious community; or the property might be built on rural exception sites in the National Planning Policy Framework, intended for affordable housing in perpetuity. Not only might it be a breach of covenant to use these assets for other purposes, but once sold and resold a sheltered block or a therapeutic or supportive community could be broken up as new private owners or tenants of buy to let with different lifestyles move in.
Charity assets are preserved by legislation for public benefit and may be used only for the purposes defined in the charity’s trust deed. Furthermore, charity law requires a charity to dispose of its assets in furtherance of its charitable objectives, and that does not mean simply for money. Indeed, the second part of the Bill, which the Minister has outlined, allows charities to use their funds as social investment, and we welcome this. Funds will also be used in the provision of homes for the homeless. But that will be completely undone if such homes have to be sold off, and then no doubt resold, as the owner can cash in on the Government’s subsidy.
There are small almshouses, there are “supporting people” charities, and there are large charities such as Peabody—150 years old, with 27,000 homes and its own Act of Parliament. Its chair has said:
“Peabody’s assets belong to us. They are not the government’s to sell”.
All are governed by charity law, based on principles dating from Elizabethan times to preserve charitable assets. Do the Government propose to amend charity law so as to override the trust deed or trustees’ wishes in order to implement their policy?
The Bill will rightly exclude people who have supported terrorism from being trustees, as well as people involved in money laundering or just subject to an IVA. But the Bill does not exclude people convicted of serious sexual offences; they would be debarred only after a complaint to the Charity Commission, leaving the responsibility for checking with other trustees, who may themselves have been involved in such activity or, if completely innocent, be unaware of the background of a new trustee. This cannot be right when charities have access to children or others with vulnerabilities. We want the Bill to add being on the sexual offences register to the automatic exclusions, which will still be subject to the normal waiver provisions.
We will also look to strengthen the Bill so that vulnerable people and children are properly protected. There are some worrying cases where charities become closed shops when abuse is uncovered. The Charity Commission should be able to investigate the fitness of trustees and consider replacing them where the charity fails to deal with abuse allegations. It is surely right for the commission, in regulating trustees, to have a duty to safeguard and protect children and vulnerable adults. Suspected child abuse should be as big a red flag as suspected financial misconduct. Could the Minister let us know the Government’s thinking on this issue?
Your Lordships will be aware of the tragic suicide of Olive Cooke, a 92 year-old poppy seller.
Baroness Corston (Lab)
My noble friend will be interested to know that one of the best experiences of my 13 years as Member of Parliament for Bristol East was my friendship with Olive Cooke. She had a face that could light up a room. She was one of the kindest people I knew. I always looked forward to her letters, giving me general and continual advice. Her outstanding contribution—selling more poppies for Remembrance Sunday than any other person in this country—is well documented. But the fact that a person who was, on the face of it, such a strong woman should feel driven in part to her death by being, in a way, prejudiced by her commitment to charitable giving, which was legendary, is quite a stain on our charitable sector.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
We have, indeed, heard many tributes to Olive Cooke from her family, from her friends and from the successor to my noble friend in Bristol for all the work that she did not just in selling poppies but in her charitable work. While her family do not think that the action of charities and their fundraising were responsible for her death, it is clear that Olive was persistently contacted by many charities and, being the generous and caring person of whom we have just heard, found it hard to say no.
Since the media coverage of her death, hundreds have come forward to say that they too have come under pressure. A major concern is where elderly relatives, sometimes suffering from dementia, have been targeted. Meanwhile, Croydon has become the 100th authority to have to crack down on chuggers, and at the weekend the Mail on Sunday reported some underhand methods of a private company working for Oxfam, the RSPCA and Cancer Research UK that broke every rule in the book to make money for itself as well as for the charities.
Many, including the vulnerable, feel hassled and harangued by charities, including by cold calling. I have my doubts whether cold calling is ever acceptable. Indeed, we strengthened the Consumer Rights Bill in an attempt to stamp it out. I regret the Government’s failure to live up to their promise to provide call-barring facilities to the particularly vulnerable, but while cold calling from a charity might elicit a donation, it could be at the expense of the trust that people have in charities, as the Minister just described. Furthermore, securing one donation can lead to a ratcheting up of demands, as many stories, including that in the Mail, have demonstrated. Indeed, the UK Giving report showed that a majority of donors agreed:
“I am worried that if I give I will just be asked for more”.
The sad case of Olive Cooke and the Mail’s exposé show that existing self-regulation is not working. A third of fundraising charities are not even members of the Fundraising Standards Board. We will investigate how we might use the Bill to strengthen the commission’s role in ensuring that charity fundraising is properly regulated, possibly by requiring charities to sign up to the industry’s code and to belong to the standards board, or by giving the Charity Commission stronger reserve powers. Olive’s law, or at least getting all charities to be regulated by the FRSB, would be a lasting testimony to this woman’s lifetime of work for charity.
We support the Bill and its protections, but they will never work if there is no one to answer the phone or investigate concerns. ACEVO, the Charities Aid Foundation and the Charity Finance Group all question the feasibility of increasing the Charity Commission’s case load without a commensurate increase in its budget—a budget halved since 2007-08. We recognise the need for savings and for the effective use of resources, but does the Minister think it is realistic for government to give more work to the commission while drastically reducing its resources? We support an effective, robust regulator for the healthy development and growth of the charity sector. I look forward to working with the Minister on his first Bill to enable it really to contribute to the aim that I think we both share.
Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Bridges of Headley
I am brought up short. The noble and learned Lord is quite right: Mo Farah would be much better. Thanks to the noble and learned Lord’s hard work, and the work of so many others in this Chamber, I am pleased but not entirely surprised that rather than wheeling out the wrecking ball for this Bill, your Lordships have simply started to stick little pins into it before the House, to test, to probe and to clarify a little bit more. I very much welcome this, my first experience of legislative acupuncture, an experience I am told will leave me feeling invigorated, refreshed and revitalised.
Turning to address the points made, I hope to cover as many as I can, starting with some of the more detailed comments. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, asked whether we could amend Clause 8 to make it clear that there are other circumstances in which a third party may be unable to comply with the Charity Commission direction. I am sympathetic to this point as we want the provisions to work effectively. We will need to look at this in some more detail before Committee, as we will other words such as “privy”, which I think the noble and learned Lord also mentioned.
My noble friend Lord Lindsay referred to the complementary role that standards and accreditation could play alongside the new powers proposed in the Bill in addressing governance and trustee issues. I agree and I welcome the work being done by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service and the NCVO to explore the potential that standards and accreditation have to offer in the charity sector.
My noble friend Lord Hodgson made a number of incisive points, as one would expect. He asked for the tribunal appeal rights to be consolidated and simplified. While recognising his point, it is important to note that not all Charity Commission decisions are subject to appeal and the existing table of appeal rights provides a useful checklist of what decisions can be appealed and who can appeal them. The Charity Tribunal itself has, I am told, not expressed concerns about it in practice. My noble friend Lord Hodgson also asked for time to implement the Law Commission’s recommendations. I am sorry to say that I cannot give any guarantees, but my noble friend knows that the Government will look favourably on deregulatory and simplification measures.
A number of comments were made about the social investment aspects of the Bill, and I am very encouraged and heartened by the interest that your Lordships paid to this. The noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, for example, made a number of perceptive points about social investment, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. I would very much like to meet with both of them to pick their brains, as they clearly have a lot of experience in this sector. I know that the noble Viscount sits on a number of foundations, and it is quite clear from the noble Baroness’s very eloquent speech that she, too, has a lot to offer.
My noble friend Lord Borwick made some very interesting points on the definition of social investment, including a slightly detailed point on mixed-motive investment. I will not detain the House on that point now but I would be delighted to discuss it with him, as I would with my noble friend Lord Bridgeman. As regards the naming of charities, a point which my noble friend Lord Borwick brought up, I simply point out that it is an offence to call yourself a charity if you are not; and as regards charitable income, charities must now declare income from central and local government in their accounts.
I turn to my noble friend Lord Moynihan’s remarks about independent schools, and pay tribute to the extensive and fantastic work that he has done in this area and on sports in general. He made some interesting points about the public benefit test. I would like to make it clear that charities already have to report on their public benefit in their trustees’ annual report. However, I would be happy to meet my noble friend before Committee to discuss the points that he has raised. Likewise, I would like to discuss the public benefit issue with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who also brought this up in a number of ways.
Perhaps I may turn to some of the substantive points in the Bill itself. Clause 3, as noble Lords will remember, will enable the Charity Commission to take account of other relevant evidence of a person’s conduct in the context of a statutory inquiry into a charity. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Low, raised concerns about this. I would simply point to several safeguards on this point, and I shall do so quickly. First, there must be a statutory inquiry open and the Charity Commission must be satisfied that there is misconduct or mismanagement linked to the individual in that charity before it can rely on conduct from outside the charity in its decision-making. Secondly, when exercising its powers the commission must provide a statement of reasons which sets out the evidence it relied on in making the decision. This would include any evidence it relied on from outside the charity. Finally, there is a right of appeal to the Charity Tribunal in relation to the exercise of the commission’s compliance and remedial powers, ensuring judicial oversight of the exercise of the power.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Low, also referred to Clause 7, which contains a power to direct a charity to be wound up. As your Lordships will know, the commission’s usual practice is to restore a charity to health following an inquiry. However, in some very rare cases—and I stress they are rare—it would be more appropriate for any remaining assets to be transferred to another charity. The commission can already do that under existing powers, but now the commission will have the power needed for the shell to be wound up. This power is available only in the context of a statutory inquiry where there is misconduct or mismanagement, or risk to charity property. In addition, the commission must be satisfied that the charity does not operate, or that its purpose could be more effectively promoted if it were to cease to operate, and that the exercise of this power is expedient in the public interest. There is also a requirement for the commission to publish details of a proposed winding-up order and invite representations. A winding-up order can be appealed to the tribunal. So, there are a number of safeguards around that clause too.
Two points were made on Clause 9, which concerns the automatic disqualification powers that the Charity Commission is to be given. The noble Baronesses, Lady Hayter and Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Low, among others, raised this point. I am sure that we will discuss this further in Committee. As regards their wish for sex offences to be added to the list, I would simply say that there is an existing regime to ensure the suitability of anyone in a charity with unsupervised access to children and vulnerable adults. Whether they are a trustee, an employee or anyone else, they must all have had a Disclosure and Barring Service check. It would be impractical for the Bill to break down the charities type by type and prescriptively list criteria for automatic disqualification in each case. Charities should be trusted to make their own decisions on how suitable a potential trustee is when recruiting. Where charities fail to take their safeguarding responsibilities seriously, the Charity Commission can and does intervene to take regulatory action.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
Does the Minister accept that that occurs only after someone has been abused?
Lord Bridges of Headley
I would point out, if I may finish my point, that under the Bill the commission would also be able to rely on the disqualification power if a person’s conduct clearly made them unfit to serve as a trustee or senior manager of a particular charity or class of charities. The commission’s draft guidance on how it would exercise the disqualification power makes clear that it could be used in the circumstances. This is made clear on page 4, under paragraph (b)(i) concerning condition F. I know that we will probably return to this point in Committee, so I hope the noble Baroness will forgive me for going on right now.
Also as regards Clause 9, the noble Baronesses, Lady Barker and Lady Brinton, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, were among a number of your Lordships who raised the issues that counterterrorism legislation might have in this context. I have been fortunate enough to talk to a number of your Lordships about this point and I recognise that there is a concern for some charities operating in some of the most difficult parts of the world—not just the Middle East, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, pointed out. However, I would point out that several government departments, including the Home Office, the Treasury and DfID as well as the Charity Commission and the Cabinet Office, are engaging with NGOs to understand their concerns and ensure that, wherever possible, they are given proper guidance.
In many cases there is already detailed guidance dealing with the points that were raised, and it may be a case where better signposting is needed. We are also not aware of any legitimate NGO worker who has been convicted in the UK under the counterterrorism legislation. Providing some sort of exemption for charities from aspects of counterterrorism legislation may sound attractive, but I would argue that it could create a loophole in the law that could be exploited by the unscrupulous—something which I am sure we would all want to avoid. I was particularly struck by the remarks made on this point by the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, given his extensive experience in this area, and I thank him for his contribution.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, raised Clause 10, particularly as regards whether condition F in the proposed new section is too broad. This condition needs to be considered in the context of other criteria for the exercise of the disqualification power, namely the test of fitness that disqualification,
“is desirable in the public interest … to protect public trust and confidence in charities”,
and the safeguards relating to the operation of the power, including the right of appeal to the Charity Tribunal. The Charity Commission’s draft guidance on how it would exercise the power should provide reassurance that it will use the power only when there is a clear case for doing so; that the commission would clearly explain what it would take into account before using the power; and that in exercising the power, the commission would provide an explanation identifying the conduct in question and why it thought that the conduct met condition F.
I turn to some of the wider issues that have been raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and a number of other noble Lords raised the tragic case of Olive Cooke. This was a very sad case and I start by paying my condolences to the family of Olive Cooke and pay tribute to her outstanding work in the field of charity, which the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, referred to. I would like to say here that the charity sector needs to move quickly and firmly to show that self-regulation works in the best interests of the public and that fundraising can set itself sufficiently high standards to meet public expectations.
Last week, my honourable friend the Minister for Civil Society met with three chief executives of the self-regulatory bodies. He made it clear that action must be taken quickly to protect the long-term reputation of charities. The self-regulation bodies agreed to pull together a plan of action that could be taken in the short term, together with plans to work on in the longer term. The FRSB published its interim report yesterday, and its findings and recommendations are being discussed at the Institute of Fundraising’s standards committee today—a point, I think, that the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, was referring to. Charities need to ask for funds, but that is not an inalienable right and it needs to be exercised responsibly, particularly if we are to protect public trust and confidence in charities for the long term.
A number of your Lordships raised the issue of charity campaigning, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayter and Lady Pitkeathley, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson. The Government have been consistently clear that charities have the right to campaign within the law and that this can be a valuable way in which charities can further their charitable purposes. The Charity Commission’s guidance, CC9, makes it clear that charity law recognises that campaigning can be a legitimate activity for charities and sets out the general principles. The Charity Commission keeps all its guidance under review to ensure that it remains relevant and up to date. The commission has monitored charities’ observance of the guidance during the election campaign and is considering the findings from that monitoring along with the impact of the lobbying Act and other issues relating to the current guidance. The Charity Commission will need to take account of any findings of the statutory review of Part 2 of the transparency of lobbying Act by my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbots. If the commission considers revisions should be made to CC9, it has committed to say so publicly and to consult widely.
I turn to housing associations, right to buy and their charitable assets. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, raised the Government’s policy to extend right to buy. This, of course, is being taken forward in another Bill. The Government are determined that anyone who works hard and wants to get on the property ladder should have the chance to do so. There is indeed, as the noble Baroness knows, a precedent for housing association tenants accessing discounts to enable them to buy their own home. I believe many people exercised the right to buy their housing association home between 1997 and 2010.
Finally, a number of your Lordships raised the resources and role of the Charity Commission, including the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Watson of Invergowrie. I would make two points. First, on its resources, if we are to bring down the deficit, we need to make savings and efficiencies right across government, and that includes the Charity Commission. The Treasury has agreed a sensible settlement for 2015-16 with the Charity Commission, based on its forecast needs and focused on protecting its investigation and enforcement functions. The 2015-16 settlement also increased the Charity Commission’s capital budget by £500,000 to invest in a new digital online system for charities to file their annual accounts. This will improve the Charity Commission’s efficiency and help it to identify and tackle fraud and mismanagement. I also welcome the £8 million investment in the Charity Commission announced last October by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. All this will help the Charity Commission refocus its regulatory activity on proactive monitoring and enforcement in the highest risk areas, such as the abuse of charities for terrorist and other criminal purposes, such as tax avoidance and fraud. Secondly, as regards supporting charities, I am confident that the Charity Commission will get the balance right between regulator and adviser, and I was heartened to read what the National Audit Office said in its interim report.
I look forward to debating and discussing these measures, and more, in more detail with your Lordships in the weeks ahead. As I said, my door is always open. That said, I would be grateful if your Lordships do not follow the example set by my formidable great-aunt, who was general secretary of the Women’s Institute during the Second World War. I am told that when she ran into some bureaucratic obstacle, she found that the best way of overcoming it was to harry Ministers by ringing them at home well before breakfast. That is something that I recommend your Lordships do not follow, as you may get my four year-old daughter, who is twice as formidable as her great-great-aunt.
This Bill is just one part of the Government’s programme to strengthen the fabric of our nation—one nation. In myriad ways, in every community across the land, charities are performing that vital role. Some are tiny, others enormous—together they are a golden thread, weaving together those who want to do their bit. The Bill will give the Charity Commission strengthened powers to tackle abuse so as to maintain the public’s trust in charities, and it will enable those who have to do still more to help those who have not. I thank your Lordships for all your contributions today and for the many months spent scrutinising the Bill’s proposals. I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.