Volunteering Bill

Debate between Christopher Pincher and Christopher Chope

Friday 10th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. I must congratulate the Government and the Chancellor of the Exchequer on raising from 40p to 45p the allowance for volunteer drivers, and also on including the 5p per passenger addition, which means that someone can claim 50p per mile for taking one person to or from hospital and 55p per mile for taking two people. That is an important and useful initiative, but I am not sure—I hope the Minister will have a chance to respond to this point—that under the current law, such volunteers need a CRB check. It is absolute madness if they do.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

Here’s looking at you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Without wishing to give the House the impression that I am a great proponent of pettifogging CRB checks, may I ask my hon. Friend about his proposed declaration certificate? How should somebody who signs such a certificate erroneously be sanctioned, because if there is no sanction, surely there is no point in those certificates?

[Mr Chope]

I am not sure that that is correct, because obviously, making a false statement is potentially an offence. However, my hon. Friend gives me the opportunity to tell the House where I got the idea of the fit and proper person certificate from. I got the idea from none other than Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. You will know about this, Madam Deputy Speaker, because you perhaps invented it when you were a distinguished Treasury Minister.

HMRC decided that people who run or who are trustees of small charities might run off with the funds or take advantage of charitable exemptions under tax law. It therefore introduced a fit and proper persons test and declaration for people who run charities. The test applies essentially to managers, trustees of charities, directors of corporate charities and so on. In a typical smaller local charity, a manager, for the purposes of the fit and proper persons test, could include the chairperson, the treasurer, the secretary or someone on the management committee who has control over expenditure.

The HMRC leaflet on the test states:

“The ‘fit and proper persons’ test exists to ensure that charities,”

community interest associations

“and other organisations entitled to charity tax reliefs are not managed or controlled by individuals who might misuse the valuable tax reliefs the organisation receives. Unfortunately fraudsters have been known to exploit charity tax reliefs so the fit and proper persons test exists to help prevent that”.

What does ‘fit and proper’ mean?

“An individual is ‘fit and proper’ if they ensure that charity funds and tax reliefs are used only for charitable purposes.”

What must a person do to satisfy HMRC that they are a fit and proper person? The guidance states that they must sign a declaration that sets out the name of the organisation, the name of the individual and their role in the organisation. The person must declare that they are not disqualified from acting as a charity trustee; have not been convicted of an offence involving deception or dishonesty; have not been involved in tax fraud; are not an undischarged bankrupt; have not made compositions or arrangements with creditors from which they have not been discharged; have not been removed from serving as a charity trustee in the past; and that they have not been disqualified from serving as a company director. They must also assert that at all times they will seek to ensure that the charity’s funds and tax reliefs are used only for charitable purposes. So that is all right for managers of charities handling probably quite substantial sums of money. The Treasury is saying, “We will take these statements on trust”. If we are to have a responsible society, we have to trust people. People say, “Well, what happens if the person turns out to be a rogue?” Exactly the same thing would happen as happened in the ghastly Plymouth day nursery case or in the case I cited earlier: the person would be brought to justice, although probably not until after a lot of damage had been done.

However many controls and regulations we bring in, we cannot pre-empt the activities of fraudsters, villains, inherent, compulsive liars, paedophiles or whoever. We have to be proportional and say, “What is the benefit of having CRB checks, bearing in mind that they do not prevent somebody who clears one from subsequently going off the rails?” What would be the benefit of not having those checks and having a much simpler system? My Bill, which adopts a simple system rather along the lines of the fit and proper person test for charity trustees, would meet the principle of proportionality. It deals only with volunteers. We are not talking about people engaged in full-time or part-time employment; we are talking about volunteers and people who, by their very nature, want to make a difference and add something to the equation. It is important for society not to deter, but to encourage those volunteers to come forward, so by removing the need for CRB checks, and making it nice and simple and easy, we will promote volunteering, which is the whole purpose of the Bill and volunteering week.