Charitable and Voluntary Sector

Lord Marland Excerpts

Thursday 30th April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland (Con)]

I refer to my registered interests as the chair or trustee of various charities, ranging from the military to the arts and legacy. Noble Lords have made it abundantly clear that funding is drying up as people rightly concentrate on health sector charities, and because the income and asset base of donors has been reduced as a result of this pandemic. Government support is very welcome, but it is temporary, as it should be. We therefore need to ask the Government to establish a giant incentive scheme to establish greater tax breaks by increasing the gift aid threshold, by creating huge tax breaks for the corporates so that they can focus on giving generously to charities, and perhaps by encouraging an in-life credit for legacies so that charities can more clearly predict the cashflow coming from wills. However, they should also set a limit per charity so that these sums can be widely distributed to a broad range of causes. I ask my noble friend the Minister to respond to this verbally later or in writing.