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Charities Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 20:"Page 7, line 22, at end insert—" ““6.   In performing its functions the Commission must have reasonable regard to the respective interests of trustees, charity staff, volunteers, donors, beneficiaries and other stakeholders in charities.”” The noble Lord said: The purpose of this amendment is to require the Charity Commission to have regard to the interests of the people involved in charities as well as a charity’s material assets. These people include the beneficiaries, who are often singularly unable to defend their own interests. The commission has sometimes acted without any thought for the consequences for a charity’s people. Indeed, I am told that one head of the investigations department notoriously said that any casualties among the trustees were an inevitable result of the investigations process. This approach can lead to an abuse of its position, which not only discourages the people concerned and others like them, but damages the charity in question and undermines the voluntary principle itself. There is a significant gap in the regulation of charities which has historically been concerned only with the material assets of a charity and ignored the charity’s people, whether they were assets such as trustees, volunteers and donors, or liabilities in the form of beneficiaries. As charities exist for their beneficiaries, it is rather odd that charity law allows the regulator to ignore their interests. I feel sure that, with the examples that I gave at Second Reading—which I shall not repeat now in order to save time—this   was an unintended consequence of the way in which the commission had acted. This amendment is designed to make members of the commission look before they leap and think how best they can deal with the matter without damaging those whom the charity is trying to support. I beg to move.