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Charities Bill [HL]

My Lords, I apologise, I did mean Amendment No. 5. I apologise for returning to this issue on Third Reading, but since we last considered these matters the Government have produced their education White Paper, which in my view has changed the climate in which this debate takes place. The problem at heart is that the Government believe that the public schools—including, for example, Eton and Harrow—are charities. I ask myself, ““Who in the Government believes this nonsense?””. In my 40 years’ membership of the Labour Party, I have never heard it argued that Eton is a charity. The public do not believe it, and neither do Labour MPs, as they will inevitably express in a few weeks when the Bill hits the House of Commons. The charitable status of public schools brings charity law into disrepute. The fee-paying schools desperately cling on to that status for the tax benefits. It is perfectly reasonable for public schools to have tax benefits because they reduce the pressure on public expenditure, but charity status is the wrong vehicle to use to provide those benefits. If the fee-paying schools want tax benefits, they should come under separate provisions in the Finance Act in return for providing public benefit. We should just take them out of the area of charity law. The Bill does not do that, though; it leaves it to the Charity Commission to decide their public benefit contribution. A Charity Commission that has left Eton, Harrow and other public schools as charities over the years has a question mark hanging over it. Indeed, during consideration in the Joint Committee, I asked around in the charitable sector why it was that the commission, in the view of some, was so timid. I did not like the reply, but I will put it to the House. I was told that it was because the commission’s management was riddled with people who have interests in private education for their own children, and they do not want to rock the boat. The truth is that I do not trust the judgment of the Charity Commission. They will duck the hard decisions on private education that are required, which brings me to my amendments. They are both about the need for political, parliamentary influence to be exerted on commission decisions in relation to fee-paying schools. Amendment No. 5 draws on the work of the Nathan committee, which made recommendations in 1950 about the future of charities. It recommended that the Charity Commission and the education Minister share responsibility for the charitable status of fee-paying schools, the reason being that the charitable, voluntary and endowed schools and the technically non-charitable LEA-maintained schools were part of the same national system. That position was written into the Charities Act 1960. As a result, until 1973, the Secretary of State for Education was charity commissioner for educational charities, and shared responsibility for those schools with the Charity Commission. In 1973, the government changed the law and removed that provision—primarily, many believe, in order to emphasise that there should be two separate school systems: one of fee-paying education out of the reach government for some, and a free education under government supervision for the others. In retrospect, that was a significantly deliberate political Act of Parliament. In 1974, a change of government took place, and a Select Committee of the Commons unanimously recommended that fee-paying schools should retain their charitable status only if they could prove public benefit. That then became my party’s policy. Today the Nathan principle is as compelling as it was in 1950 and 1960, and it is against that background that the Government, like their 19th-century predecessors, are seeking to create in their White Paper the concept of a national system of education that is more intact. I remind the House that, during the 19th century, governments of both parties assumed that fee-paying schools were part of the state system, and many committees and commissions were set up to keep a state system for education intact. Only yesterday the Times reported that a fee-paying charitable school in Liverpool was to become a maintained non-fee-paying school—a healthy development. That school has decided to become part of the non-fee-paying state system. In the circumstances of the new policy, it is absurd that the Charity Commission, which has little educational expertise, should, with the courts as a longstop, be effectively the only arbiter of the place of new maintained schools in the state system. Nathan was absolutely right: whatever the status of schools, the Secretary of State responsible for the national system of education should be given reasonable purchase on the shape, framework and operation of a new developing state system. My amendment would restore the shared responsibility between government and the Charity Commission that existed before 1973. I believe that my argument in this regard is compelling, and if your Lordships do not recognise that, I hope that the Commons does when it comes to consider these matters. Amendment No. 1 concerns the height of the public benefit hurdle that fee-paying schools will be compelled to surmount if they wish to maintain their charitable status. The issue has been well rehearsed in previous stages, and I do not want to go down that route. The Government’s brief, for which my noble friend is required to argue, has been unconvincing. It is an immensely political issue, and one that dominates debates on education in our party. Many obvious and genuine charities resent their charitable status being entangled by the Government with that of Eton, Harrow and the other fee-paying schools. The proposition that this criterion should simply be left to a quango—the Charity Commission—and the courts, bodies whose individual members cannot be considered disinterested parties in the light of their personal commitment to private education, is offensive. Decisions about the nature of public benefit should be enshrined in statute by Parliament, particularly by the elected House of Commons. If the latter amendment does not appeal to your Lordships, I hope that the Commons will see the sense of it. I beg to move.