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Charities Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 43:"Page 110, line 19, after ““the”” insert ““copy of the””" The noble Lord said: My Lords, these amendments remove an anomaly brought about by the existing law and I ought to put on record my debt to the Charity Commission for the suggestion. Section 45 of the Charities Act 1993 requires all but the smallest registered charities to send their annual reports, their accounts and any report of an auditor or examiner to the Charity Commission each year. Section 46 of that Act also allows the commission to require some non-registered charities to send in these documents. I understand that, in practice, a large number of charities send the commission copies of the documents that I have referred to. Strictly speaking that fails to comply with the statutory requirement, which is for the actual documentation—not copies of it—to be sent in. A further anomaly is that the existing law also requires trustees to preserve their annual accounts for six years, which of course they cannot do if they comply with the requirement to send them to the commission. These amendments remove the requirement for charities to send in the originals of their documents and replace it with a requirement to send in copies. The amendments make the equivalent changes to the new group of accounts provisions. The amendments will also allow trustees to carry out their duty to preserve their annual accounts, since they will be retaining the originals while sending copies to the commission. Finally, they will require the trustees of a charity to preserve its annual report only if a copy of the report has not been required to be sent to the commission. I beg to move. On Question, amendment agreed to.