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Charities Bill

Again, I shall deal with that later in my speech. The hon. Gentleman says that he wants to deal with the Bill in sequence, but I have not yet begun to deal with the Bill—I was still in my preamble. The Bill will make improvements in several areas of the law and in the regulation of charities. The most important improvements concern the definition of ““charity””, the constitution, functions and powers of the Charity Commission as regulator and in its relationship with the Government, the creation of a new corporate legal form for charities, which will be called the charitable incorporated organisation, changes to ensure that effective and proportionate regulation applies right across the charitable sector, including those charities which are not currently required to register with the Charity Commission, and the regulation of people who collect in public for charity. I shall deal with each of those specific areas in more detail. The Bill is the result of a thorough process, including extensive consultation with charities themselves and significant time spent in the other place. I know that many hon. Members are active trustees, volunteers and, indeed, supporters of charities, and they are well aware of the strong support for the Bill across the breadth of the charitable sector. The Bill originated in a review by the Prime Minister’s strategy unit, which was published in 2002, of charities and the wider not-for-profit sector. We received more than 1,000 responses to the public consultation on that review, and those responses showed clear and strong support for the great majority of the review’s recommendations, which form the main content of the Bill. The Bill was published in draft in May 2004, and it received thorough pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee, which was skilfully chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn), who is in his place today. The Government accepted more than three quarters of the Joint Committee’s recommendations, and the Bill emerged the better for it. The Bill was first introduced in December 2004 in another place, where it was extensively debated, and it fell when Parliament was dissolved in April last year for the general election. It was reintroduced at the first opportunity in this Parliament, and it has had more than 60 hours of debate so far. It has been well over a decade since any significant changes have been made to charity law, and many of the aspects of the current law are considerably older than that. Charity law has simply not kept pace with changes in our society and in the diverse voluntary sector. The Bill extends to England and Wales, but not to Scotland or Northern Ireland, where charity law is a devolved matter. Even before devolution, there were three different systems of charity regulation in the UK—one for England and Wales, one for Scotland and one for Northern Ireland. In July 2005, the Scottish Parliament passed an Act including many of the reforms that our Charities Bill will make for England and Wales, and similar proposals are being worked up in Northern Ireland. After all those reforms have been enacted, the three systems will continue to be compatible without being identical. The Charities Bill contains 78 clauses and 10 schedules, and it is divided into four parts. Part 1 of the Bill contains the provisions defining ““a charity””, which are very important. Any organisation which falls within the definition gains access not only to valuable tax exemptions, but to a special status, which enjoys a high degree of popular trust and confidence.