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Charities Bill

My hon. Friend, whose main interest is in motor sport, recognises that we are, for the first time, classing amateur sport as a charitable purpose. In doing so, the main aim was to promote healthy recreation, so sport has been defined as, in many ways, involving physical skill and exertion. I am not sure how much motor sport fulfils that criterion. However, the Charity Commission, in consultation with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, will be willing to consider any representations on what exactly the addition to charitable purposes will mean. As my hon. Friend suggests, and as hon. Members’ earlier interventions made clear, once one puts any new definition into a Bill, there arise all sorts of questions about its interpretation. One of the aspects that Ministers are struggling with is the possibility that putting certain things into the Bill will raise uncertainties in the minds of charitable organisations, and others, as to whether they will be covered. I am anxious not to put money into lawyers’ pockets, so I am being fairly careful in that respect. The scope of charities has developed over the centuries to reflect changes in what society has at any one time regarded as worthy of inclusion. Some sorts of endeavour, such as the relief of poverty, have always been seen as charitable, while others, such as the promotion of human rights, have been accepted relatively recently. Clause 2 provides a list of the many forms of charitable endeavour or charitable purposes, at the same time preserving the flexibility to recognise new charitable purposes in order to accommodate future changes in society. The Bill does not take away the charitable status of any purpose that is already charitable. No charity will wake up on the day after the Bill becomes law to find that as a result the purpose for which it exists has ceased to qualify as charitable. An organisation cannot be a charity unless its purposes are exclusively charitable. That means that its purposes must fall wholly within the purposes listed in the Bill. To qualify as a charity, an organisation must not only have exclusively charitable purposes but be for the public benefit. The Bill preserves the existing law on the definition and test of public benefit, with one change. Under the existing law, there is the presumption that charities established for the relief of poverty, the advancement of education or the advancement of religion are for the public benefit. Charities established for all other purposes do not benefit from that presumption. The Bill abolishes that presumption. That will create a level playing field on which all charities will have to show that they are for the public benefit. To do so, an organisation will have to show that it generates identifiable benefits that reach, or are available to, a sufficiently large section of the public. Given the great diversity of charitable endeavour, the nature of those benefits and how they reach the public will vary greatly.