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Charities Bill [Lords]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner), who is leading on this Bill from the Front Bench, for adopting my amendment. I hope that he has set a precedent, and that Opposition Front Benchers will always be keen to adopt my amendments. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink). At one stage, it looked as though I would be trapped with the wonderful ladies of the Berkshire women’s institute, and would not be here to move the amendment. My hon. Friend agreed to move it in the absence of an adoption by the Front-Bench spokesman, so I am grateful to him for that, and for the work that he has put in. Existing law already includes a presumption in favour of religious charities. I am not seeking to introduce something that has never been in the law before, to grant religious charities a privilege that they have never had before or to discriminate in their favour at the expense of everybody else. I am merely seeking to retain in our law something that the Government inexplicably want to remove. If there were evidence—my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight has already pointed out that there is none—that the part of our law that already makes a presumption in favour of religious charities was not working and was causing difficulty for the Charity Commission, for organised religion or for other charities, I would be much less certain. However, I always work on the principle, ““If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”” That particular presumption has served us for centuries, and I see no reason why it should not continue to do so. The right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) challenged my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight about the word ““pray”” and pointed out that organisations such as—although he did not mention them—the Scientologists pray. Some of the more obscure cults also pray—they prey, too—but they are already excluded under existing law, so the point is a red herring and has nothing to do with amendment No. 126, which simply tries to keep in our law a provision that has served us well and has caused no problems. I have had to ask myself why on earth the Government or the Charity Commission would want to ditch a law that works perfectly well. The agenda is set out in paragraphs 15, 23 and 24 of the Charity Commission report of January 2005, in which the commission states that public benefit must be assessed"““in the light of modern conditions””" and that keeping up with ““modern society”” is required if a charity is not to have its charitable status revoked. I would suggest that that means that there are already religious charities that would be in danger from the exclusion of the presumption. This is not only about new charities being set up, but existing charities whose status might be revoked. What exactly are these ““modern conditions”” and this ““modern society”” that a charity has to comply with? I do not get the impression that it has anything to do with setting ““How Great Thou Art”” to rock music. It is far more likely, as my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight said, that modern morals—