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Charities Bill [Lords]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her kind words addressed to me and my hon. Friends on the Committee. I agree that the Bill has had the longest gestation of any of which I am aware. It has been scrutinised in the House of Lords twice and in this place once and a bit, as well as being scrutinised by the Joint Committee, of which the right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn) was Chairman. I came to it late, and the Parliamentary Secretary came to it even later. At various points during the Committee stage we may have formed the view that we should not have started here, but here is where we did start, and I think that we have reached a satisfactory destination. I am particularly grateful for the reassurances from the Minister for the Cabinet Office about scrutiny. The Charity Commission will be an enormously strong and powerful quango that, as my hon. Friends have pointed out, will have power to revoke or indeed grant charitable status. There are concerns about how it will exercise that power, and it is good to know that a Select Committee will scrutinise it. I wish the right hon. Lady well in her discussions with Committee Chairmen. Let me first thank the Parliamentary Secretary. It was a pleasure to work with a Minister who listened carefully and sought honestly to deal with all the inquiries fired at him from all sides—including, on occasion, his own—in the best possible way and in the best possible traditions of this place. We want to achieve a good deal of consensus on Bills of this kind, and I think that in this case consensus was largely achieved, but it was not consensus for the sake of consensus; it was agreement on good legislation, and I pay tribute to the Parliamentary Secretary for helping us to achieve it. I thank the charities team—originally in the Home Office, subsequently in the Cabinet Office—for their assistance. They answered questions at short notice, and also replied to a multitude of letters. I thank the Charity Commission’s staff, with whom I think it fair to say I have had robust discussions on a number of occasions: sometimes I have been persuaded, sometimes not. I thank the many charities that have contributed to proceedings on the Bill, and their representative organisations. Without evidence from charities large and small at grass-roots level, this would not have been such a good Bill. I particularly thank the Charity Law Association. One or two of the amendments that the Minister commended originated not from my pen, but from that of the association. I thank my colleagues who were members of the Committee—my hon. Friends the Members for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley), for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) and for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge), some of whom have been present this afternoon. I also thank the Committee Chairmen, my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) and the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble). Finally, I pay particular tribute and give particular thanks to my researcher Tim Sheppard, who has now gone on to greater things but who saw me very well—at least, I thought so—through the Committee stage. One or two minor issues remain, which we were unable to discuss on Report. In particular, there is the question of access to the tribunal. We are very pleased that there is to be a tribunal to provide an intermediate post between a Charity Commission decision and judicial review, but we are anxious about whether charities will be able to afford to face the commission in the tribunal. We do not want the commission to spend a lot of public money on lawyers when small charities do not want to spend charitable money on them. We are also anxious to ensure that justice is not only done but seen to be done in the tribunal. I hope that the Minister will have one or two things to say about that. The Minister for the Cabinet Office mentioned a review that would consider public benefit, and said that if there were not the evidence of public benefit that Ministers would like to see, they would consider what action was needed to put things back on track. She has committed herself to beginning that process within three years. If the Conservatives inherit such an inquiry or review, we will be happy to continue it and to take the results to legislation if necessary. I am, I must say, a little concerned about the fact that having worked as hard as we have—and, more important, given the hard work of so many other people—we are bringing forth what may turn out to be interim legislation. I hope that it will not be. I hope that the wishes and desires of the Government, the charity sector and Members on both sides of the House will be met successfully by the Bill. However, I am concerned that conflicting signals have been sent, even at Report stage, on exactly what the Bill means and, in particular, on public benefit. It is not satisfactory to leave to a quango, however well intentioned or distinguished its members, decisions not of administration, but of policy. I fear that the Minister has made comments that he hopes will be taken on board by the Charity Commission and interpreted as policy but that were never put before this House in the form of amendment or legislation. If the commission responds too well to Ministers’ expressed wishes, or the Government try to smuggle amendments through in the form of statements of policy, wishes, desires and guidance, it will spend much more time than it would wish before the tribunal. This House is the place to make legislation: quangos are not. Their job is to implement and, where necessary, interpret legislation and we have not been entirely fair to the Charity Commission in leaving it with such a broad canvas and range of opinions as have been expressed today but not clearly represented in the wording of the Bill. That is my only reservation. The Bill is much improved by the effective scrutiny it has received, and it is a great improvement on the previous legislation. I am pleased to have been involved in it, and I thank the Minister for his assistance.