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Charities Bill [HL]

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1. I shall spend a little time on the amendments, because the group includes an amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, intends to move. Within this small group, Amendments Nos. 1 and 3 go together and Amendment No. 2 stands on its own. Noble Lords will recall that when this Bill was in your Lordships' House last year, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, put forward a powerful case for adding as a specific category of charitable purposes, "““the promotion of the efficiency of the armed forces of the Crown””." The Government accepted the force of the noble and gallant Lord’s argument and made an amendment to include his proposed category, which is Clause 2(2)(l). A similarly powerful case was put more recently on behalf of the police to my honourable friend the Parliamentary Secretary in charge of the Bill by the Police Dependants’ Trust and by the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police among others. They advocated the inclusion in the Bill’s list of charitable categories of, "““the promotion of the efficiency of the police””." The Government agreed to its inclusion and the amendment was duly made. I should emphasise that this amendment does not change the law, since the promotion of the efficiency of the police can already be charitable, but it is of considerable importance to the police service that its status and its importance in national life be recognised alongside that of the Armed Forces. The chief executive of the Police Dependants’ Trust has written to my honourable friend to express his and his trustees’ delight with the amendment. It would have been invidious to have included the police without also including the other two emergency services, so the provision at which the Government arrived, which is Amendment No. 1, covers the police, the fire and rescue services, and the ambulance service. Amendment No. 3 provides a definition of ““fire and rescue services””. Amendment No. 2 is on the different subject of sport. The Bill includes as a category of charitable purposes ““the advancement of amateur sport””. When it left your Lordships’ House last year, ““sport”” was defined in that context by Clause 2(3)(d) as meaning, "““sport which involves physical skill and exertion””." The Government have listened carefully to representations in another place and elsewhere that the definition of ““sport”” was unclear or was too narrow. The new definition, substituted by Amendment No. 2, improves on the Bill’s existing definition in two main respects. First, it makes it clear that what we are talking about, in the context of charitable sport, is sports or games—we have added ““games”” as an extension of the previous definition—which are capable of contributing to improvements in the health of participants. The Bill’s original definition, with its requirement for physical skill and exertion, was intended to denote sport which was capable of contributing to physical health, but I concede that it did so by implication rather than by stating it expressly. The new definition takes a direct approach by referring specifically to health. Secondly, there seemed to be no justification for continuing to focus on the physical to the exclusion of the mental, when those two aspects of health appear to be of equal significance. The new definition therefore extends to sports or games on the mental as well as on the physical side. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, will recall his own amendment to exactly that end in Grand Committee in the Bill’s previous life. The charitable purpose of the advancement of amateur sport should be seen alongside the Government’s community amateur sports club scheme, which provides a real alternative to charitable status. It gives tax advantages to community-based sports clubs run on an amateur basis, without requiring those clubs to show any public benefit in the charitable sense. The scheme exists to encourage grass-roots participation in a wide range of sports. The Government have therefore taken full account of what has been said in Parliament and outside about the definition of charitable sport and have reacted as helpfully as they could. I shall listen with interest to the explanation of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, of his own amendment before I respond to it. Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1.—(Lord Bassam of Brighton.)