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Charities Bill [HL]

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 5 and 6. I can be brief on these amendments too. They achieve three separate effects. Amendments Nos. 5 and 6 give up a ministerial delegated power that has not been used in over45 years. Amendment No. 11 allows the general income threshold for the registration of charities to be varied by order at any time. That amendment was needed because the Bill had inadvertently been drafted to prevent variation of that threshold before a report had been made to Parliament on the operation of the Act. We have had a lot of debate in the past about thresholds, so I know the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, will see the importance of that. That report need not be commissioned until five years after Royal Assent. The Conservatives were keen, and Ministers have agreed, that the registration threshold, and other thresholds, should be reviewed much sooner than that, and that changes in thresholds should be made if necessary. Other amendments in this group allow different provisions within the new registration arrangements to be brought into force at different times. The point of doing that is simply to ensure that the Charity Commission can manage the flow of new registrations in a smooth and orderly way. As I understand it, none of those amendments were at all controversial in another place. I beg to move. Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons with their Amendments Nos. 5 and 6.—(Lord Bassam of Brighton.)