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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. 100. The amendment reverses an amendment made in your Lordships’ House on Report, on 12 October last year. That amendment was moved by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, who, for reasons that we well understand, is no longer with us. His contribution to this Bill—and to the field of charity law over many years—has been second to none. As ever, I shall not avoid an opportunity to praise him for that. He has done a fine service, and we are greatly in his debt. However, the amendment had an effect which I believe went further than the noble Lord foresaw or intended. It is to reverse that effect that the Government made their counter-amendment in another place. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, was rightly concerned to secure the independence of the Charity Commission from ministerial interference and control in the way it operates in regulating charities. Many of your Lordships shared the view that the commission must be independent in how it operates as a regulator. The Government strongly share that vision. For that reason we have included in the Bill a provision expressly asserting and guaranteeing the commission’s independence. The provision is in new Section 1A of the 1993 Act, inserted by Clause 6 of the Bill. It says: "““In the exercise of its functions the Commission shall not be subject to the direction or control of any Minister of the Crown or other Government department””." I do not think it would be possible to be clearer than that as to the commission’s independence as a regulator from ministerial influence. The need for the provision inserted by the amendment comes from the fact that the commission is—and, under the Bill, is to remain—a non-ministerial government department. While the commission is a non-ministerial department, its staff must be in the Home Civil Service. Without the amendment there will be, at the very least, serious doubt as to whether the commission’s staff were in the Home Civil Service. We would be in the highly unsatisfactory position of having to tell the staff of a government department that the effect of the Bill might well be to remove them from the Civil Service. We could not, however, tell them with any certainty what their status was, since there is no obvious precedent for a government department outside the Civil Service. As I have said, the effect of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, was probably not exactly what he had in mind. To quote from his contribution to the debate: "““The Minister made a serious point, with a degree of tentativeness, about what this would do to the status of the employees. I am sure I speak for the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, as well as myself in saying that, if that is the case, we would accept without demur an amendment at the final stage of this Bill that made it clear that the status of employees was unchanged””.—[Official Report, 12/10/05; col. 327.]" That is precisely what our amendment aims to achieve: to make clear that the commission’s staff are to remain in the Home Civil Service. Our amendment is a common provision which is used in other legislation establishing non-ministerial government departments—for example, the legislation which established the Food Standards Agency. It does not mean that the Minister for the Civil Service will be involved in the determination of the terms and conditions of employment for individual members of staff. The Charity Commission already has delegated authority on behalf of the Minister for the Civil Service to determine, except for staff in the senior Civil Service, the number and grading of its posts and the terms and conditions of employment in so far as they relate to such things as remuneration, allowances, expenses, holidays, working arrangements performance, promotions and redundancy. The commission is only required to agree the overall pay remit with the Treasury. The commission takes its own decisions on terms and conditions of service within a broad framework. Finally, I repeat the most important point in this debate: that the Bill places the commission, for all purposes to do with the exercise of its regulatory functions, wholly outside ministerial control in both fact and appearance. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, for his contribution in that debate, which enabled me to move this amendment—unchallenged, I am sure. Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 100.—(Lord Bassam of Brighton.)