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Planning Bill

moved, as an amendment to Amendment No. 136AA, Amendment No. 136AB: 136AB: After Clause 202, line 8, leave out ““wholly or mainly”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness. I feel that I should apologise for interrupting her flow but it was necessary as she does not know what I have to say. I should say at the start that I am grateful to her for Amendment No. 136AA because it moves the Bill forward in a helpful way and provides a substantial degree of immunity for charities. The question is whether that degree of immunity is sufficient. My amendment will enable me to explore those limits further, and I know that noble Lords will want to explore still further. I remind the noble Baroness that it is a fiduciary duty of a trustee of a charity to maximise the revenue income or asset value. Not least of the problems that CIL might cause, if we accept the sort of exemption provided at the moment, is that the charity might be put into difficulty over the possibility of the future development of, say, a field that may have been left to it. It may originally have been out in the open countryside but subsequently becomes surrounded by development. The only sensible thing would be to develop it, which introduces the question of the best way for the charity to maximise the return on that development. It may be for exclusive use for charitable purposes. If it was a charitable housing operation that might be sensible but if it was a particular type of housing, perhaps like the YMCA, the charity might not be able to take up use of the whole site. Taking out the words ““wholly”” or ““mainly”” would go a long way towards overcoming that. But the trustees may find that maximising the return on that asset could involve commercial development and use for a commercial purpose by providing a revenue stream for the charity. That would be likely to produce greater revenue for the charity than selling the site with a liability to CIL. The question I need to explore with the noble Baroness is whether such a ““commercial development””, which aims to produce a revenue stream for the charity and which of course would be used for charitable purposes, is included in the exemption. As I read Amendment No. 136AA, it would not. Therefore, the possibility of the arrival of CIL puts trustees of a charity in a difficult situation vis-à-vis their fiduciary duty. That may be wild imagination at work but, in my experience, we have to deal with the wilder flights of imagination. When I was heavily involved in local government some of the most productive time we spent was considering how people might defraud the county council. We had some fairly wild flights of fancy on that trip but we saved a lot of trouble as a consequence. We were able to put in place steps that inhibited such operations happening. We need to think about these possibilities. The real question is how far this exemption goes and where its limits are. It obviously extends to developing a site exclusively for use ““for a charitable purpose””. That is fine, but then we have this extension if it were to produce a revenue stream to support the charity. Is there a point beyond that? I do not know. The noble Baroness may find these technical questions difficult to answer tonight and say that she wants time to consider them and come back at a later stage. If that suits her it would be perfectly acceptable to me. At this hour of the night it might save a deal of bother, but I do not know what other noble Lords have to say as they have yet to speak. I beg to move.