Charities Bill [HL]

My Lords, like other speakers I declare my interests in the charitable area, modest though they   are. I am president of the Money Advice Trust, senior trustee of the Reform Club and patron of Public   Concern at Work, sometimes known as the whistleblowers’ charity. As others have said, many of us here today participated in the many days of work of the Grand Committee between January and March on the predecessor to this Bill, which fell, of course, when Parliament was dissolved in April. My noble friends Lady Scotland and Lord Bassam valiantly lasted through that period and withstood, very wisely, a number of criticisms of many detailed aspects of the Bill. Again, they take the burden of piloting this Bill and this very important reform—as everyone agrees it is—through this House. As the Minister has explained and as others have mentioned, there have been a number of changes, but I want to refer to one in particular, with all due deference and respect to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell. Clause 2(3) refers to what is meant by ““the advancement of religion”” as a charitable purpose. The previous Bill provided no amplification on what was meant by ““the advancement of religion””, which had been listed in the preamble to the statute of Elizabeth I in 1601. Now, after so many centuries, the Government very boldly have attempted a definition. It is quite short so I shall read it. The Bill now says that,"““‘religion’ includes—""(i) a religion which involves belief in more than one god, and""(ii) a religion which does not involve belief in a god””." I am very glad to see some movement in government thinking and I tentatively welcome this unheralded change. In his closing speech to the Second Reading debate on the previous Bill on 20 January, my noble friend Lord Bassam seemed quite definite when he said:"““To qualify as a religion under charity law, there has to be a belief in a supreme being and acts of worship of it””.—[Official Report, 20/1/05; col. 963.]" After several noble Lords on this side of the House had raised the matter of non-religious beliefs and agnosticism in Grand Committee on 3 February, my noble friend Lady Scotland said, in a letter to me and to others of 24 March—it was made public by being put in the Library of the House—that she could not find a way of incorporating in the Bill a reference to belief that would not let in wholly irrational beliefs. The new definition in the Bill now before us makes it clear that multi-deistic religions are within it, as are religious beliefs in non-deity. I understand that that is wider than the Charity Commission’s current opinion of what is meant by ““the advancement of religion””, but the   repetition, several times over, of the word ““religion”” in the new clause seems to me to emphasise that organisations promoting non-religious belief, or promoting a lack of faith, or promoting agnosticism are not within the phrase ““the advancement of religion”” or indeed within the spirit of that purpose. I suppose one could see Clause 2(4) as a broadening provision. It is a pity that the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, from the Liberal Democrat Benches is not here today. At Second Reading, on 20 January, he was concerned that the Bill as it then stood, prior to this new definition, might be contrary to Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which gives equal prominence to religion and belief. It does not   allow discrimination between religious belief and non-religious belief such as humanism. When the noble Lord is able to attend our proceedings, I would be most interested to hear whether he is satisfied by the new definition. I should think that there must be some doubt because of the emphasis of ““religion””, which is repeated several times, in the new definition. One of the significant changes that this Bill makes to charities law, as did the one introduced in January, is to   end the presumption that bodies established for the relief of poverty, the advancement of education or the advancement of religion are for the ““public benefit”” and therefore automatically charitable. However—and it is a big ““however””—abolishing the old presumption does not by itself deprive of charitable status fee-paying schools that were registered as charities when the presumption existed, for example. That is explicitly set out, not in the Bill but in paragraph 26 of the Explanatory Notes. My noble friend Lord Hattersley may not grace this House with his presence very frequently but he wrote a telling and pertinent article in the Guardian of 23 May. It followed a lead given by someone whom I claim to be a very old friend in Labour Party circles, Christopher Price, a former Member of Parliament and former university vice-chancellor, who is concerned that if fee-paying schools continue to enjoy charitable status they will continue to receive tax exemption that amounts to a government subsidy. Mr Price proposes that such schools should retain their charitable status after the Bill becomes law only if they give something in return to the community generally; that is, a public benefit in return for what he calls public emoluments. Mr Price does not want to leave it to the Charity Commission to determine what ““public benefit”” means or to allow, for example, a school to qualify for charitable status just because it loans its football fields to the broader community for a few days a year. Mr Price wants Parliament to draft some   specific, significant criteria to which the Charity Commission, in the time-honoured phrase with which we are familiar in constitutional law, must ““have regard”” when it chooses to confer charitable status. If I feel that there is any support for that, I may wish to table an amendment in due course. We have a fresh opportunity now to follow on from the debates initiated in Grand Committee by my noble friend Lord Wedderburn of Charlton, who is in his place and will speak later. I hope that the Government can respond positively, at any rate to the sort of proposition—setting out criteria in the Bill—which Mr Price and others have made. I wish to mention one detailed matter. I admit regret that I have to raise it as I did so in Grand Committee on behalf of the Higher Education Regulation Review Group, chaired by Dame Patricia Hodgson. It believes that if the Higher Education Funding Council is made the principal regulator for universities, universities may be involved in a fresh set of onerous and expensive processes. When I raised the matter previously, my noble friend Lord Bassam said that the Government were keen   to keep ““to an absolute minimum”” any additional burden on universities as a result of the Bill. He added that keeping the burden to a minimum could include the use of existing auditors to assist compliance. Many in the university world—I am sorry that my noble friend Lady   Warwick is not here today—may be glad to hear my noble friend Lord Bassam repeat those assurances today so that they are not lost or considered less relevant because they were part of an abortive discussion a few months ago on a Bill that is not precisely the same as this one.