Charities Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for the lengthy nature of his introduction to the matter. I shall not chastise him for giving a cogent explanation; it seemed to me entirely sensible. We have much sympathy with what the noble Lord had to say. We would like to take the matter away and give it fair   consideration as the noble Lord highlighted a particular problem. We believe that the proposal has merit. We would also like to tackle another practical problem arising from Section 38. Under Section 38 trustees have to obtain advice covering the prescribed matters before they execute a mortgage—otherwise, they have to obtain the commission’s consent. The problem arises when a charity already has a loan whose repayment is secured by a mortgage and wants a further loan. As things stand, the trustees have to execute the mortgage again, after they have taken advice on the further loan. That gives rise to administrative and legal costs for the charity, perhaps in the order of those which the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, mentioned. It is common commercial practice for a mortgage to be given to cover further loans as well as the original one. So long as advice covering the prescribed matters is taken again by the charity on any further loan, it does not seem necessary to require that the mortgage should be re-executed every time the charity takes a further loan. We would like to deal with both those matters. If the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, will trust us to do that we shall try to bring forward an amendment that is satisfactory to him before the next stage of the Bill.