Charities Bill [HL]

The Minister said a lot then of a quite high degree of complexity. I am not sure that I followed his parallel with a pre-incorporated company—a commercial company—under the Companies Act. That seems different. A pre-incorporated company is a company that is probably in the process of building itself up. In this case, we are trying to encourage the emergence of CIOs. That means that we are trying to find a facility for charities, where they wish, to move assets into a CIO or put themselves entirely into a CIO. In those cases, we are not dealing with something de novo, but something that may have been around for hundreds of years. It makes it much clearer if a charity is to form itself into a CIO that it cannot slough off or remove its liabilities on the way through. That could leave an unhelpful and unsatisfactory situation. I am not sure that the Minister’s response has hit the nail on the top of the head, but I will read it carefully and the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, will be able to draw on his extensive charitable experience to tell us whether we have a proper point here. In the mean time, subject to that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.