Charities Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am very grateful for that introduction. While my noble friend Lord Borrie was speaking, I was thinking of one or two occasions when a bit of frivolity and bizarreness might definitely have been in the public interest. Sometimes I think that as I sit here on the Front Bench. However, perhaps I shall not dwell on that. As the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, said, we have been around this issue on rather a few occasions. I can do no more than set out where we think we are. I owe it to my noble friend Lady Whitaker to do no less than that. For decades there have been charities promoting humanist, rationalist and other coherent and serious non-religious belief systems on the register of charities. Non-religious belief systems, such as those I have just mentioned, which promote moral and spiritual welfare are now, and will continue under the Bill, to be charitable. Subsections 2(l) and (4)(a) of Clause 2 secure that state of affairs. The Government are clear that the Bill has no discriminatory effects as between charities promoting religious belief and charities promoting non-religious belief. Indeed, the Bill further levels the playing field between religious and non-religious belief. At the moment, religious organisations enjoy a presumption that they are for the public benefit while organisations promoting non-religious beliefs do not. The Bill removes that presumption. That will mean that after the Bill is enacted organisations promoting religious beliefs will be in exactly the same position—that of having to demonstrate public benefit in order to qualify for charitable status—as organisations promoting non-religious beliefs. It has been argued that the Bill leaves non-religious belief at a disadvantage because it is encompassed by the catch-all provision of Clause 2(2)(l) rather than being expressly mentioned. That argument is based on the perception that the purposes within Clause 2(2)(l) are somehow lesser purposes. I do not share that view. They are not. More importantly, there will, once the public benefit presumption is removed, be no respect in which those purposes are treated in law or in practice any differently from any other charitable purpose. I remind noble Lords of some of the purposes covered by Clause 2(2)(l): preservation of public order; relief of unemployment; rehabilitation of ex-offenders; promotion of industry and commerce; promotion of agriculture, and so on. I would not belittle the promotion of non-religious beliefs to sit alongside those purposes, which are all very important areas of present-day charitable endeavour. But we cannot give everything that is charitable its own specific heading without making the list unmanageably long. Even if we had a very long list, we would still need a final category consisting of purposes that had not been specifically mentioned to avoid the risk of removing charitable status in error from any other recognised purpose which was not mentioned in our long list. Although I understand why my noble friend Lady Whitaker would like to see non-religious belief placed directly alongside religion, I can assure her that it would have no legal or practical effect. As I have said before in setting out the Government’s position, by including the word ““belief”” in the list in the terms proposed by my noble friend’s amendment we would bring in various types of belief system that, however worthy, should have no place in charity. Defining belief by reference to Article 9 of Schedule 1 to the Human Rights Act 1998 would not, in our view, overcome that objection. Article 9 concerns the freedom to hold, manifest and change one’s beliefs, whereas our concern is, more narrowly, with beliefs, the advancement of which is likely to result in a public benefit. We do not agree that it is safe to allow all belief systems or philosophies into the list of charitable purposes on the grounds that the public benefit test would act as a backstop to exclude those that had no place in the domain of charity. We disagree with that argument because it is ultimately an argument for a definition of charity which does not have a list of headings of charitable purposes, but simply says that anything for the public benefit is charitable. That is not the route that we, or any commentators on the Bill, favour at all. Neither is it inconsistent of the Government to argue that non-religious belief need not have a specific reference in the Charities Bill while conceding that it needs a specific reference in some other legislation. In the Charities Bill, non-religious belief is already present in the list of charitable purposes by virtue of subsections (2)(l) and (4)(a) of Clause 2. That subsection brings in everything that has already been recognised as charitable but which does not come under any of the other headings listed in Clause 2(2). So, unlike with some other legislation, non-religious belief does not need to be imported into the Charities Bill; it is already present. I conclude by re-emphasising that the Bill as currently drafted provides every possible assurance and safeguard that it will remain a charitable purpose to promote moral and spiritual welfare through non-religious belief. It follows that we do not believe either that my noble friend Lady Whitaker’s amendment is necessary or, for the reasons I have given, that it is desirable. I am advised that earlier in my reply I did not make it clear that I was referring to subsection (2)(l). I have a feeling that I have repeated that error. I hope that my noble friend will feel satisfied with that response.