Charities Bill [HL]

My Lords, like my noble friend, I have not had the problems that the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, has with the amendment. It may be defective in its precise drafting but not in the purpose behind it. As has been said, we debated the matter extensively in February on an amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. I have a couple of points to add. First, recommendation 105 from the joint scrutiny committee, which the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, quoted extensively in January, urged the Government to provide an answer to the conundrum that the amendment proposed by my noble friend now has to pick up on. It is not as though the Government have not had notification of the problem going back to the joint scrutiny committee’s report, which was published over 12 months ago. The issue for the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, as pointed out by my noble friend Lord Forsyth, is that we have removed the presumption. When you remove the presumption for charitable purposes, the charitable status of some schools and hospitals will be thrown into sharp relief and a few, as my noble friend has said, may fail the public benefit test. There will be a gap that we must address. My noble friend has made a reasonable proposition on how it could be done. The asset lock on the CIC, the community interest company, provides the sort of protection that the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, was looking for. I hope that, if the Government are not prepared to accept the amendment, they will come forward with a proposal to address that gap. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, there is a gap, and how many individual charities will be affected by it we cannot tell yet. It would be wrong for us to let the Bill leave this House without having put forward some coherent method of treating it, as the joint scrutiny committee recommended in its recommendation 105. I support the approach proposed by my noble friend.