Charities Bill [HL]

My Lords, I do not think that I received the briefing to which everyone is referring. I hope that that is not because I pursued an amendment with regard to public interest that was not favoured by the Independent Schools Council. Indeed, it cannot be, because the noble Lord, Lord Best, had his name to the same amendment. I should like to make two quick points. First, surely, in the example that the noble Lord, Lord Best, gave, there would be an action for negligence against the surveyor. The difference between the value he certified the property as bearing and the real value as realised shortly after the acquisition by the predatory buyer was so enormous that there must have been negligence. Secondly, granted that I have had to try to understand this new section from the lips of the noble Lord, Lord Best, without any background information, it seems that the check to sales of this sort which the noble Lord, Lord Best, seeks to insert in the Bill simply is not there. Unless I have misread it, all that the trustees have to do in the event of a sale of functional land is to certify that in their opinion it is expedient for the charity to make the sale. There is an implicit opinion for every sale that trustees ever make. They do not make sales unless they think that it is expedient to make the sale. I do not see how there is a remedy here to the very real problem that the noble Lord, Lord Best, identified when he opened his argument in support of the amendment.