Charities Bill [HL]

My Lords, I shall try to deal with this tectonic fare as rapidly as I can. The noble Lord is right: I did say in Committee that we saw a lot of sense in the amendment and we would go away and think about it, and we did. I am sorry that we have not been able to table an amendment for today, but we have every intention of tabling what I am sure the noble Lord will agree will be a suitable amendment at Third Reading. We have identified a problem with the amendment as it is drafted, for reasons I will explain. Let us imagine that there is a charity with purposes A and B, whose trustees want to use the power in the Bill to transfer all of its property. As drafted, the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, has tabled would allow the charity to divide its property between a charity with purpose C and a charity whose purposes encompass both purposes A and B. This comes about because the transferees together can be said to have purposes wide enough to encompass the purposes of the transferor. But it would not be right to allow a charity which had only objects A and B to transfer property to a charity with a purpose outside the transferor’s own trusts—in this example, purpose C. We are having to juggle and conjure here and we are working on the exact scope of our amendments, which we intend will satisfy the noble Lord’s concerns, and we are seeking to iron out the problem that I have just identified. I am sure that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment and I look forward to moving our amendment to address his points at Third Reading.