Charities Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 110: "Page 159, line 22, at end insert—"    Any consultation initiated by the Charity Commissioners for England and Wales before the day on which section 4 of this Act comes into force is to be as effective for the purposes of section 4(4)(a) as if it had been initiated by the Commission on or after that day.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to move Amendment No. 110 standing in the name of my noble friend Lady Scotland. Under Part 1 of the Bill the new Charity Commission will have a duty to issue guidance in pursuit of its public benefit objective and a duty to carry out such public and other consultation as it considers appropriate and wise before issuing the guidance. Our current intention is to bring Part 1 of the Bill together with the provisions creating the new provision into force on the earliest appropriate date. As the Bill is drafted, consultation on the public benefit guidance would not in practice begin before that commencement date. This is because consultation carried out before the new commission comes into existence would not count towards discharging the new commission’s consultation duty. The practical result of that would be a delay in issuing the public benefit guidance while a valid consultation was constructed and completed. It is clearly desirable that the period between the provisions concerning the public benefit requirement taking effect and the appearance of the commission’s guidance should be as short as possible. This amendment will greatly help in that respect because it will treat any consultation carried out by the current commission before commencement as if it were consultation carried out by the new commission after commencement. I understand from the Charity Commission that it would propose to begin consultation as early as possible. In summary, the amendment will allow a head start to be made in the consultation required before the issue of guidance on general public benefit principles applying to all charities, so that it can be issued much sooner after commencement than would otherwise be possible. I am sure that because the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, is very keen on this he will support the amendment very enthusiastically. I beg to move.