Charities Act 2006 (Principal Regulators of Exempt Charities) Regulations 2011

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for that introduction. I broadly welcome the regulations. I have one specific, rather gritty point to put to her. I have given notice of it to her officials, so I hope that it may be possible for an answer to be available today. I have one general point on which I would be very interested in her response and then another general point which needs to be made in the light of the regulations. I shall deal with the gritty point as quickly as I can. It arises out of the statutory instrument dealing with principal regulators. Regulation 7 introduces a new section, Section 71A, into the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009. New subsection (1) gives a discretion to the Young People’s Learning Agency to provide the principal regulator, the Secretary of State, with information that he or she may need in order more effectively to carry out his or her duty as regulator. We have already heard today that the YPLA is likely to be replaced in not too long a time by the education funding agency. I hope that that does not mean that we shall need further amending legislation to substitute EFA for YPLA. But why only a discretion? Surely the YPLA should be under an obligation to provide assistance, information or advice to the principal regulator, so long as it is a reasonable request. The Minister might like to comment on that. My first general observation relates to the particular character of a government department as a principal regulator. There is growing anxiety within the charity sector about the preservation of what is an absolutely fundamental characteristic of any charity: its independence. It is often not understood among the wider public that one of the bedrock guarantors of the integrity of each and every charity—however small or large it is, whether it has trustees appointed by outsiders or not, and whether it is funded from a particular source or not—is that it has absolute independence and responsibility for its own affairs. Its trustees have one sole purpose in life, which is to forward its charitable purposes to the best of their ability for the benefit of the public. Having the Secretary of State for Education as the principal regulator is sure to involve conflicts of interest all along the way. Whatever Government are in power, they will have their own agenda. The voluntary sector is a very important part of the provision of education generally. The measure seems to warrant a little more thought. I do not for a moment propose to question the Secretary of State for Education being principal regulator in these statutory instruments, but the concern is germane and relevant. Perhaps the Minister will take back to the Government the need for some informal, internal consideration of the independence factor, as I call it. I move on to my final point, which I hope Members of the Committee will think relevant to our deliberations. I wish to comment on the complexity of these statutory instruments. What I am about to say will not in any way reflect upon the quality and bona fides of the civil servants responsible for these instruments, because they do their level best, and it will not reflect on the calibre of the parliamentary draftsmen. I know from long engagement with them what an impossibly difficult task they have and how superbly, on the whole, they undertake it. The second of these instruments—the one dealing with the definition of exempt charities—makes clear in a way that is rarely visible the fact that there was a cock-up. Is one allowed to use that term in Parliament?