Charitable ends can never be justified by uncharitable means. Terrible revelations were made last summer by the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, to their great credit—I do not say that very often—about the abuse of the means that charities were using to achieve their ends. We all strongly support such charitable ends, but those charities engaged in the fierce fundraising that goes on among charities and that is becoming even fiercer. One charity spends an astronomical amount— £20 million—on fundraising to get the money in. Understandably but wrongly, certain charities fell into the trap of using means that were thoroughly unjustified and in too many cases abused their donors.
We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) about a terrible case, though it should be pointed out that the relatives of Olive Cooke have pointed out since that her death had no connection with the pressure that was put on her and was due to other reasons. But there have been other cases of people who were suffering from dementia being plagued by repeated phone calls, letters and pressure on them. We have considered the case of chuggers. Highly respectable charities were using chuggers to accost people
in the street and offer them a deal. That was fine for the charities because they got a huge amount of money in, but it was a very poor deal for donors. Of the donations they give for the first full year, virtually none goes to the charity. Such deals are very poor value for the donors.
As a senior member of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, I have been asked to speak today by the Chair of that Committee, who tabled new clauses 4 and 5. The Committee was shocked by the evidence we had. We saw that all the charities were in confessional mood. They were penitent and agreed that they had overstepped the mark. As members of the Committee with supervisory roles over the charities sector, we were tempted to call for new regulations, but we decided unanimously that we did not want to cage the entire charity movement in a new prison of regulation that would limit their powers of innovation.
Charities have clearly poisoned their own well. So many people have turned not only against the charities involved when that scam was announced last year, but against the whole idea of charity giving, so we want to make the point powerfully in new clauses 4 and 5, which seek to introduce reforms. We are strongly behind the Charity Commission. If it is to do a bigger job, it must have the money restored—30% of its funding was taken away from it. The Committee’s message, which will be in our report on Kids Company that comes out on Monday, is that charitable ends can never justify uncharitable means.
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