My Lords, I declare an interest as a charity lawyer of long standing and founder of the firm Bates Wells and Braithwaite, which does as much charity work as any firm in the country.
I hope that the Minister will not be too dismayed by what I have to say. I do not view this as a partisan Bill; it is a Bill that all sides should, classically, deal with as
they best think fit, as they are doing. However, the problem of dealing with this as Back-Bench Peers is as intense in relation to this Bill, more or less, as to any that I have come across. It is not so much the length—it is a mere 62 pages—but that it is mostly written by reference to the 2000 Act, and there is no Keeling schedule. How on earth are we Back-Benchers, with no assistance whatever, supposed to get to grips with the fine print of a main Bill of 201 pages and a supplementary and amending Bill of 62 pages? It is outrageous: I wanted to say that. I hope that in Committee the Minister will put in hand a Keeling schedule right away because without it we cannot do our job.
I note also that as we got in this morning there were three documents, totalling another 94 pages. One was the excellent Library note, one was the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the third was the Constitution Committee’s report. They were available only this morning. Again, how on earth are we supposed to do our jobs and take into full account the very careful work done by those various bodies? That merely emphasises the fact that a Bill of this importance should not be dealt with in this helter-skelter way, whether or not it comes out of the wash in time for the 2015 election. In my view, that is of secondary importance to the need to get this Bill as right as we can. It is difficult enough if we do that in the right way.
I happen to agree with much of what has been said in criticism of Part 1, although I want to concentrate on Part 2. I do not want to see Part 2 wholly scrapped, because with regard to non-charitable entities—particularly commercial third parties seeking to influence the outcome of an election by plugging, sometimes with huge resources, a particular line or point of view—we need Part 2 although, again, it should be heavily amended. I am wholly unpersuaded that we need charities in Part 2 at all. They should be exempt from Part 2 and from the 2000 Act. I shall come to that in a little detail in a minute.
A number of Peers have mentioned the importance of the charity sector, but there are one-third of a million charities in this country, 95% of which are run entirely by volunteers. It is no good the Minister saying, “They will not be caught by this Act”. Lots and lots of them jolly well will because we have the provision about coalitions. I am damned if I fully understand the coalition arrangements, but certainly they will catch tens of thousands of small charities in their tentacles because so many of them are part of a national body, albeit that they are independently and separately registered as charities, and we know all the rest.
There has been a good deal of exaggeration and quite a lot of charities, frankly, were not even aware of the 2000 Act where a lot of this stuff resides. None the less, the charity sector as a whole is up in arms about this Bill. Broadly, the charities are absolutely right. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, used the rather nice expression that this is a solution without a problem, which is right. We have no evidence from anywhere or anyone that the last election or the one before was subverted by charities. When have we ever in this House had a Bill like this which deals with a problem that does not exist? It is bonkers. It is not even as if, if
we take charities out of this Bill, there is nothing that contains and controls them: they have the Charity Commission, as my noble friend Lord Hodgson and others have said.
The Charity Commission is not a pushover. I have grappled with it for the past 45 years. Sometimes, it is pretty tough going. It has a job to do.