My Lords, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, is actually addressing a different issue in this letter. I was dealing with paragraph one. He is dealing with paragraph two, about public trust and confidence in charities, which I was about to come on to and which, if I may, I will deal with it in a second.
I emphasise the fact that the Charity Commission has delivered to those in this House who are particularly involved with this issue some guidance in relation to the law—comparing electoral law with charity law—that leaves us at best in a state of some confusion. I think, as I will say in a minute, that the approximation of charity law and electoral law is now so close that to all intents and purposes it is in practical terms the same. However, as we know better than anybody on earth, the capacity of lawyers—and not only lawyers—to argue about that is infinite. When you get a letter such as this from the Charity Commission, you can see why.
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Coming to the point of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, the second point here is headed:
“The effect of an exemption on public trust and confidence in charities”.
It starts by saying that the Charity Commission believes in keeping the burden on trustees and charities to the minimum that is consistent with an effective regime. That, in itself, supports my case, because for charities to have two sets of regulators is plainly not keeping their burden to a minimum. Secondly, it rather argues against its own competence to then go on to say that you need two sets of regulators.
I will also add the point that the commission makes here, when it advances the proposition, which has been heard in debate in Committee, that some organisations will seek to exploit the differences between charity law and electoral law by registering as a charity if they are a non-charity, in the expectation that that will give them more latitude in terms of what they can do during election periods.