My Lords, I declare my interests in charities as listed in the register of interests. I was going to declare my interest in the fundraising regulation review panel, but I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for doing it for me.
As she says, we are not yet in a position to present our report. On 10 July, Minister Rob Wilson rang me to ask us to start this report. That was an interesting call because, on 9 July, the Prime Minister had thanked me for accepting. But it shows that it is being taken seriously at a very high level. We will have an appropriate moment to thank Sir Stuart Etherington and Elizabeth Chamberlain of NCVO and Susann Hering from the Cabinet Office for the report, which we hope will be published extremely soon. If it is to be published at the Conservative Party conference—I do not think that is the plan—I will personally welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and invite her to sit with me and listen to every word. I hope there will opportunity for further debate in this House when amendments come back here.
3.30 pm
We met during August—it was a most interesting August—a large number of people, not just the IoF and FRSB but pretty much all the chief executives of the top 20 charities and chief executives of much smaller or medium-sized charities. The comment that has been made is correct: there is an element of denial, which is disappointing. The charity sector is quite rightly under massive review. It is astonishing to discover that the charity sector as a whole—within the wider definition of charities— raises some £68 billion a year, and the voluntary donation of the organisations that we recognise as charities, perhaps excluding organisations such as the Arts Council, is some £8 billion a year. I do not think that any of the chief executives in the top 20 earns a salary of less than £100,000, and more than 30 of them earn a salary of £200,000 or more. They therefore have great responsibility to a wider community. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said, they have two inherent, enormous advantages. The first is the favourable tax treatment they receive and the second is the public’s good will and trust. As one of the people we met in our review said to us, charities defy every rule of economics. No economist can understand it, because people are giving money for nothing in return; the rules break down. This special position of trust needs to be protected.
So we have specific ideas which do not involve the compulsion that the amendment suggests. The thrust of our comments is to try to instil in some of the charities the idea that they are no more than a conduit through which donors can make donations to the good cause, and they have to understand that donors are the source. Some of them seem to think that donors are cows that can be milked, but the reverse is true: it is the donors’ money that enables them to do what they want to do, and they should perhaps regard donors a little more as shareholders than as people to be attacked.
It is most appropriate that the Bill talks a lot about the roles and obligations of trustees, but that is not the subject of this amendment, which focuses on the fundraising review and regulations, so I shall restrict my remarks to that. Before I sit down, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bridges of Headley, on taking through his first Bill. His maiden speech was at Second Reading and we are grateful to him for seeing this Bill through.