My Lords, it is a great pleasure to sponsor this Bill and present it to your Lordships today and seek your support. It is an honour to follow the passage of the Bill in another place, where there was unanimous and enthusiastic support. The debates were led ably and sympathetically by Wendy Morton, MP for Aldridge-Brownhills. It is entirely appropriate that a Bill involving Peter Pan should be introduced by an MP called Wendy. I thank the Minister and Wendy Morton for meeting me, and Department of Health officials for their excellent guidance. I thank also Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Association of NHS Charities for their help. Most importantly, I thank the Library for its most useful briefing pack.
I very much look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bird. We have discussed the Bill and I know that he is committed to its principles. I also look forward to the Minister’s response. I know that he has connections of long standing with Great Ormond Street. I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Blackstone is taking part today. She has been significant in ensuring that issues relating to NHS trusts are reconsidered. She is of course now the chair of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust.
The Bill may seem complex but it is, in fact, fairly simple and its aims are clear. It seeks to do two things. First, it makes provision to remove the Secretary of State’s powers to appoint trustees for NHS charities linked to NHS bodies in England, and makes consequential amendments to the removal of those powers. Secondly, it makes provision to amend sections of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to transfer to the new Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, to be known as GOSH, the right to a royalty in relation to performances or publications of the play “Peter Pan”. There are other related and transitional provisions.
At the moment, the right is in the hands of special trustees appointed by the Secretary of State, and I will go into this in greater detail in a moment. It is worth adding that when the NHS was established there was no Charity Commission, and structures for charities were quite different. All that we seek now is a level playing field to improve the ability of charities to work more efficiently to raise money and spend it to the advantage of children, in the case of Great Ormond Street, and of clients generally.
Noble Lords will know that JM Barrie, the author of “Peter Pan”, made a bequest in 1929 to Great Ormond Street Hospital so that it might benefit from royalties. As I reread “Peter Pan” over the weekend I realised that it is actually a political thriller, set largely in Neverland and full of idealism, revenge, rescue and battles. We probably have a number of potential cast members here today. Who would play Peter Pan, who Wendy and who the Lost Boys? Would the Minister fancy himself as Captain Hook? Will Tinker Bell suddenly alight on the Dispatch Box? How would the doorkeepers deal with the ticking crocodile?
I shall not go into the Bill in minute detail—noble Lords will be aware of its implications—but I shall set out the main thrusts. I shall give a brief history and then look at the policy issues for the two components of the Bill. First, I shall discuss issues relating to the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, GOSH. Since 1929, Sir James Barrie’s gift has provided a great deal of income to the charity, which, as we all know, provides superb services for sick children and their families.
In 1987, the former Prime Minister Lord Callaghan successfully proposed an amendment to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, giving the charity the unique rights to royalties from the publication or performance of “Peter Pan” in perpetuity. However, there were problems, and my noble friend Lady Blackstone raised the need to amend legislation to benefit from the Barrie bequest during the passage of the Deregulation Act 2015. The Government agreed to introduce legislation, which is what the Bill is all about. The problem is that the so-called Peter Pan rights are vested in special trustees appointed under NHS legislation for Great Ormond Street Hospital. The Department of Health made an agreement with the hospital whereby the existing NHS charity transferred most of its undertaking to an independent charitable company limited by guarantee. That new company was also appointed as corporate special trustee of the existing NHS charity under the Act in 2006.
At present, the GOSH charity is unable to fully complete the conversion to an independent charity as the NHS charity has to be kept in existence until the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act is amended. This complication, according to GOSH, presents a huge risk that legacies to the charity may fail, thus significant charitable donations could be lost to the provision of healthcare at Great Ormond Street Hospital. I know that the GOSH charity has adopted a five-year strategy, aiming to raise £500 million in that period to benefit patients, their families, the hospital and research. If the Bill were not passed, the charity would not be able to complete its move to independence. The hospital would therefore have to run two charities, one the independent arm and the other the existing one, into which royalties from “Peter Pan” would be transferred. This is clearly a waste of time, energy and money, with more duplication of effort and more bureaucracy. That is why the Bill is so important.
I will now briefly go into issues for NHS charities in general. NHS charities are those regulated by charity law but which are linked to NHS bodies and bound by NHS legislation. They are charitable trusts. Their trustees
are an NHS body such as a foundation trust, or trustees appointed by the Secretary of State for an NHS body. The Secretary of State has statutory powers to transfer trust property held by NHS charities. Such charities are distinct from independent charities established solely under charity law, and funds donated to the NHS must be held separately from Exchequer funding provided by the taxpayer. NHS bodies can hold properties on trust for any purpose relating to the health service. Charitable funds can be held by NHS trusts, special health authorities, foundation trusts, clinical commissioning groups and NHS England. Boards act as corporate trustees of the charitable funds.
Since 1973, the Secretary of State has had powers to appoint special trustees to manage charitable property on behalf of hospital boards. In 1990, powers for the Secretary of State to appoint trustees to NHS trusts were enacted and are now extended to other NHS bodies, as set out in the National Health Service Act 2006. The NHS Trust Development Authority oversees the appointment and removal of trustees. Separate trustees can be appointed if a business case can be made. The situation, as noble Lords will see, has become complex and somewhat unwieldy.
In 2011, the Department of Health conducted a review and consultation on NHS charities. In consequence of this review, the department announced its intention to allow NHS charities to move, with safeguards, to independent status and be regulated by the Charity Commission. There is detailed guidance on this, which I will not go into.
The bottom line of the Bill is that the Secretary of State will no longer appoint trustees, although he or she can, by order, appoint trustees to hold trust property in respect of certain NHS bodies. Clause 1 sets out the removal of the Secretary of State’s powers; Clause 2(1) discusses supplementary provision; Clause 3 discusses the transfer of the rights to the royalties from the play “Peter Pan”; Clauses 4, 5 and 6 detail the extent, commencement and the Title of the Bill; and there are two schedules. Thus, although the Bill is short, it is significant. It will sweep away bureaucracy, clarify and simplify the position of trustees and NHS charities and will give charities more freedom to operate.
In the film “Peter Pan”, Peter Pan says:
“To live will be an awfully big adventure”.
The Bill will ensure that trusts, such as the Great Ormond Street Hospital trust, are freed from undue bureaucracy to spend more of their charitable donations on patients and, we hope, allow more children to live for that big adventure. I recommend the Bill to your Lordships, I thank all noble Lords who have stayed for this Friday session, and I look forward to their speeches and to the Minister’s reply. I beg to move.
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