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PETITION
Community Rail
6 pm
Mrs. Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con): I beg leave to present a petition initiated by Councillor Christopher Schutz and signed by over 1,100 residents of Remenham, Wargrave, Ruscombe and others, condemning the Government's decision to pursue the community rail plans for the Henley to Twyford and Maidenhead to Marlow branch lines.
The Petitioners declare that these lines are key commuter routes and that under the proposals safety standards will fall and Government investment will be cut.
The Petitioners further declare that branch line deterioration will lead to an increase in road congestion and engine emissions.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to cancel its Community Rail Proposals for the Henley to Twyford (and Maidenhead to Marlow) branch lines.
To lie upon the Table.
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Aid (Tsunami)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ainger.]
6.1 pm
Mr. Tom Harris (Glasgow, Cathcart) (Lab): I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and through you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to have this short but important debate this evening.
As the Prime Minister said on 10 January, the scale of the tragedy caused by the Indian ocean tsunami on Boxing day was unimaginable in its power and catastrophic in its impact. All of us, I believe, were deeply affected and moved by the horror that we saw unfolding on our television screens—the hundreds of thousands of deaths, the destroyed families and the countless ruined lives.
However, out of that awful tragedy came hope, symbolised in this country by the amazing generosity of the British public. They have donated a magnificent £300 million to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal, and a further £40 million directly to its members. This money will make a real difference to the lives of many. The DEC has stated that its members will do all that they can to ensure that families affected by the tsunami will not only recover their former status, but will live in safer, more resilient communities, better able to resist future disasters.
There obviously remains much more to do. However, the priority for Governments and non-governmental organisations now is to ensure that the money donated reaches those who need it and that it is spent effectively. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those involved in this large and difficult task. I have met representatives from Oxfam and I was extremely impressed by their dedication and commitment to the cause. The hard work carried out by Oxfam and the other DEC members deserves to be fully acknowledged and applauded by all of us.
I would also like to pay tribute to Glasgow The Caring City, a charity based in my constituency, led by the Rev. Neil Galbraith of Cathcart old parish church. That was one of the first charities, if not the first charity, to mobilise aid on the very evening of Boxing day and get equipment and aid to Manchester airport to be flown out that very same evening, which I think beats every other charity in the country. The Rev. Galbraith has just returned from a visit to Sri Lanka to see how aid work was going on, and, although I have not met him since his return, I am told that it was an extremely useful visit. To digress on the question of Sri Lanka, when my hon. Friend the Minister replies, could he explain in some detail exactly what work the Government are doing, particularly in the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka?
I recognise the serious problems still facing people affected by the tsunami and those trying to help them, but the purpose of this debate is to highlight the completely separate issue of the impact of the tsunami appeal on charities working in other areas. I was contacted by a UK charity that had suffered from a drastic cut in income following the tsunami. The main reason for that cut in income was that corporate supporters had temporarily switched their funding from the charity to the tsunami appeal.
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As I understand it—I am sure that most Members will agree with this definition—a donation is either disposable income or profit that has been given to a good cause. A donation is not money that was promised to one good cause and is then given to another instead. That would be a bit like recycling Christmas gifts, as it would mean giving somebody a gift at no extra cost to oneself.
I therefore decided to write to a number of companies to find out the extent of the problem, and in my letters I asked two questions. The first was: were they treating their donation to the tsunami appeal as an additional one-off cost to be borne in this financial year? Secondly, I asked: were they planning to renege on any commitments made to support charities that were unconnected to the tsunami appeal? Fortunately, the responses that I received were on the whole extremely encouraging. All the companies to which I wrote were able to confirm that they were not planning to renege on any existing commitments in light of their donation to the tsunami appeal. Furthermore, the majority were also able to confirm that the money that they had donated to the appeal was in addition to, and not part of, their existing budget for charitable donations.
I believe that it is important to highlight good practice as well as bad. The bad will come later, but in the meantime, I would like specifically to mention the Next Group plc. In addition to its £250,000 corporate donation to the appeal, which is over and above its existing charitable budget, the directors and associates of the group also personally donated a further £200,000.
Unfortunately, not all the companies that I contacted have behaved as generously and responsibly as Next. Barclays Bank plc wrote to inform me that its total commitment to the tsunami appeal exceeds £1 million, but how much over and above what it was already planning to spend on good causes did that cost Barclays? Its consumer and community affairs director told me in his letter:
"As you might be aware, we have a substantial programme of community support with a budget in excess of £30 million. A portion of this is earmarked for disaster funding, which is where we have drawn some of the monies for the tsunami appeal."
Barclays does not say where the other moneys were drawn from. From its letter, I can only assume that they came from the rest of the existing community support budget. In effect—I am sure that it will be more than happy to clarify this—Barclays has not donated additional or new money to the tsunami appeal; it has simply funded its donation through its existing charitable budget. BT donated £500,000 in cash to the tsunami appeal—money that will also be met from within its existing budget for community investment, which is based on a percentage of its profits.
Then there is Marks and Spencer. The executive directors of Marks and Spencer have made a personal donation to the appeal of £50,000, which is undeniably a very good thing. What is not so good is that its £250,000 corporate donation has come from its existing budget for charitable donations. Stuart Rose, the chief executive of Marks and Spencer, said in his letter to me:
"Our corporate contribution to the tsunami disaster has come out of our budget for charitable donations. We make decisions on behalf of our shareholders as to where the money should be spent. These are always difficult decisions and we prioritise a range of worthy causes".
I am ready to accept that, in terms of the company's existing charitable budget, tough choices have to be made regarding what causes should and should not be supported. However, it should be acknowledged in the case of an unforeseen disaster that requires immediate financial support that if companies do not choose to fund the support with additional money, they will in effect be diverting money away from good causes. That is a concept that most other companies that I contacted seem to have understood.
Furthermore, I believe that such companies have misled the public. All of them issued press releases effectively advertising the fact that they had donated large sums to the tsunami appeal. Indeed they had, but what they neglected to explain is where the money came from. They were already claiming credit for donating money that was already earmarked for good causes. That does a disservice to the many companies that rightly ensured that the money that they donated to the tsunami appeal was in addition to the money that they ordinarily donate to good causes.
It is important to realise the consequences of those actions. The Institute of Fundraising carried out a survey one month on from the tsunami to garner members' opinions on the impact of the tsunami appeal on their organisations' ability to fundraise. It received 293 responses, of which one fifth saw a fall in income averaging 30 per cent. in January. While it is impossible to predict the long-term effects of the tsunami appeal on the charity sector—the positive as well as the negative—it is seemingly undeniable that, for many who are unconnected to the appeal, the short-term effects have been extremely problematic.
It has been suggested that one reason why many charities have seen such a significant fall in their income is that the general public, as well as some companies, have a limit to their generosity. I do not accept that. In fact, I believe that, on the whole, the general public show best practice on this matter—best practice that some companies would do well to follow. While a few people may decide that they have done their bit for the time being, I believe that the vast majority will continue to donate to worthwhile causes unrelated to the tsunami appeal. I have no empirical evidence to support that belief, but I cannot accept the idea that individuals adhere to strict charitable budgets. Rather, they give what they can, when they can. Therefore, I do not envisage people cancelling their monthly charity standing orders because they feel that they have already given away enough money this year.
The main reason why the Institute of Fundraising has reported that a fifth of the charities that it surveyed saw a fall in income averaging 30 per cent. during January is that, as I indicated, many charities have suffered a loss in income from the corporate sector. That is because, unlike the general public, private companies—understandably—have budgets for the amount of money that they donate to charity. Pat Reed, the chief executive of Cancer Bridge, has said:
"we are a small regional charity and have been almost brought to our knees by it. It may even be the death knell for ourselves and others . . . The cheques that we expected to receive in January have been noticeable by their absence. We were also promised a
- donation of £5,000 before Christmas by a private company, but have just had a letter saying it has given a substantial sum to the tsunami appeal instead".
Riders for Health, a charity that works on the problem of delivering health care in Africa, has been notified of funding cuts to its long-term development work in Africa because money has been diverted to the tsunami relief effort. Joint chief executive Andrea Coleman said that several funders had withdrawn support.
The MS Trust, a leading independent charity for multiple sclerosis sufferers, their families and friends, and for health professionals, was notified that fundraising from a corporate partner was being put on hold in 2005 following the tsunami disaster. The loss of that income is a severe blow to the trust and to the people whom it supports.
Penny Moore, the chief executive of Hospitality Action, the trade charity for the hospitality industry, contacted me to say that it, too, had been adversely affected by the by the tsunami appeal:
"Companies who have committed to raising money for their charity have seen monies being redirected to the Asian appeal especially in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. These monies have often been in excess of our expectations.
It still remains to be seen what the long term affect will be but HA have been through a process of cost cutting as we forecast revenue could be reduced by as much as 30 per cent. over the financial year. This has resulted in three redundancies within the head office function.
Those figures speak for themselves. It is vital that we ensure that charities such as those that I have listed, which do so much good work, do not become unintentional additional victims of the tsunami.
It was undeniably important for the public, companies and the Government to provide large sums to the tsunami appeal, and I have no complaint about the record of the Government. I am extremely proud of the help that they have given in the aftermath of the tsunami. However, it is also important that that money is additional to money that would ordinarily have been given to good causes. Sometimes, when the circumstances dictate it, we simply need to give more, and that goes for corporate organisations just as much as for individual members of the public.
I thank ThirdSector, the weekly magazine for the not-for-profit sector, which has been extremely helpful in providing me with information on this important issue.
I did not seek this Adjournment debate to criticise companies that have a good track record on supporting charitable organisations. Nor do I specifically criticise those companies that have set aside a finite budget for donating to charities. What I do have a problem with, as I am sure do the vast majority of the public, are corporate organisations that boast in press releases about the extra money that they intend to give to a particular charity while not explaining specifically that if that money had not been offered to that charity, it would have been given to some other charity—in other words, not explaining that money that they have already set aside is not additional to money that would otherwise be spent on charities in a particular financial year. The public deserve more, and I hope that some of these corporate organisations will look to their own practice and learn something from the generosity and best practice of the British people.
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6.14 pm
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