Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
60-79)
MR JON
BENJAMIN, MR
DON HORROCKS,
MR DAVID
POLLOCK, MR
STEPHEN SLACK
AND MS
ANDREA WILLIAMS
12 JUNE 2008
Q60 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Is that
advancing Christianity in the terms of the Charity Commission,
or is that you saying, "Look, we are going to have to do
something to help these guys and girls"?
Ms Williams: It is whole, it is
a circle. We are compelled by the love of Christ, we are compelled
because we believe there is eternal significance with what you
do with the message of Christ. We are also compelled because we
want to see justice. We want to see justice in this country, we
want to see justice in Africa, we want to see justice globally.
That is part of the holistic nature of what Christianity is and
why it would be true to say that you will find Christians not
just in their hubs of well-doing, but you will find them in all
sorts of charities that are not specifically Christian because
they are compelled by the love of Christ to basically change the
world for good to serve their neighbour.
Q61 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Should you
be getting involved in countries where you are trying to push
your beliefs, possibly against the Government of that country,
for good or bad, I am not moralising. Are you, therefore, not
going outside the boundaries of the Charity Commission and creating
a system which is possibly against the benefits of that country?
Ms Williams: Baroness Cox's charity,
HART (Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust) does incredible work in Islamic
nations where there has been oppression and violence as a result
of Islamic regimes, and she has pictures and stories of where
people have perhaps remained Muslim but they have gone in there
and provided aid and help, or people of the villages of the country
have converted to Christianity, and that makes a difference.
Mr Horrocks: I observe that non-coercive
missional religion is a fundamental United Nations human right,
and to try and separate the mission in terms of the belief system
and what it actually does is not possible. I would like to see
the British Government supporting freedom of religion in countries
that do not permit it. In fact, I was intrigued this week actually—an
interesting observation to note—that a few British embassies
in repressive countries such as Lithuania were flying rainbow
flags in support of human rights for gay people. I wonder if the
same embassies will fly flags supporting Christian liberty in
Belarus or in the Middle East. This is the kind of issue we are
concerned with. There is freedom of religion here.
Q62 Mr Liddell-Grainger: That is
why I am asking the question. We have seen splits in the Anglican
church over gay bishops and there are lots of other things which
have pulled religions in countries where, using your charitable
status, you are operating. I am trying to differentiate between
the advancement of Christianity without you tinkering in the internal
workings of governments?
Mr Horrocks: Again, I come back
to the aspect of coercive religion. If there is any element of
coercive religion or linking aid to commitment, to belief, that
kind of thing should be outlawed.
Q63 Julie Morgan: I apologise, I
missed a lot of the earlier discussion. I believe that some charitable
organisations started off with a religious base but have changed
as time has gone on and broadened out. I was thinking particularly
of Barnardos, which I worked with for a while. I wondered what
your comments were about that happening. I do not know whether
that happens more generally?
Mr Horrocks: What are you actually
wanting us to say on that? I am aware of the Children's Society,
for example, that certainly started very much as a Church of England
charity. I think the patron still is the Archbishop of Canterbury,
but it is very much now a secular organisation. I remember at
the time how it almost had to close down, and did close down in
Wales, because when it began to adopt a secular tenet rather than
the Christian basis that historically it had, its support fell
overnight. The secular part of society did not make up the charitable
giving.
Q64 Julie Morgan: Which organisation
are you talking about?
Mr Horrocks: The Children's Society.
In that case, that seems to make the point that religious motivation
is a pretty important factor in charitable work.
Q65 Julie Morgan: My understanding
is that, in order to reach out to a wider group in the public,
that was the reason that these charities did this. These are very
successful charities who help an enormous number of people and
they obviously felt that this was necessary to do. I would like
your comments on that really.
Mr Benjamin: I would have thought
the Charity Commission is pretty good at making sure—and
there are all sorts of checks and balances every year in one's
accounts, and, again, in this current legislation and the guidelines—that
charities are doing what they say they are doing and if they are
doing something else which may be charitable, then they have to
alter their objects, and that then brings into question whether
money they have raised and their assets can be applied to the
new purpose or have to be applied to the old purpose. There is
a methodology, there is a mechanism there, or should be—I
believe it exists—for the Charity Commission to say, "Right,
you raised money on a certain basis and those funds have to be
applied on that basis. If you now want to do something else you
can, but you have to work with us to alter your objects or see
whether your existing objects will cover that." It is a matter
of transparency, so, again, donors understand what they are giving
money for. As you said, they actually increase their attractiveness
to donors but those who gave money on one basis and one understanding
have to have their wishes respected as well.
Q66 Julie Morgan: I think it is also
a matter of increasing their attractiveness to people who want
to use their services.
Ms Williams: I think Christianity
exists to serve the community. It is actually very outward focused.
A church will want to serve its community. It will be open to
all. That is actually the point. Christianity does not say you
cannot come to a service because of something, if it is a children's
home; that is not how Christianity functions at its core. It is
not a coercive religion, but it may as time goes on seek to persuade,
and at the end of the day a person can accept or reject the beliefs
of Christianity, but when you see people giving their lives to
do mission work, it is not because they believe in any way that
they are going to force a person into belief, but rather because
they want to serve the person, either with the gospel or children
that are underprivileged; they feel that the call upon their life
is to serve underprivileged children and to love them in Christ.
So it is not the broadening out or making something less religious
that appeals to a wider community generally. You will often find
Christians at the centre of serving a community because they care
about the community and they do not discriminate against who receives
their services.
Q67 Julie Morgan: I am saying that
these organisations felt it necessary to become more secular in
order to promote what they were trying to do?
Mr Slack: I endorse a lot of what
Jon has said. I think there is tension between, on the one hand,
the need to keep with the donors who have given funds to a charity
in the past for a particular purpose, perhaps an explicitly religious
one, and the need for the charity to be able to carry on using
its funds effectively for the broad sort of purposes for which
they were given in modern, perhaps rather different, circumstances.
English law has had for many years a mechanism to enable that
to be done for the see, pray principle which allows charitable
funds to be applied to new and different purposes where there
is a convincing case for that to happen. The Charity Commission
effectively acts now as the mediator for that process. So there
is the potential for funds which have been given for a religious,
charitable purpose to be widened in their application, but, I
think, if you are talking about a traditional trust, that tends
to happen rather less frequently precisely because it would need
the see, pray doctrine for that to be possible. That would happen
more frequently perhaps in the context of a modern limited company
where it is easier to change the purposes that the charity exists
to fulfil.
Mr Benjamin: Can I mention another
point that I am reminded of in this discussion. There was a consultation
recently from the DCLG about public funding for charities and
how the DCLG, doing what it does, wanted to promote cohesion and
the suggestion that charities would have to expand their beneficiaries
and be more inclusive in order to qualify for funding. That is
a laudable aim, but there is a problem there that that may require
charities that rely on some public funding, and it may not be
the majority of the funding but it may be an important top up
for them, to be able to function. That may call upon them to go
beyond their charitable objects, and, in response to the consultation,
we made that point. There was a specific question about: would
there be a problem if charities had to go beyond their traditional
activities, and, of course, there would not be a problem if those
activities are actually tied in closely, as they should be, with
their object. So, again, there is that tension, and it may be
the charity's own view that it wants to expand and become more
inclusive or it may be pressure from outside linked to funding
streams where there is some cogent reason for expanding the beneficiaries,
but actually that does not sit very easily with the Charity Commission's
own rules.
Q68 Chairman: Could I ask one question
as we end. Having sat through an hour and a half of this I am
still not clear, by any means, about what this public benefit
test really means for religious organisations. Andrea, you spoke
at one point when asked by Paul about the difference between true
and distorted versions of Christian faiths. I do not know how
on earth the Charity Commission, if it has got this task, is going
to distinguish between true and distorted versions of Christian
faiths. I have not heard any criteria advanced as to what kind
of public disbenefit will be of such a kind that a religious organisation
will not qualify under a public benefit test. So, just as we end,
I would like each of you to tell me, if you can, what kind of
organisation advancing religion would fall foul, do you think,
of the public benefit test?
Mr Horrocks: I believe I have
made that absolutely clear. Any religion that advocates violence
or coercion in any form. Suppose, for example, a religion that
actually believes in child sacrifice applies for charitable status,
it is not going to get it, is it. I think the Charity Commission
is going to use a lot of commonsense and historical case law to
be able to reach its judgment in 99.9% of cases. In the point
.1% of cases where there is difficulty, there is going to have
to be some kind of resolution process, but those are the kind
of religious charities, those that advocate terrorism, violence,
coercion.
Q69 Chairman: Can you name a religious
body that you think would fall foul of this test?
Mr Horrocks: No.
Q70 Paul Flynn: David, what about
you?
Mr Pollock: There are so many
disbenefits that come from religion. They may not be central to
religion, but the law has to take account of them and the present
guidance is failing to do so. You have religious organisations
that go in for exorcisms of children involving threats and beatings;
you have condoning, as we have heard, of Islamist terrorism. In
fact there was a radio programme on Radio 4 not long ago
that investigated quitting Islam as a possibility and could not
find a single Islamic authority who disagreed that death was the
penalty of apostasy. The liberal ones differed in being more able
to find excuses for not applying the penalty. You have got religious
charities that encourage corporal punishment, you have got charities
that encourage family break-up by shunning of non-believers, those
that teach that women are inferior or worthless.
Q71 Chairman: You would have the
whole of Islam on your list to start with.
Mr Pollock: Indeed, you might
well. The whole question, as some members of the committee have
said, of subsidising religion, as such, does come into question,
in my view.
Q72 Chairman: Stephen, can you think
of a body?
Mr Slack: I do accept, as I said
earlier, that activities of religious bodies could, in principle,
constitute a detriment of the kind that could be set against public
benefit in such a way as to lead to the rejection of a claim for
charitable status, but I think those have to be quite significant
disbenefits—I think that is what the Charity Commission
guidance says—partly, I think, because of the European Convention
sort of arguments, and that they are likely to be confined to
these rather serious types of activity of the kind which the draft
guidance contemplates, such as danger or damage to mental or physical
health, the encouragement or promotion of violence or hatred towards
others and unlawful restrictions on a person's freedom. I think
they are the sorts of areas which would be likely to give rise
to real objections.
Q73 Chairman: Can you think of a
religious organisation that might meet any of these tests?
Mr Slack: I am not aware of any
Church of England bodies.
Q74 Chairman: David has given us
quite a list.
Mr Slack: Yes, the sort of activities
that he mentioned in relation to healing, and so on, would be
quite inconsistent with the kind of advice that the Church of
England gives to its churches.
Q75 Chairman: You cannot think of
any body that might fall foul of the public benefit test?
Mr Slack: No.
Q76 Chairman: No organisation of
any kind that you can think of.
Mr Slack: I am talking about the
position within the Church of England. It is possible to contemplate
certain sorts of Christian bodies which may engage in activity
which is harmful.
Q77 Chairman: But you cannot immediately
think of any.
Mr Slack: I am not aware of any.
Mr Benjamin: I think we obviously
have to differentiate between organisations and religions. If
there is a religion where all its adherents believe in child sacrifice,
then the religion would fall foul of the public benefit test,
but far from saying that Islam or Christianity, or whatever, is
going to fall foul of the test because there are some people that
might have certain very extreme views, I am not going to subscribe
to that view because I do not believe that is right. Can I give
actual examples? No, I do not know of religious charities that
are currently charities that are engaging in things that they
should not be, but that might be due to my lack of knowledge.
One of the issues that has been touched on in the discussions
up to this point and today is proselytising. We would have a particular
problem, and I think this is dealt with in the guidelines, in
a group that is being very heavy-handed in seeking converts and
one perhaps that particularly seeks out converts from a particular
group or other faith, because clearly that is quite an onerous
thing for the targets of their activities.
Q78 Chairman: Andrea, tell us about
these distorted organisations. Are they going to fall foul of
this test?
Ms Williams: To put it into context,
we have to remember that our country is still constitutionally
a Christian country; the Monarch still swears to uphold the gospel.
The Church of England is our established religion, so historically
we have believed in the benefit of Christianity. Where are there
distortions? There are distortions in cults: the kind of thing
that Mr Paul Flynn mentioned. In the name of Christ someone going
off and then sacrificing people. This is a terrible thing, and
Christians would be against that. That kind of behaviour is, of
course, not approved of at all in the bible. To look historically,
but also in reality, at what Christianity is, is evident for all.
An organisation like an Al Qaeda1 that currently wants to build
the mega-mosque in east London: you look at whether or not they
should be charitable. You were talking about religious organisations
that might fall foul of this sort of thing. We see that, through
various mosques
1 Note from witness: the organisation referred
to should have been Tablighi Jamaat.
in this country, there has been conversion to this
particular group and then they have been linked to some of the
terrorist bombings. If we have got that kind of evidence on a
religious organisation, then clearly they ought not to be charitable.
If there is evidence that children are being brainwashed, that
ought not to be charitable.
Q79 Chairman: Religions that attack
Christians as infidels, they are going to be charities, are they
not? They are going to pass the public benefit test.
Ms Williams: The issue there,
again, for individuals and for society as a whole, and maybe this
is true, as I said earlier in this debate, historically we have
said we are a Christian country. We believe this to be true. This
is the foundation of our law dating back to the Magna Carta.
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