Examination of Witnesses (Questions 780
- 799)
WEDNESDAY 7 JULY 2004
MS GERALDINE
PEACOCK, MS
ROSIE CHAPMAN
AND MR
KENNETH DIBBLE
Q780 Bob Russell: I can understand
that.
Ms Peacock: So it may not be for
the right reasons, whatever the right reasons might be, but they
perceive it as being helpful to them.
Q781 Bob Russell: We have had evidence
that in some sectors the exempt charities are already highly regulated.
For example, on higher education institutions, the Better Regulation
Task Force has concluded that higher education institutions are
in some respects overburdened already by bureaucracy. Is there
any hard evidence of bad practice which justifies increasing the
burden on those organisations let alone what it is going to do
to the Charity Commission?
Ms Chapman: Where there is already
a main regulator that has been identified they will continue to
regulate those bodies. So for example we have had dialogue with
HEFCE about how they could take on board the charity aspects of
those organisations they currently regulate.
Q782 Bob Russell: So it would not
be duplication?
Ms Chapman: No, it would not be.
Where they already have a regulator they would expand their role.
It is where there is not an identified main regulator that we
would regulate them.
Q783 Bob Russell: You think it is
more of a status thing for the excepted and exempt charities if
they come under the umbrella of the Charity Commission? There
would be no practical benefit to them on a day-to-day basis?
Ms Peacock: I do not know where
they are coming from. They all probably come from different places
thought-wise but I would like to think there was a merger process
that allowed them to develop cumulatively better practice which
is shared and disseminated in the sector.
Q784 Ms Keeble: I want to ask about
the excepted charities because I think those include a lot of
religious organisations, do they not? I do not mean like the ones
with charities attached to churches, I mean the actual religious
organisations themselves. I have got a few questions I wanted
to ask about that but that is right, is it not, that a lot of
these 5,000 would be religious organisations?
Ms Chapman: Yes.
Q785 Ms Keeble: Have you got a satisfactory,
functioning, workable definition of what would then qualify for
those excepted charities because under "charitable purposes"
you have got "advancement of religion" which would normally
be proselytising but will just worshipping organisations be included
as well under that common charitable purpose or will it just be
proselytising religions?
Mr Dibble: If it is a religious
organisation within the meaning of charity law it will fall within
that purpose.
Q786 Ms Keeble: So far they have
been excepted. These are going to be brought in for the first
time and they are a difficult area because if you take regulating
mosques and temples it is going to be difficult. Have you got
the right definitions in the legislation for what you are going
to have to do?
Mr Dibble: The advancement of
those religions which you refer to as temples and mosques would
be acceptable as religious purposes.
Q787 Ms Keeble: So "religious
purposes" is going to include just worshipping, not active
proselytising?
Mr Dibble: The celebration of
a religious rite in public is a public benefit for the purposes
of religion under charity law.
Ms Keeble: Could I come on to a couple
of other things.
Mr Foulkes: In other words Scientology?
Q788 Ms Keeble: Forget about Scientology
because they have had some other difficulties but there are also
people like the Jain Community who are an important community
but they do not normally come under the category, so are you going
to be able to include those religions as well?
Mr Dibble: Jainism, yes, we will
accept that as a religion.
Q789 Chairman: Just on that point,
we have had put to us, unsurprisingly, by the British Humanist
Association that the definition as described here is I think,
to use one of your earlier phrases, not terribly modern and that
a better word might be "belief" rather than "religion".
Do you have a view on that?
Mr Dibble: My understanding of
the descriptions of purposes are those which the public can immediately
relate to as having acknowledgement that they are charitable purposes,
and the use of the word "religion" of course derives
from the heads of charities that currently exist and are set down.
The Commission has considered separately that the promotion of
a belief system which is not religious may be acceptable as a
charity if it confers adequate public benefit, and that would
fall under the residual class but I imagine that because those
organisations are not so well perceived as being charitable religious
organisations they are not included in the list of descriptions.
Q790 Chairman: So it would fall under
the 12th rather than third or fourth category in your view and
it would be possible for an organisation that espouses a particular
belief that is non-religious, provided it passes the public benefit
test, to be registered as a charity?
Mr Dibble: Yes.
Q791 Ms Keeble: This is a practical
thing. You have talked quite a lot about consulting the community.
Consulting this particular community of diverse faiths is very
difficult and the Government has not got any comprehensive models
yet and of course the churches are changing partly because the
ethnic composition of the country is changing. How are you going
to set about consulting and making sure that they know about the
fact that they have to get registered and managing that process,
which is probably in the context of the sensitivities around faith
communities, one of the most difficult jobs that you will face
and will make the independent schools look like a tea party, I
suspect.
Ms Chapman: I think what we have
tried to do is identify as far as possible an umbrella body to
start with. For example, we managed to build some goodwill with
the Evangelical Churches Alliance and we would need to go out
on that basis. We would be foolish not to learn from the experience
of the Home Office's Faith for the Community Unit and to see what
contacts they have. That does tend to be our starting point when
we are reviewing any status there is.
Q792 Ms Keeble: How about those organisations
that really do not want to be regulated? It might be against their
particular beliefs or they might have political objections to
being regulated. How are you going to manage that? If you bowl
into some places I can think of and say "trust me" it
might not go down too well.
Ms Chapman: I think we recognise
that it will be difficult and it will be as much about maximising
and educating, as Geraldine was saying, and communicating and
trying to create a climate in which the advantages of registering—and
there are of course considerable advantages—are made plain.
Q793 Ms Keeble: Have you scoped it
out yet at all?
Ms Chapman: No.
Ms Peacock: What we are trying
to do is look at how we can conduct a number of scoping exercises
because the focus of our task, in answer to your original question,
which does link with this too, I think, is that we know we have
to work in a different way as a Commission because if we work
in the way we do at the moment we simply could not cope with all
the numbers that you are talking about.
Q794 Ms Keeble: How about diversity
and expertise in the staff?
Ms Peacock: Yes, again, that is
an area which needs addressing, not only I suggest in the Charity
Commission but in a number of regulatory bodies, and it has to
be part of our scoping exercise. I talked about us needing to
model what we expect others to do and we cannot do an effective
job as a charities regulator if we cannot address our own internal
process and procedures sufficiently first.
Q795 Ms Keeble: One of my concerns
is that I suspect this 5,000 is tiny. Thinking back to the early
1980s, there were 2,500 supplementary schools operating just in
Birmingham, quite a lot those attached to different religious
organisations. Bearing in mind the amount of money people are
prepared to give to their churches, it could be vastly more than
that. I really wonder how you are going to manage it because we
have talked about deregulation through all of this and this is
a massive, massive, massive extension of regulation to an area
that currently operates quite freely, and I am concerned about
how it is going to be managed.
Ms Peacock: It is not a direct
equivalent at all but to give you an example not from my Charity
Commission days but from my sector days when I worked in autism,
for instance, there were a number of different agencies providing
services and support services that had no apparent standards and
could not be evaluated, quantified or costed. In fact what happened
was we brought together those bodies and got them to define for
themselves what successful outcomes were and then provide a structure
which helped them to achieve those.
Q796 Ms Keeble: Do you think that
all the churches should be regulated? Do you think they should
all be brought under the umbrella? £100,000 is not that much
income for a religious organisation. Do you think that should
be changed?
Ms Peacock: I think we should
be asking more publicly whether people would find charitable status
the most helpful status for them. There are a range of different
institutional options now, non-profit-making activities—
Q797 Ms Keeble: Under this they have
to be regulated by you if they have got an income of over £100,000,
which is not a lot for a church.
Ms Peacock: If they meet the criteria.
Q798 Ms Keeble: So do you think that
that should be looked at again because it is just an unmanageable
job?
Ms Peacock: No.
Ms Chapman: As I understand it,
I think the current exceptions are defined and they are particular
denominations so it is not perhaps on the scale suggested.
Q799 Chairman: There is a broader
issue here. Sally is on to a very good point but there is a broader
issue too which is to what extent this really means for you, notwithstanding
your strictures on light touch, an expansion in role and therefore
whether or not the Commission has the capability, capacity, et
cetera. That is a big issue. Rather than you answering it now
because we are coming to the end of our time I would not mind
if you could submit a very brief paper to us on this issue on
what you see as the demands that are likely to be forthcoming
on the Commission and what you think the likely costs are to the
public purse. We can all sit here very glibly and say that is
a very good idea but every time we do that it has a cost to the
public purse which we need to assess. If you could submit something
along those lines that would be helpful to the Committee?
Ms Peacock: We would be happy
to do that[34].
34 Ev 224 (DCH 300) Back
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