DCH 108 Help the Aged
Draft Charities Bill
A one page summary of
the Help the Aged Response
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We are pleased to summarise
our response to the draft Charities Bill in one page, as requested:
1. We welcome the publication
of the draft Bill and hope that it will pass into law in 2005.
We believe it is important for the Scottish and Northern Irish
Bills to be passed and brought into force at or around the same
time to prevent different regimes operating within the UK which
could cause difficulties to large charities operating throughout
the four nations.
2. However, we are disappointed
by the thinness of the drafting of the Bill in many places, the
lack of detail and the fact that so much is left to be done in
secondary legislation. This paucity of content creates considerable
uncertainties and makes it hard for us to judge the impact of
the Bill. This is reflected in the considerable number of questions
that we raise in our detailed response. The Bill is of fundamental
importance to the charity sector and we are anxious to see complete
and comprehensive, workable and well thought through legislation
passed.
3. The Bill will go some
way towards reducing red tape but there is much more that could
be done.
4. Public confidence in
charities will, along with developments such as the Standard Information
Return, be improved by the Bill. The new regulation of public
collections will help to combat negative publicity.
5. We believe the "public
benefit" test should remain undefined in the Bill and reliant
on existing and to be developed case law.
6. We share the reservations
of the NCVO in respect of the "social and economic impact"
objective.
7. We believe the objectives
of the Charity Commission are drafted in a woolly and confusing
way and feel there needs to be a great deal more clarity in the
wording of such objectives.
8. It is clear that, to
be effective in is enhanced role, the Charity Commission must
be adequately funded.
9. We continue to believe
that charities should be allowed to trade as part of their normal
activities; the current system of use of trading companies is
complex, expensive and confusing.
10. The proposals to regulate
public collections are workable if all definitions and criteria
for capacity assessment and fitness tests are in a national framework,
operating consistently and fairly by local authorities across
the country.
11. However, we question
if registered charities should be required to obtain a Certificate
of Fitness.
12. The proposed new rules
relating to professional fundraisers statements of remuneration
will be very difficult, if not impossible, to implement owing
to the complexity of such remuneration arrangements.
13. The requirement to
notify exact dates in advance of each collection of goods is bureaucratic
and we believe it is unworkable in practice.
14. We believe that objective
criteria for establishing that self-regulation of fundraising
has failed should be inserted in the Bill and that the power to
control fundraising by regulations should be subject to such criteria
having been met.
15. We are disappointed
that the CIO proposals do not give the opportunity for flexible
structures, to be utilised at a charity's choice, such as allowing
members and trustees to be combined into one role or retained
as separate roles or adopting either a two tier board structure
or the executive/non-executive model used in public limited companies.
16. The remit of the Tribunal
should be extended to enable all legally binding decisions of
the Charity Commission to be capable of being appealed to it.
17. The proposed power
of the Charity Commission to enter premises and seize material
is inappropriate.
18. We are pleased to
see that it is not proposed that trustees should be paid for being
trustees.
19. We would like to see
provisions clarifying section 36 of the Charities Act 1993 inserted.
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