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Lord Dahrendorf: My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my long-time colleague at the London School of Economics, the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, and to confirm that I am a great believer in the creative chaos of civil society and of the charitable sector. I am sorry that I cannot confirm that in my explorations of the English language I have missed the word Weltanschauung. I think that it is in fact quite a good thing that that unfortunate word does not exist in a language which is precise and therefore does not require it.
There is a sense of déjà vu, as the first speaker so rightly said. Indeed I was tempted to go a step further and quote the immortal words imputed to the legendary American baseball player Yogi Berra, who was an involuntary wit, to be sure, when he said:
Since that applies to me too, I confine myself to three quick comments.
The first has to do with public benefit. That is such an important term and quite clearly it is going to be a central term in the Bill and in the Act when we have passed it. A number of comments have been made about it. Since my concern is particularly with small charities and, if I may use another word which could be misunderstood, "irrelevant" charities in a certain
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sense—that is, charities born out of ideas which have very little to do with the intention to improve the world—it is important that as we talk about public benefit in our debates, both in this Second Reading debate and in Committee, statements are made which help the Charity Commission in providing its guidance to be generous to those charities.
In the list of 12 purposes which must be included, I am struck by the fact that certainly 10 of them could also describe government action. Therefore, there will be a temptation to understand charities as being concerned with subjects in which they either compete with government or help government in pursuing its purposes. That is not my view of the third sector—the charitable sector. I therefore hope that in interpreting public benefit, the term "public" will not be confused with the kind of purposes that are rightly defined by elected government, but will be used in a much wider, more generous way.
That would then make way for the truly independent charities which are not always concerned with doing good. I am not entirely sure that in this regard I agree with everything that my noble friend Lord Best said. I usually agree with him but, again, I think there was a strong element of charities having to do good in a certain sense which is too narrow for the kind of understanding of charities which I cherish because I am a great believer in civil society and its strength.
My second point is brief and just really a word of thanks or praise for what has happened to the Bill since we first saw it. It follows from my view of charities that it is quite important that the Charity Commission in its behaviour is, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, called it in a Committee debate, "fair, reasonable and proportionate". I am therefore very pleased that in the Bill as it now stands, at least the word "proportionate" has survived. The word "reasonableness" is circumscribed in a number of ways, and it is a pity that the word "fair" has not survived the discussions we have had so far. However, I understand that new Section 1D in Clause 7 takes account of the points that were made in this connection. I think that that is a great improvement, especially for someone who takes my creative chaos view of civil society.
My third point is again an expression of pleasure. Those of you who were present last night in our debate on Parliament and the legislative process, or indeed those of you who have read yesterday's Hansard, will have noticed that we discussed at some length the question of post-legislative scrutiny and the various methods that could be applied to it. As I expressed last night, I am strongly in favour of a wider use of sunset clauses. But sunset clauses are only one end of post-legislative scrutiny. There are methods of review of legislation that go some way towards achieving the same purpose.
I should like to congratulate the Government and the authors of Clause 7 on the quite interesting method they have devised for the review; that is, the appointment of a person to review generally the operation of the Act after
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five years. I think that that is a highly desirable way forward, one that helps us avoid the long life of unnecessary or mistaken legislation. I look forward to the first review of this Act once it has passed Parliament, which I hope will happen as soon as possible.
5.59 pm
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall: My Lords, I remind the House that I was a member of the Joint Committee that scrutinised this Bill in draft last year. I also declare an interest as a trustee of a number of charities including the Almeida Theatre, the National Opera Studio, Southbank Sinfonia and Welsh National Opera and as a former employee of others including the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre. If noble Lords detect a certain bias in this, they are certainly not wrong.
Like other noble Lords who have spoken today I contributed to the Second Reading debate when an earlier version of this Bill was introduced, and I also tried—but I am afraid not as successfully as some colleagues—to stay in touch with the subsequent deliberations of the Grand Committee. However, I should like to pay tribute to the work done at that stage by my noble friends Lady Scotland and Lord Bassam, work which was rigorously but I think always courteously tested by the contributions of, in particular, the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Lord Phillips of Sudbury. I am delighted to see that all four have their shoulders back to the same wheel now that we are setting the great work in motion again. I should like to say that as a result of their earlier efforts I agree with all those who have said that the Bill we have before us now is significantly improved, even from what was—as my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley observed earlier—a pretty good Bill to start with.
So I think there is a great deal that we can feel very positive about. One of the benefits of being the tail-end Charlie, which falls to me today, before the more eminent contributions of the winders-up, is that if you have heard everything you want to hear said in the debate, you can afford to say very little more. I am sure that noble Lords will be grateful if I follow the intention of the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, to provide pleasure and not irritation. If I cannot provide pleasure, I shall try to provide minimum irritation.
I absolutely welcome the Bill, which is needed. During the deliberations that have taken place on it in the past six months and, indeed, before that in the scrutiny committee, we have seen the huge support and great deal of good that it can bring to the sector which it is intended to regulate.
I particularly welcome the introduction of a public benefit test and the expansion of charitable purposes which the Bill proposes. These issues have been extensively discussed by other Members of your Lordships' House during the debate and I will simply say that I welcome them. It is, however, still the case that the effectiveness of these proposals, once they are enacted, will depend upon the ability of the Charity Commission to develop rigorous, transparent and fair systems for putting into practice the new powers that
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it will have. I draw particular attention once again, as other noble Lords have done, to the sensitivity of applying the public benefit test to charities that charge for their services—a group which is far more diverse than might be imagined from the controversy which inevitably surrounds the status of public schools and hospitals, and one which includes inter alia many of the most important cultural institutions, large and small, in the land.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf—he is no longer in his place—referred to small charities. They referred to the possibility that small charities might also have as it were small publics. The importance of applying a public benefit test in a way which takes account of the fact that although a public may be small it is neither insignificant nor—I see the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, has re-entered the Chamber—as the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, put it, irrelevant, needs to be very carefully borne in mind.
I would be very keen to hear from the Minister when he replies whether he is confident that the Charity Commission will be adequately resourced—I mean resourced in the broadest sense—to carry out its new duties so as to ensure that no inadvertent damage is done to a vitally important group of charitable enterprises.
Finally, I return briefly to a point which, as the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, kindly noted, I and others raised at the earlier Second Reading and in Committee; that is, the question of the independence from government of the Charity Commission. Although the present Bill still states at Clause 6(1A)(3) that,
I note with great satisfaction that a new subsection (1A)(4) has appeared to the effect that,
"In the exercise of its functions the Commission shall not be subject to the direction or control of any Minister of the Crown or other government department".
Hoorah!—a listening government, indeed. That is extremely welcome.
The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, raised a worry about the unchanged provision in Schedule 1 for the Charity Commission to secure departmental approval in its recruitment processes. I understand that worry so I hope we can be assured that that power will be exercised with a suitably light touch and that the commission will be encouraged and enabled to seek the best and most able people to fulfil its very difficult and extended remit and that there will be enough of them to do the job properly.
That said, I welcome the Bill back. Like others, I hope that this time we shall see it reach the statute book speedily and that it will be unimpeded by anything other than the usual vigorous debate.
6.4 pm
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