CHARITY LAW AND VOLUNTARY ORGANISATIONS

HL Deb 04 July 1977 vol 385 cc117-54

8 p.m.

Lord ALLEN of ABBEYDALE rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have come to any conclusions on the recommendations made in the report of the Goodman Committee on Charity Law and Voluntary Organisations. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the report of the Committee on Charity Law and Voluntary Organisations, which was so skilfully chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, is an important document on an important topic, and I am grateful for the opportunity of initiating a short discussion about it. It is particularly pleasing that the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, himself, and the noble Lord, Lord Nathan, who was the vice-chairman of the Committee, are to speak this evening.

From about the time that I became chairman of the National Council of Social Service in 1973—although I hope and believe that this was pure coincidence —we became increasingly aware of concern about the law and the administration relating to charities. We learned of this concern through books and articles, as well as through representations made direct. I suppose the issue which most caught the eye was that relating to the extent to which charities can engage in political activity. But there were other points, too, which is hardly surprising as there was by then a good deal of experience, and circumstances had changed since the Charities Act 1960 had been passed. After a good deal of discussion and consultation, the National Council concluded that the time was ripe for launching a committee of inquiry. I am very grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, agreed to chair this inquiry and that we were able to support him with a strong membership. The inquiry elicited a great deal of evidence, and I am particularly glad to place on record that the Government Departments concerned co-operated and gave a great deal of help.

It so happens that after the Committee had got under way, the Expenditure Committee in another place reported on the Charity Commissioners and their accountability, and we have the added bonus that the Goodman Committee were able to include their comments on the Expenditure Committee's recommendations. I do not suppose that many people will agree with every single thing in the report—I do not myself. Indeed, the report itself contains a minority recommendation. But there will be general agreement that this is a most valuable report, raising all the relevant issues. It is not only the National Council who have great cause to be grateful to the noble Lord and his colleagues. I noted that the Charity Commissioners themselves, in their recent report for 1976, said how much they welcomed the Committee's report, and in view of the high regard I have for the chairman of the Charity Commission I feel that this comment is particularly valuable.

I am not sure that it is universally recognised how important charities are in this country, and how fortunate we are to have such a wealth of activities carried out by charitable bodies for the benefit of the community. A good deal of money is involved, too. Charities hold substantial assets, they have incomes which must total at least £400 million a year—although I am bound to say that some of this income is looking a little precarious, in present circumstances —and they enjoy tax exemptions totting up to well over £100 million a year. All this means that a balance has to be kept between, on the one hand, encouraging voluntary effort without stifling initiative, and, on the other hand, seeing that the money which the public contribute as donors and as taxpayers is not wasted through diversion to non-charitable purposes through incompetence or, indeed, through fraud.

The Committee's report deals with all these issues, but I should like this evening just to pick out four points. The first arises out of the basic recommendation that a definition of "charity" is not practicable, but that the categories of permissible activities should be restated in modern simple language, if those two adjectives are consistent. This proposal rests on the assumption that, very broadly, the present basis of deciding what is a charity should be continued. But Mr. Whitaker's minority report reflects the view held by some, that private charity should now be drastically limited just to the prevention and relief of deprivation, and that the rest of the money should go to the public social services which are democratically determined.

I myself believe that the nation's investment in charity is amply justified, even if, in practice, the interpretation of what constitutes "charity" goes wider than perhaps the man in the street would ordinarily understand by charitable purposes. It is an investment which taps resources of effort on a scale which the statutory services simply could not match. I do not know what will be the reaction of the Government to the recommendation about defining "charity", but I hope that they accept the underlying assumption on which it is based. I am encouraged in this by the decision which the Government recently took to exempt all charities from the two points surcharge on the employer's National Insurance contribution, and I am glad to have this first opportunity of expressing appreciation of this important concession.

I can deal very briefly with my remaining three points on the report. I should like to call attention to what the Committee say about the test for securing registration as a charity. This involves not only the question of political activity, but also whether there should be a right of appeal to a tribunal against administrative decisions of the Charity Commissioners, and whether there should be legal aid for appeals to the courts on points of law.

Then there is the suggestion that the Charity Commissioners should have a power to register a charity provisionally for a period, to give them time to resolve doubts whether the organisation is serving the community in a reasonably effective way. Lastly, there is the suggestion that the cy près doctrine should be relaxed, so that when a charity is obsolete some new purpose can be substituted to serve a real current need of society. There are a great many other recommendations, but the only other one I want to refer to is the proposal for a new charity board. On this, I just want to say that this is a recommendation which, in the course of consultations after the report was published, has not found very much favour. Many of those consulted say that they would prefer to see some lay element introduced into the Charity Commission itself.

I am certainly not expecting the Minister to come out tonight with a list of Government decisions, and an announcement of an early Bill. The National Council themselves are still brooding over the Committee's recommendations on fiscal issues and the reviews of local charities, and I know that the meeting, at which they hope to give to the Home Secretary the views that they have formed so far, has had to be postponed until after this debate, because of a little local difficulty. I also recognise that the forthcoming report of the Committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, on the future of voluntary organisations, is likely to have some bearing on some of the issues involved. Nevertheless, there are propositions in the report which involve changes of administration and not necessarily changes in the law. We shall listen with close attention to anything that the Minister can tell us at this stage about the Government's reactions to the report and also to anything he may be able to say about the possible programme of consultations; whether, for example, in these days of open government, he is thinking of the possibility of a Green Paper at some stage. I have already spoken for rather longer than I had intended, and I should now like to give way to those who are rather more knowledgeable than I.

8.10 p.m.

Lord GOODMAN

My Lords, those of us who were on the Committee are most indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for securing this opportunity to discuss the two years' work that was involved in preparing this report. May I say at the outset that, as the chairman of the Committee, I do not regard it as appropriate that I should press on anybody the virtues or advantages of our recommendations. I do not believe that that is the function of the chairman of a committee. The recommendations are there on paper for everybody to see. Whether or not they are agreed with is obviously a matter for Governmental consideration, for democratic consideration and, at the end of the day, for decisions to be made by other people. We have made our recommendations and suggested what we think ought to be done, and we must leave it to others to judge their merits or demerits. However, there are a few observations which can usefully be made by the chairman of such a committee. They can also relate to some of the criticisms which have already been uttered.

There was a basic criticism—not very widely uttered—about the selection of the Committee. I should like to say in quite unequivocal terms that the committee was admirable. The people on it were experts. We did not know, except in one rather spectacularly obvious instance, the political colour of anybody who was on the Committee, nor did it have any bearing on the recommendations which were made. It was a wholly nonpolitical committee until it emerged that what we were saying was the subject of very political comment. The most violent criticism directed against us came from groups who do not, in a simple word, believe that government ought to exist. The most bizarre suggestion we received was that any organisation of a voluntary nature that was non-profitmaking should receive the fiscal benefits and advantages that are now available to charities. I asked one of the proponents of this proposal whether he included, for instance, a body such as the Stock Exchange. I believe that there was a slight pause before no answer was furnished to the question.

All I can say is that I encountered this form of philosophy as Chairman of the Arts Council. A great number of people —great in relation to the numbers interested in the arts but a tiny minority of the population—proposed that the Arts Council should be taken over by another body which would not seek to impose the intervention of any discretion or choice in matters of art. It would be a case of first come, first served, which they saw as the best way of dealing with any administrative problem that arose. I remember that, on one occasion, a particular body was formed which had what seemed to me the wholly virtuous object of showing pictures in tents in the park. This object had our strong support until it emerged that the method of selecting the pictures was simply the order in which they arrived for selection. The first dozen to arrive were exhibited; the others, even if painted by Rembrandt, or Van Gogh, or whoever it was, would still not be exhibited. The notion that any human mind should intrude into the question of selection was wholly unacceptable, authoritarian and, to these people, thoroughly repellent.

To my astonishment, the same idea emerged in relation to charities. It is felt in some quarters—and this view is slightly reflected in the minority report—that no organisation should exist to make any decision about other human beings. This would make our lives here much easier, because we could all go home and leave matters to be dealt with simply on the basis that whoever came first received what there was and those who came later received nothing. No doubt the revolutions and riots which ensued would not be dealt with because there would he no police force to deal with them.

This is perhaps a slightly lighter and more frivolous note in relation to our report, but it is important that we should know that these opinions exist. I did not even know of their existence except for my encounter with them at the Arts Council, and the vehemence with which those opinions were expressed to us in evidence and in after-comment came to me as a mild surprise. It seemed to me, at my age and very embedded in Establishment notions, inconceivable that one could bestow upon any organisation that happened to form itself the fiscal benefits which today are available to a very carefully monitored charity. It still seems to me inconceivable. But that there are many other people who do not consider it inconceivable is a matter for reflection —and, I think, for rather chastened reflection. There are people who think differently from ourselves, and it is probable that one of them is in this Chamber at the moment. Nevertheless, those views have to be taken into consideration. That they should arise in the case of a highly technical subject like charities was certainly an agreeable surprise, because it lent a little colour to the discussions which might not otherwise have taken place.

I do not intend, in our nocturnal "romp" discussing charities in this House, to occupy much of your Lordships' time. I have said that I think the composition of the Committee excellent. The philosophy of everybody on the Committee was a profound belief in the need to maintain charitable organisations, which was perhaps based on the rather wide concept of the need to retain the volunteer in English national life. I do not think that anybody features more importantly than the voluntary worker. It is in connection with charities that one sees him at his best and that one sees him making his most valuable contribution to social life. I encountered it in my work at the Arts Council, as chairman of the Housing Corporation and throughout those small aspects of public life with which I have been concerned. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the voluntary worker and what he does to maintain institutions which would not otherwise be there.

Hence, the Committee has reported that we are not in favour of discouraging small charities simply because they are small or even because they may, on the face of it, seem to involve a degree of effort and exertion that is not related to the results achieved. Of all the activities in this country which are the least mischievous and do the least harm, the people engaged in pursuing charities to relieve poverty, or to provide gowns for virgins, or whatever other activities saw them established in the 15th or 16th centuries, seem to me to be the least harmful of all. I should not like to see small charities swept away into a common pool under some kind of authoritarian direction because it would be profoundly discouraging to an immense number of people who are engaged in this wholly innocent and, I think, benevolent and godly activity, and I do not believe that they ought to be discouraged. That was certainly the philosophy upon which we, as a Committee, worked.

What else needs to be said? Perhaps that there are something like 30,000 small charities in this country. There are a great number—much less than 30,000 —of large charities. There are immensely important activities which are maintained by charities and charitable workers. It is obvious from the strength of interest in these matters, from centuries ago, that this is something which will endure in English life. I do not believe that any statutory discouragement would at the end of the day destroy the charitable impulse, the impulse to bring voluntary aid to human beings, which exists so deeply in the structure of our society. I believe, therefore, that it calls for careful governmental consideration. It is a very long time since 1601. It is a very long time since Pemsel's case. It calls for all the recommendations in this very detailed and careful report to be taken carefully into account, together with the recommendations of the Expenditure Committee and those of Lord Wolfenden's Committee when they emerge.

As the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, has said, we had very great assistance from the Government Departments that are involved in these matters. I should like to mention in particular that we had very considerate, careful, detailed and time-consuming help from the Inland Revenue, who gave us evidence on more than one occasion and sent very superior people, if I may use that word. Those of us who are merely concerned with dealings with H.M. Collector of Taxes may not realise that such superior people are available within the organisation. We had assistance from people of high intellectual quality who came and, in fact, rather changed our view. At the outset, many of us were of the view that the job should be done entirely by the Charity Commissioners and that the function of the Inland Revenue was redundant and superflous but, having heard the Inland Revenue on the subject, we revised our view on that aspect of the matter. We are extremely grateful to all the people who so willingly gave us assistance.

I will conclude simply by reading a word or two from the minority report because it demonstrates the profound difference in approach between the majority and the minority in this matter. The minority report says somewhere that, in its view, some matters are too important to be left to private charities and should he referred to the State. Frankly, the view we took was that some matters are too important to be left to the State and should remain in private hands. We held this view very strongly. It is not in the least a political manifestation; it is a belief that the qualities of mercy and compassion and attention to the needs of the elderly, the poor and the afflicted cannot be adequately dealt with by any State or governmental organisation. It is only through the intervention of a person who is privately concerned and who is deeply concerned not because he is employed to do the job but because of an urge from within that the job gets properly done. In that spirit, it was with pleasure that we presented this report, for what it is worth and for good or ill. We shall be interested to hear the Government's view on the matter.

8.21 p.m.

Lord PONSONBY of SHULBREDE

My Lords, I am sure we are all very grateful for the opportunity this evening to debate the report of the Goodman Committee on Charity Law and Voluntary Organisations and to hear the chairman of that Committee himself speaking about the work of the Committee. It is almost three years since the Committee was established, but it is almost five years since a Committee of which l have the honour to be the chairman—the Charity Law Reform Committee—started its campaign to press for reform in the existing charity law. I should like to say straight away that we in the Charity Law Reform Committee have been disappointed that the report has not produced radical suggestions for the reappraisal of our attitudes to charity law.

We are grateful that a number of detailed proposals about the administration of charities which have been put forward to the Goodman Committee and, previously, to the Expenditure Committee in the House of Commons, have been accepted, but the central problem of charity law has been tackled in such a way that, if the proposals are enacted, vagueness and uncertainty of law will be increased. The problem is the reliance on a definition of "charity" and this has led to arbitrary distinctions between the bodies which can and those which cannot gain the financial advantage of charitable status.

The report adds endless elaboration to the existing definition in the Act of 1601 to cover every conceivable charitable object. Time and again, the report places great emphasis on the ability of the Charity Commissioners to decide what is appropriate, suitable and deserving, but it fails to appreciate that the real need is to rid the system of value judgment and compounds this with statements of doubtful political philosophy such as, however liberal or tolerant a society may be, it has a duty to determine what is and what is not beneficial to it. Accordingly, between good and evil it cannot be neutral; it must exclude from charitable status what it regards as evil, just as it can and does outlaw what it regards as detrimental to its moral welfare.

The Committee has spent too much of its energy on the wrong question. For example, it discusses whether or not contemplative religious orders and ethical and philosophical systems bring benefit to the community, yet it does not address itself to the one important question: Why is it necessary, as the Committee asserts without argument, to have a system of fiscal advantages based on value judgments rather than on objective evidence?

We live in a plural society with many different sets of values. It is invidious for small groups of people to apply any specific set of values to the exclusion of others. No new definition of charity can possibly meet the evident need for fairness, clarity and certainty. For example, ethical societies not founded on a belief in a deity have not been accepted as charities. In principle, the Committee supports the advancement of such movements and considers that, if not detrimental to the community's moral welfare, they should be encouraged and should, in fact, be granted charitable status. However, they should be required to satisfy the Charity Commissioners or the court that their advancement is for the benefit of the community.

But what if the Charity Commissioners think that agnosticism is an evil? What then will become of their particular beliefs? According to the report, the fiscal reliefs granted to charities cost the taxpayer at least £75 million a year. But probably they cost about £100 million when one takes into account the reliefs granted by local authorities. The Committee suggest ways in which further reliefs can be given. For example, they suggest that covenanted donations should be allowed as deductions for higher rate tax purposes and also that company donations should not be taxed as distributions to shareholders. Both these items would be of financial advantage to individual charities.

How the Government will look upon these proposals at the present time I know not, hut I should have thought that in a time of economic stringency the Government would be unlikely to look favourably upon any proposals which involve an expansion in the amount of monies given to charities as a whole by the national Exchequer. I should have thought that a better starting point for the deliberations of the Committee, given a limit on the amount of relief to good causes, would have been to consider whether the right organisations were receiving that relief. That is the crucial point with regard to charity law. Because of the unfairness which inevitably occurs at the edges in the definition of charity law one has various arbitrary decisions made, which means that there can be an element of unfairness.

I think that the Committee should have concerned themselves with doing away with this element of unfairness and making proposals to that end. Indeed they did try to ameliorate the position to some extent by pushing further back the boundaries of charity definition, what is and what is not acceptable as a charity. But inevitably this will create a mass of new case law; not case law created in the courts but case law made by the decisions of the Charity Commissioners at individual points of time, as to what is and what is not a charity. Because of the high cost of legal expenses, the impossibility of any small oganisation challenging the decisions of the Charity Commissioners in the courts is well known. It was for this reason that my Committee advocated the granting of fiscal benefits accorded to charities to all non-profit distributing organisations. In paragraph 23 of the report the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, argues: We can see no justification for saying that the difficulties should be side-tracked by giving the same status to all NPDOs as is now given to charities. This is really to abolish altogether the concept of charity as it has developed over the centuries and to alter radically the commonly accepted meaning of charities in the minds of most people". My Lords, this is really nonsense. The ordinary concept of charity is already miles away from its legal definition. By all means let us keep the word "charity". Let charities be sub-categories of NPDOs worthy of the name of charity. The Inland Revenue also suggested to the Committee that the extension of fiscal advantages to all NPDOs would give rise to considerable opportunities for abuse. Yet when members of my Committee met them, the Inland Revenue were not able to point to any way in which this scope for abuse came about.

My Lords, I hope this House will not regard this report as the last word about charity law. As I have said, the report contains some very useful proposals about the administration of charities. But it is a report prepared largely by those with a vested interest in the status quo for charities. Both the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, and the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, were on the defensive about attacks which they said had been made about the membership of their Committee. Lord Allen of Abbeydale called it a strong membership; Lord Goodman defended the membership. But the point is that the membership did not reflect the concern of those organisations, like the Disablement Income Group, Amnesty, the National Council for Civil Liberties, the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination, who are outside the traditional ambit of charities. It was their concern and the concern of other organisations which was one of the motivating forces which led the Charity Law Reform Committee to press for an inquiry into the existing law regarding charities. I hope, therefore, that the Government will feel that this is a matter which needs to be looked into further, because I think that a lot more could be said on this matter.

8.34 p.m.

The Lord Bishop of SOUTHWELL

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for giving us the opportunity of this debate, and I am glad of the chance to express from these Benches what I think is the view of the mainstream Churches in the country. We welcome this report, and not least for the fact that it does not attempt at this time of great change to be drastic in the remedies it suggests for any excesses or deficiencies in the law concerning charities at the present time. The Committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, was generous enough to say that after very careful inquiry no large problems existed, and in consequence only a few matters of obvious demerit needed rectification.

My view, which clearly differs from the view of the noble Lord who preceded me, is that this is a proper kind of report, one which proposes changes where change is necessary and declines to meddle where there is little advantage to be gained from meddling. In this field evolution is a far more fruitful process than drastic changes in the law. The long history of case law in charity matters provides us with an invaluable corpus of sound judgment on real situations from which sensible deductions can be made as new situations emerge. Perhaps being born and bred in the Church of England I may have the via media too deeply ingrained in me, and for that reason I may see merit in this report which others may not. But your Lordships may note that my few utterances in this House have not always supported the status quo.

There is no doubt that this matter before us today is a very important matter. There is sometimes expressed the view that if something is worth doing it should be done officially by the decisions and actions of central or local government. But, as this report reminds us, this is a simplistic view. Charity will never be altogether superseded by State activity, even in the field of poverty and social welfare. There will always be gaps in the services run by the State. Further, the voluntary services may not only be quick to identify new needs and cater for them before the necessary statutory powers can be given to the State welfare services, but also may give a more individual service less trammelled by the limitations of the rule books under which the State welfare services operate". Those words are quoted from paragraph 19 of the report.

I would go a stage further by saying that the official agencies cannot avoid being classed as "them", as those who are paid to do good, and so there builds up a natural barrier in the heart of the recipient, who, like any of us, does not like to be done good to. But more than this, voluntary action may not only be swifter, it may also be more daring. Local authorities cannot vote money for what are untried ventures, but voluntary enthusiasts will do just that, risking a lot in order to get a sad gap plugged or a new need met. Perhaps your Lordships will allow me to say one more thing on this point, and it is this. It would be a sad day if the society in which we live was robbed of the challenge to do something positively good out of sheer good will. At a time when we are all naturally cautious and anxious not to worsen our lot, we need the challenge that voluntary service can offer to lift us out of our selfishness.

I would agree with the report that motivation to engage in charitable works is not confined to those practising the Christian religion, or indeed any religion. There are many who love and serve their neighbours from what the report calls genuine altruism. But religious belief is a strong motivation, and for this reason, if for no other, it is important that religious bodies should continue to be classed as charities. In many local situations I find that much of the voluntary and statutory social work is being done by people with religious motivation.

I am glad that the report recognises the importance of the nation's spiritual welfare as well as its physical and social welfare. No man can be regarded as whole while his mental and spiritual needs are unsatisfied. We witness today, in my view, a spiritual deprivation on a large scale. The provision of religious amenities and the staffing of religious institutions is not properly done by the State, as in most European countries, but by voluntary contributions, and this charitable work must surely continue to be given the financial privileges which charity status affords. At present ordinary God-fearing people in town and country are giving sacrificially for the maintenance of their religious institutions. This task should be encouraged along the lines of this report.

May I at this point make a tiny plea that the contemplative orders of the Churches and their work should not be overlooked. It may seem to the uninitiated that such prayerful activity is wholly subjective and therefore inappropriately classed as charitable work. I find it hard to distinguish between this prayerful activity and the aim and purpose of the Church's work as a whole. For those of us who have to be inordinately activist, almost to the neglect of our own spirituality, it is comforting to know that we are supported by the prayers of those who have devoted their lives to this one thing; and let no man think it an easy option—it is in fact the hardest of work.

I hope that when reconsideration is given to the question of contemplative orders being charitable bodies they will be given generous recognition. I know that there is a need to discriminate between the beneficial and harmful activities undertaken by religious bodies. I have no doubt that there will always be conscientious people aggrieved at any discrimination against them in regard to their religious affiliations. But my view is that up till now the matter has been dealt with, on the whole, very realistically and beneficially, and under the terms of this report there is every chance that this situation will not change.

There will always be religious cranks and people who will capitalise out of other people's susceptibilities, but the English people are not easily "conned" and such aberrations quickly fade away. In passing, I am sure that Mr. Ben Whitaker's remarks in the minority report, that religious bodies should be granted charitable status only in so far as they carry out charitable activities—for example, for their work in relieving poverty—but not for providing vestments, were a convenient shorthand but an unfortunate phrase. The embellishment of Churches or their ministers is a very costly business nowadays and the laiety who pay for it well know their priorities. It would be impossible and wrong for religion to be divested of its symbolism, for it is through symbolism that some truths alone can be communicated.

In conclusion, I should like to say a few words about religion and politics. I trust that your Lordships do not regard the presence of the bishops in this House as a sort of chaplaincy, but rather as a recognition that religion cannot escape involvement in politics if it is to impinge on life. We realise that there is no single area of life that can avoid political involvement. We may regret that so often politics prevents the staging of certain sporting contests, whether it be rugby football, cricket or chess. International sport is bound to arouse political feelings. So also the activities of the Church in this country, and in countries overseas, will require a political stance on the part of the Churches. It is hard for Christians not to express common cause with their fellow human beings in matters of simple justice when they are living under other skies and sometimes alien ideologies. Still less can they stand aside when their fellow Christians are concerned, to whom they are bound in ties of affection and international organisation. Here, clearly, we are at the heart of a very difficult problem—the relation of politics and charity law.

Once more may I support the view that the Committee of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has taken in this matter. There are political activities which are inappropriate activities for a charity organisation, and the guidelines suggested in paragraph 104 of the report seem to meet this point. In this way charitable bodies will be free to face the inevitable political challenges of the work they seek to do and will also be able to engage in proper political action.

My Lords, I do not intend to comment on the financial section of this report. The Churches are very glad that Her Majesty's Government were ready to concede that charities were suffering grave discrimination by the proposal to levy on them the National Insurance surcharge. I should like to take this opportunity on behalf of the Churches to express their thanks to the Government that that particular financial proposal was withdrawn. It is a great relief to Churches and charities alike, and we are indeed grateful. I am sure that the people of this country will not want charities, and among them Churches, to suffer financial hardship by the withdrawal from them of the financial privileges that they enjoy under charity law. We are glad that this report comes out firmly in our favour on this point.

In general, the Churches support the recommendations of the report and hope that such legislation as is necessary can be introduced at the appropriate time and in the not too distant future for our consideration in this House, when any minor blemishes in these proposals can quite effectively be corrected.

8.45 p.m.

Lord GORE-BOOTH

My Lords, we are very much indebted this evening to my noble friend Lord Allen of Abbeydale for giving us this opportunity to talk about the report which my noble friend Lord Goodman has produced. At once I should like to say that I agree with my noble friend Lord Goodman very much in his commendation of his Committee. I should also like to add my commendation of what he himself has written in the preface.

Perhaps I may begin with a quotation from the report which says: The mainstay of charity is a general altruism. I make that my first comment because it is important in this debate to recognise what those who enter into charitable work are like and what they do. Here I believe that the report is very strong—even if it does not use precisely this language—when it says that people who engage in this work are people who quite simply want to do some good to those who fare less well than they do.

Charity is not really about a fundamental theoretical problem. Charity is about the fact that someone gets to know that several hundred thousand babies in Bangladesh do not have enough to eat or enough milk; it is about someone who gets to know that there are a number of children on the streets of Belfast who have nowhere to go to get out of the range of casual gunfire and who would be much better off if a few people subscribed so that they could play together not on the streets but in a hut or in someone's house. That is what the whole motivation of the charity movement is about.

The great strength of this report is that it has regard to this all the time. In other words the report always says, if not in so many ways, do not try to tidy up charity too much. That is the soundest possible advice. I really must take this opportunity of replying to the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, who told us that the motivation of people engaged in charity—such as my noble friend Lord Goodman and the rest of us—is the maintenance of the status quo. If that is said to a playgroup in the East End, they would make a very odd face if not a very odd noise. People are interested in behaving to others as they would like others to behave to them, and the report is quite right in the instinctive understanding that one does good works of this kind when one can, where one can, and with the means that one is fortunate enough to have.

It is also very wrong to talk about a charity "benefiting" from some concession by the Government or some extra money. It is not the charity which benefits; in my case it is the children, but it may be the disadvantaged, the aged or whomever one likes. It is they who benefit, not the charity. I am sure that the Committee was right and that we shall be right if we constantly keep this principle in view.

That brings me, with perhaps a bit of a drop from the principle of what we are doing, to the finance of what we are doing. If we try to get away from fashionable motivations, surely we must all be a little horrified at the figures that are given in paragraph 116. These are the figures which indicate that if you have a certain income level (certainly it is a high one) and if you wish to give a charity £1,000, you have to earn £3,280. This is, with great respect, crazy. The charity needs the money for the people whom it benefits. The way in which this scale is arranged is precisely to offer people who are in high income brackets a "disinducement", going up and up, to contribute to charity at all, and this cannot be sensible.

The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, said that it might be difficult for the Government to do this, but good heavens! in the sort of world about which we are talking this evening if nobody ever did anything that was not convenient, or might be a little difficult, nothing would get done at all. So I feel bound to protest that the Committee are right in their strictures on this financial situation. I hope that it will be possible that the Government may consider this with some speed because a decision like that takes a good deal less time than decisions of organisation, administration, and the setting up of bodies and so on.

While I am on the matter of finance, perhaps I could also express agreement with the Committee that there would not be great sense in overturning our taxation system in this particular context, but I am sure that the Committee are right to suggest that the period of the covenant has become too long. It has become too long because the people you meet about the place who are able to sign covenants, and want to pledge themselves to the future, cannot in all good conscience to their own families pledge themselves in these uneasy days to periods as long as seven years. I should like to commend the Committee's suggestion that for the time being the covenant period should be reduced to four years. That at least would give the charities some assurance of getting a regular sum, but it would not place too unknown and rather frightening a burden on the person contemplating making some kind of a pledge.

May I conclude by once again thanking the Committee very much for what they have done; for their intelligent and sensitive humanity, which I hope, in nearly all the respects which they have considered, will be a guide to a future which will be sufficiently orderly not to raise suspicions of charities but sufficiently relaxed to let people who want to benefit the less fortunate to go ahead and do it.

8.53 p.m.

Lord NATHAN

My Lords, I had the privilege of serving under the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, as vice-chairman of the Committee. To my mind the most remarkable fact is that people give to charitable causes—and, in aggregate, in huge amounts—every year, and they give in voluntary service as well as money. There is ample evidence that the young give no less generously than the young of previous generations, and perhaps more so. This intense desire to give has not been stultified by the Welfare State, as some thought it might be, but rather has, since its inception, gone from strength to strength. It has found new outlets not dreamed of half a century ago. This tenacity of the desire to give has been demonstrated with special significance in these past difficult years of economic stringency. So the first question with which we might have been confronted, whether the changes in social and economic circumstances have rendered charity redundant, answered itself; charity is a central institution in our society.

In view of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, I should like to spend a moment or two on the question of the definition of "charity" and the other points to which he referred. First, perhaps, in view of his observations concerning the names of those who were members of the Committee, I might indicate to the House who these were. Apart from the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, as chairman, there were Mr. Montgomerie and myself as vice-chairmen. There was Mr. Ames Lewis, a recently retired Charity Commissioner; Mr. John Balcombe, Q.C., since elevated to the Bench; there was Stewart Bates, Q.C.; Professor Sewell Bray, who practises as a chartered accountant; Mr. Cracknell, general secretary of the National Children's Home; Martin Grundy, general secretary, Exeter Council for Voluntary Service; Mr. Nicholas Hinton, director of the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders; David Hob-man, Director of Age Concern; T. McMillan, director and general manager of Related Banking Services Division of the National Westminster Bank; Mrs. Charles Morrison, then vice-chairman, now chairman, of the National Council of Social Service; Air Commodore Milligan, secretary of the Rayne Foundation; J. K. Owens, director of the National Council of Social Service; Colonel Satterthwaite, director and general secretary of the National Playing Fields Association; Ben Whitaker, of whom mention has been made; and Peter Williams, director of the Wellcome Trust. It is not a bad list, with a variety of interests, experience, and contributions to make to such discussions.

Returning, if I may, to the difficult question of the definition of "charity", we received evidence such as the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, has described, from those who would like to see the privileges afforded to charities extended to all organisations constituted so as to eliminate distribution of profits whatever their objects or activities. We rejected this proposition for a number of reasons given in our report, but most importantly because it would eliminate the concept of charity as an institution in our society.

"Charity" has a moral connotation and it is this, in part, which attracts such widespread support. There has been much emphasis on the tax and other privileges which charities enjoy but enormous sums, let alone voluntary service, are received by charities which attract no tax benefit at all. It is this moral connotation which, in large part, attracts this widespread support.

There were those who believed that one should first determine what purposes or activities should attract the tax benefits presently accorded to charities, and confine the legal status of charity to those organisations which conform to those requirements. But to define charities according to such a formula turns the argument upside down. What is required is an assessment of the criteria required for qualification of a charity—or a definition—and the tax and other privileges would flow only to those so qualifying.

It is worth mentioning perhaps that the position is that since the beginning charities have, in principle, not paid tax on the ground that they do not make profits. To my mind it is a misconception to say that they are subsidised in the way that word is so often used. We were not surprised, and your Lordships will not be surprised either, that a definition of "charity" eluded us as it has the greatest minds in all generations—with which we do not seek to compare ourselves in any way.

One reason for the difficulty is that from age to age the concept of charity has been moulded by changing social conditions. It is therefore in a constant state of flux. If the concept had remained unchanged it might have died or become of minor importance, yet it is perhaps more vigorous than ever. It was tentatively suggested to us that the Home Secretary should have powers to make changes by Statutory Instrument in what is, or what is not, considered to be a charity. We rejected that proposal for many reasons. Above all, we felt that charity provides an opportunity for individuals to stake out priorities for themselves. By giving for spastic children, or cancer relief, or overseas relief, whatever it may be, the giver is identifying himself with that cause and establishing for himself, and perhaps by his example for others, a priority for it. Governments have constantly to establish their priorities but their choices are much constrained by political and financial factors. Government do not and cannot therefore reflect the aspirations of all, all of whom are individuals with personal predilections and all of whom are in one way or another within minority groups within the whole. The old, the sick, the sportsman, the musician—each in some aspect of his life is within a special group with interests in common. Government intervention in establishing what is and what is not a charity contradicts the basic concept of charity itself.

It is in this context that I turn to some of our main recommendations. The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, in opening referred to our view that the preamble to the 1601 Act had served us well. But we thought the language was so out of tune with current usage that it would be well, first, to update it and, secondly, to set out the categories of activity, or rather purpose, now regarded as charitable. Therefore we set that out in an appendix to the report which we hope might be of use in case this were acquired for incorporation in a statutory provision.

I wish, first, to refer to the environment, a comparatively new field of charitable activity. The widespread and increasing support for and interest in such charities derives from a new philosophy. It is increasingly coming to be thought that the heritage of the land, the trees, the beauty of landscape, the antiquities and curiosities which previous generations have created, are not dispensable as rights of property by private or public interests based on personal preferences or economic pressures, but that the public have an interest of their own, separate and distinct from rights of property for their enjoyment and as trustees for future generations. Further, this philosophy extends to the development of new landscape, both rural and urban. We believe that every encouragement should be given to charities with such purposes and that they should not be constrained by any narrow interpretation of law or practice.

The question arose in regard to the overseas activities of English charities, and our own recommendations on this have received some comment in the Press, so perhaps I might comment on the subject. We start from the proposition that the purposes and activities which are charitable if carried out in England should likewise be charitable under English law if carried out overseas. Poverty, ignorance or the desecration of ancient monuments are as much an affront to civilisation if carried out overseas as they are here. Such activity abroad by an English charity could, we appreciate, be contrary to the public interest of the United Kingdom.

In principle, we believe that Governmental intervention or direction in relation to charities should be avoided wherever possible; any such intervention should be public and open to debate. In these circumstances, we recommend that the Foreign Office should be empowered to make an order requiring a charity to cease an activity overseas, but subject to safeguards. These safeguards would be that the order should be made only after giving an opportunity for representations to be made, including the possibility of debate in Parliament, and the order should be published.

We were also concerned about what might be called international charities. Generally, the need and demand for action by charities across national boundaries have greatly increased in recent years, and this is likely to continue with increasing pressure. We believe this should be encouraged. However, the need for effective supervision and control over charities by the Charity Commission, the courts and the Inland Revenue to avoid abuses is of overriding importance to maintain public confidence, which now justifiably stands high.

However apparently insular and nationalistic such a policy may appear, we believe the current position, under which only charities constituted in England can enjoy privilges accorded to charities, should be maintained. I would hope, however, that by international agreements, possibly instituted under the aegis of the Council of Europe, some means may be found to meet the requirements of supervision and thus enable trans-national charities to be constituted.

Possibly a step by step approach relating to particular charitable projects, such as the conservation of Venice, the development of specific youth programmes or particular projects for education, might be more fruitful than an attempt to formulate some all-embracing convention covering all forms of charitable endeavour. As the noble Lord, Lord Allen, pointed out, the problems in regard to the political activity of charities proved, as we expected, to be the most difficult which we had to consider and I will not detain your Lordships by referring to our proposals in that regard; it takes a complete chapter of the report and at least I hope the points in favour of different courses are clearly set out.

Our brief was to consider charity law and voluntary organisations. Law does not create charity; it provides a framework within which it may be exercised. In delimits the scope of charity for legal purposes, so that it shall not be so narrow as to stultify endeavour nor be so wide as to dilute its meaning. The law may be changed marginally or radically without destroying the concept. Once the concept is undermined by the general body of opinion, it will die; directly or indirectly, a few have started on this road.

A declaration now of the importance of charity as a central institution in our society maybe reeks of platitude. If left until an attack is mounted, it comes too late. If our report is criticised for platitudes, I would rather that than have to plead for a lost cause. I therefore hope that the Government and your Lordships will affirm the central importance of charity today, and that the Minister in his reply may be able to indicate some steps which he has in mind to make in regard to the changes in law and practice which we have recommended.

9.7 p.m.

Lord PLATT

My Lords, you will be pleased to know that I rise only to ask a question which, after all, is what we are here for. I may possibly ask another related question, and I shall, I am afraid, have to take a little of your Lordships' time in explaining how this question arises. My impression from the debate is that charity is entirely run by very high principled saints. Perhaps all saints are high-principled—but, at any rate, those are the people involved. Your Lordships may find some of my questions rather unwelcome in that context. I will have to be quite specific. But I do so only to give your Lordships an example of the way that some charities are managing their affairs. I shall have to be specific, but I shall not name the charity, because I think that that would be unfair as I have no evidence that they are in any way breaking the law.

Let us call it the National X Research Fund, X being a group of illnesses in which I have myself been interested. A strong committee of very distinguished men of complete integrity was called. It was a scientific committee, which was to decide on how the money should be spent, and what projects should be supported. But like most scientific and medical men in general, they were far more interested in what they would like to do with the money than in how it was to be obtained.

I was asked to act as sponsor, which I gladly did, and as your Lordships know, a sponsor does not usually expect to have to do anything, except perhaps turn up at one or two Press conferences. But surely the one thing he must do is ensure that all the methods used by the fund which he is supporting are those of which he can approve, and he must, in other words, be able to guarantee the integrity of the charity.

After a few years I found that all kinds of peculiar fund-raising activities were in use, including bingo, which is probably perfectly legal, and so on, and there were collectors going around, visiting public houses, especially on Saturday nights. They were able to bring in large sums of money for this fund. I then found that the collectors were entitled to take 30 per cent. of the money collected, the supervisors of each district were taking another 10 per cent., and there seemed to be certain people in the background who were perhaps getting some other, unspecified, rake-off.

The facts were made known in articles in the Guardian and in the News of the World. Needless to say, I inquired into all of this because it seemed to me that they were evading at any rate the spirit of the Charity Commissioners, if not the actual rules. After some evasions, I was told that the activities which seemed to me to be rather questionable, with these enormous sums going into the pockets of the collectors, were all put into action by something called the Appeals Society of the Research Fund. This was not registered as a charity, and so it has no reason to respect any of the kind of rules which normally govern charitable institutions.

But I checked up on the collecting boxes, and I found that they were clearly labelled as collecting for the research fund, and not for the Appeals Society. Whether they still are, after some comments that I have made, I do not know because I resigned my position as a sponsor. The registered number of the charity was in fact given, although this money was going into the Appeals Society. As I said, it may be that nobody was breaking the law, but the innocent public who put their 50p pieces or pound notes into the boxes, little knew that about half of the contributions would never reach the fund at all.

This makes it very easy for the central fund. All it has to do is register that so many thousands or hundreds of thousands pounds were paid into its fund by the Appeals Society. Of course, there are no central expenses on that, and so they can show a nice pretty picture of having got all this money without having to put up their central office expenses. But of course they can do it only because all the expenses have been paid out to the collectors before the fund ever sees the money at all.

Now we come to the question. Nothing I have read in the Goodman Report—and I admit that I have looked only at parts of it which I think might be relevant to my question—gives me to understand that they knew that this kind of thing was going on. Nothing that I have heard tonight would make me think that any noble Lord who has spoken thought that this kind of thing was going on. I should like the Minister to try to give me some guidance as to whether all this is accepted and acceptable practice, or whether it really does need looking into a little more closely.

Lord GORE-BOOTH

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord a question? Is he somewhat tending to take a single case of abuse to prove a general point, or is he drawing our attention to a single case where abuse has been possible?

Lord PLATT

My Lords, I cannot answer that question absolutely because I happened to he involved in this and, therefore, went into it very carefully; but I was told that there was nothing unusual in this procedure. I think that is the best answer I can give the noble Lord, because I have not studied charitable institutions in general. I was taking a specific example in order to demonstrate what could be done.

9.14 p.m.

Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL

My Lords, clearly one of the more valuable functions of charities is indeed to produce a report about charities, which has given rise to this debate this evening. I have served, and still do serve, on several registered charities, and I have had experience (shared by most of your Lordships, I expect) in trying to extract support from other charitiable organisations. I dare say the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, would therefore say that I had a vested interest in what we are talking about this evening. Equally, I suspect I am probably not alone in not having devoted a great deal of thought to some of the fundamental issues until I looked at this report, which made me aware how incredibly ignorant I was about some of the underlying problems. I suspect this is a condition shared by a number of others, and I am afraid it may continue to be so because I had quite a lot of difficulty in getting hold of a copy of the report. That is a great shame because it should be widely read. It does, at least, offer a primer which sets out many of the questions that we need to answer, even if we do not necessarily agree on some of the answers which are put forward in the report.

I was very glad to find that, right at the outset, the report laid the ghost of some of the unthinking and iconoclastic, rather cynical critics who dismiss all charities as a racket. On page 4 one finds the interesting comment: At the beginning of the Committee's deliberations, there was an indication that there were a number of problems which might have suggested that radical reform was necessary. However, after considering the evidence and making an analysis of the problems which were discussed with a number of witnesses on several occasions, it was evident that no large problems existed "— although they then go on to say there were certain areas which called for further thought. I find this very reassuring, and I hope I shall not sound presumptuous if I say that the whole report seemed to me to be shot through with ordinary, sound, common sense. I think it would be recommended reading to anybody who is going to indulge in philosophical thinking about the place of charities in our national life.

We on this side of the House are, I think, bound to welcome the conclusion at the end of Chapter I, where the third recommendation in the Summary says: We do not agree with those who say that the concept of charity is outmoded and that all its activities should be functions of the state". This, of course, was against some of the comments made in the minority report, which seemed to me to devote a great deal of time beating the air and making a mountain out of a molehill on the issue of rationalisation. The minority report says: The fact that, 16 years after the Act, over half the charities registered with the Charity Commission have an annual income of less than £50 and nearly 25 per cent. have an income of less than £5, speaks for itself". Indeed it does speak for itself, and one of the things it says to me is that it is not a terribly big problem because the sums of money involved are so extraordinarily small.

Going back to the more general question, it was also interesting to find that in this House in 1959 a noble Lord called Lord Nathan made a great speech on this subject in which he quoted from a debate 10 years before. He said: It was my noble friend Lord Pakenham who, in the debate 10 years ago, speaking then for the Government of the day, said that: 'Without voluntary service the State would lose its soul'; and went on to say: I adopt that phrase". —[Official Report, 13/5/59; col. 366.] It is interesting to find the same general comment cropping up again in this report. I must say that I, too, was slightly worried by the question of the moral value judgments which have to be made on this issue of charities and it troubled me that the report appeared to feel that it was possible for the Charity Commissioners to make these judgments. But I am bound to say I did not find it very logical of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, to suggest that what we apparently have to call the NPDOs should all be allowed to enjoy the fiscal benefits which relate to charities and at the same time that the Government would control the amount of money allocated to charities. I cannot see how you can have it both ways, but perhaps I misunderstood the noble Lord. If so, I apologise and no doubt we shall be able to work it out later.

I believe that the question of the State's participation is an important one. It seems to me that, almost by definition, the State cannot deal with many of the issues which the charities have set up to handle. Added to that, we have the possibility of political interference in charitable organisations, the sheer inhumanity of size and what I might call the irresistible "Parkinsonian" tendency of the self-perpetuating bureaucracy which all these organisations tend to create around themselves, where what we ought to see is a reduction in bureaucracy. One of the ways in which we can achieve this is to recognise the great value—as the report did and as the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, emphasised again this evening—of the enormous voluntary efforts which are put in, particularly by after-hours activity at local level and by people slaving away for salaries which would not be regarded as competitive at the central administrative level of charitable organisations. I hope that we shall take to heart the resistance in the report to the imposition of coordination and uniformity in the name of administrative tidiness. This is another point which struck me as being very much a part of the minority report with which I could not agree. Instead, we should be doing all we can to encourage local variations which are appropriate to the disparate needs of all areas of this country. It was clearly no accident that, in the days of the Arts Council under the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, of which I had some experience, one of the criteria for giving grants was the amount in local contributions which had been forthcoming.

The other point that I think we have not made at all is that we need to encourage sources of volunteers outside the State and quasi-State organisations by the obvious means of increasing profits and reducing taxes. Here, I hope the noble Lord when he comes to reply will be able to tell us what is the Government's attitude to the rather anomalous notion that supertax is not allowable whereas the basic rate of tax is allowable. There is no defence for this. This is a point which has already been made at least once this evening and I shall not reiterate it.

My Lords, I was attracted to the idea of a charity board to advise on policy because it seems to me that this is a good way to make sure that policy issues are kept under review. This is a function which has recently been handled in other areas by organisations like the Public Accounts Committee. We do not want the Charity Commissioners to become set in their ways. I hope that the next time we come to have a report on this subject we shall not find in it the splendid phrase—whose author I think I can guess— A fine selection of vituperative epithets has been levelled at the Charity Commissioners in the evidence". I hope that the existence of a charity board might help to avoid that happening and might also help to prod the Government into a constant examination of whether the policies in the Charity Commissioners are being adapted to the continually changing circumstances in which they are being operated.

Then also there is the concept of an appellate tribunal which is sensible if one is going to ask the Charity Commissioners to operate their administrative functions rather more intensively. The caveat one would utter here is to ask whether this might add a further cost. In my ignorance, I do not know who pays for the Charity Commission at the present time. One would be worried as to whether some of the suggestions would be liable to increase the cost of the charitable administration.

The Report makes it clear that the law may need some revision and updating—which is reasonable enough when, as several noble Lords have mentioned, the basic law was made in 1601—but there is no need for major surgery. It also mentions that the law is not clear. My worry here is that it is seldom clear to the layman, anyway, and nothing that I have seen in recent years has led me to believe that Parliamentary draftsmen are likely to add a great deal to the clarity of the law. I am sorry to say this, but it has to be said.

My Lords, I do not think that I can do better than end by quoting the last paragraph (paragraph 251) of the report which sums up exactly what we ought to he thinking about at the present time. It is headed "A More Imaginative Approach". The main considerations which we have had in mind in drafting this latter part of the Report are firstly the hope that it will be possible, as a result of the recommendations, to bring a more imaginative and positive attitude to bear on the subject of charities, and secondly, by making a clear distinction between the small local charities and the large national charities, and by decentralising the surveillance of the former to ensure that more time is spent in the years to come on the study of the problems and needs of the larger national charities".

Lord PONSONBY of SI-TULBREDE

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I say that he heard me correctly. The question is whether the jam is spread thickly over a smaller area or more thinly over a much larger area.

9.29 p.m.

The MINISTER of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Harris of Greenwich)

My Lords, all will agree that the House is indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for having given us the opportunity this evening of discussing the report of the Committee on Charity Law and Voluntary Organiations, of which the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, was chairman. We also agree that the subject is one of considerable social importance. That has been testified to by virtually all who have participated in the debate. It should be of interest to the very substantial proportion of the public who contribute to or benefit from charitable and voluntary work.

On subjects of this kind, this House is often able to bring to bear a degree of expertise which could not readily be found elsewhere. It has been so this evening because the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, who initiated the debate, only recently relinquished the chairmanship of the National Council of Social Service which of course set up the Goodman Committee.

I am always in a slight difficulty when referring to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, whom, according to the rules of the House, I cannot appropriately describe as "my noble friend". I have to refer to him as "the noble Lord, Lord Allen", although he and I served together in the Home Office for quite a substantial time. However, I was reassured, as I am sure the rest of your Lordships' House were also, to hear the former Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office refer to the former Permanent Under-Secretary of the Home Office as "his noble friend". So, I am quite sure, were the rest of the Civil Service.

Among those also who have contributed to the debate today have been the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, who presided over the Committee, and the noble Lord, Lord Nathan, whose interest in this subject continues a family tradition. His father was chairman of the Committee appointed in 1950 to review the law relating to charitable trusts in England and Wales and on whose report the Charities Act 1960 was based. The noble Lord has continued his father's interest in the law on charities; he is one of the leading authorities on the subject and was also a vice-chairman of the Goodman Committee. We are also glad that the debate has enabled my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede to speak to us and give us his views. He provided the House with a critical analysis of the report of the Goodman Committee and I think the debate was very substantially improved as a result of that.

It is difficult, inevitably, to deal with some of the more detailed points that have arisen, but perhaps I could start by dealing with a point made only a few moments ago by the noble Lord, Lord Platt, who referred to a particular charity. I do not know the name of the organisation to which he was alluding, but all I would say about his speech is this. The law, as I understand it, is that house-to-house collections and street collections for charities are subject to the control of the local authority. In the case of London, in the Metropolitan Police District it is the responsibility of the police. Collections in public houses are not subject to control, but the Committee of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, in paragraph 213(c) of its report recommended that they should be brought under control. We shall, of course, be looking at that recommendation—

Lord PLATT

My Lords—

Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH

It is the practice, if I might just continue to deal with the point, to permit charities to retain a commission, provided that the commission does not appear to be excessive; but I should like to look more carefully at what the noble Lord said. If he would care to provide me with further information on the matter I should be glad to receive it and then I, or perhaps my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, who deals with these matters, will write to him.

The Committee whose report we are discussing was set up in 1974 with a very wide remit, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, would agree: to examine the effect of existing legislation about charitable organisations in England and Wales, and to suggest improvements to benefit the work of voluntary organisations. The report, of course, was neither produced nor directly sponsored by the Government, but it was, and in my view will be, of great value to us. We had been awaiting it not only because of its intrinsic significance but also because in the autumn of 1975—and this point has been mentioned by a number of speakers this evening—the Expenditure Committee in another place produced a report dealing with the accountability of the Charity Commissioners. During the 1974–75 Parliamentary Session, the Expenditure Committee in another place and the Committee of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, were both at work simultaneously. The Expenditure Committee, as is customary, completed its work within the compass of a single Session. It produced a report which was necessarily a great deal shorter than that of Lord Goodman's Committee and, of course, it covered a far narrower field.

When the Expenditure Committee's report appeared, it seemed sensible to the Government that our consideration of its recommendations should be deferred until we received the report of the Committee of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman. Now, of course, we have both reports before us. With the aid of the helpful comparative summary in Appendix III of the report of the noble Lord's Committee it can not only be seen that the two reports cover some common ground but also that, on a number of issues, they disagree.

I should like to begin by dealing with some of the recommendations of the report of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, and his Committee. The Committee began, naturally enough, by considering the definition of "charity". The Nathan Committee recommended in 1952 that the definition then in force, which operated by reference to the examples of charities given in the preamble to the Statute of Charitable Uses passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, should be replaced by a shorter and simpler definition in modern terms, but without abolishing the existing case-law. However, the then Government rejected this recommendation in 1955, on the ground that it was impracticable to devise any "new" definition which would not be new in substance as well as in form.

The Committee of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has now recommended a restatement of the categories of charities in simple and modern language, on the lines suggested in Appendix I to the Committee's report. The Committee has given up the Nathan Committee's hope for a short definition; but in other respects, particularly as regards preservation of the existing case-law, the recommendations of the two committees have a great deal in common.

Reference has been made to the minority report of Mr. Whitaker. It was referred to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell and others. It relates to issues of broad social policy rather than questions of legal definition. Mr. Whitaker urged that the scope of charity should be restricted to the relief of poverty and deprivation, and to social welfare in general. As is clear, this restriction advocated by Mr. Whitaker was not supported by the other members of the Committee who considered that other causes to which people were willing to devote money and voluntary effort without material reward also deserved the protection which the legal status of charity affords. All I can say is that this is a matter of considerable importance. There is here a substantial philosophical divide and it is clearly an issue upon which the Government must form a view and so must Parliament.

The Committee of the noble Lord then went on to express general satisfaction with the present arrangements for the control of charities by the Charity Commissioners. I am grateful for the generous words bestowed on the civil servants in various Departments by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, because, as he rightly observed, the Committee obviously derived a great deal of benefit from the very substantial assistance it rightly received from officials of various Departments. I am sure that all those who assisted the Committee will be grateful for what the noble Lord said.

Having indicated their general satisfaction with the control of charities by the Commissioners, the Committee went on to recommend certain extensions of the Commissioners' functions. In considering these recommendations we shall need to take into account the demands that their implementation would make on public service manpower, and the consequent effect on the level of public expenditure. We shall also have to consider the objections that the Goodman Committee expressed to financing the work of the Charity Commission by levying a registration fee on charities. This is an issue—and there are others—where there is a difference of opinion between the report of the noble Lord and his Committee, and the recommendations of the Expenditure Committee in another place.

There are also divergent recommendations from the two Committees on the arrangements for the review of local charities—whether responsibility for these reviews should rest with local authorities, as is the situation at the moment, or with the Charity Commission, and whether there should be powers of compulsory amalgamation. There are also differences of view about the structure and accountability of the Charity Commission—whether the Commissioners should, as they are now, be civil servants, or be drawn from a wider field; and whether they should be made answerable to Parliament, through my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, for their day-to-day work.

Of course, the Committee of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, submitted its report not to my right honourable friend the Home Secretary nor to any other Minister, but to the National Council of Social Service. The House will understand, therefore, that the Government cannot take their consideration of the Goodman Committee's Report very far until we know how far the recommendations are endorsed by the National Council of Social service itself. The NCSS, for its part, has decided to consult widely before formulating its own views. The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, presided at a conference on the Goodman report in April, which I know was also addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Nathan, and some other members of the Committee. No doubt, other representations have been made to the National Council by its constituent bodies. I understand that the Council is now drawing up a memorandum for consideration by the Government, and we look forward to receiving it.

The present Chairman of the National Council of Social Service recently asked for a meeting with my right honourable friend the Home Secretary to discuss the report of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, and his Committee, and this meeting— having been deferred on one occasion, as the noble Lord, Lord Allen, has rightly observed—will be taking place later this week. In these circumstances, I know that the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, will not be surprised to hear that the Government have not as yet reached any conclusions on the recommendations made by the Goodman Committee. Not only would it have been somewhat discourteous to the National Council of Social Service if we had attempted to do so without knowing what their views might be, but the very breadth and scope of the Committee's report would have rendered it an exceptionally difficult task. Nevertheless, as I indicated at the beginning of my speech, this is clearly a most important matter and so we regard it.

The work of charities affects the lives of many millions of our fellow citizens. The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, referred in his speech to the role of the volunteer in our society, and certainly I would agree with him. For the first two years when I was at the Home Office, I had responsibility for the voluntary service unit of the Home Office which, as the noble Lord will know, has an important role in relation to the voluntary organisations and their total relationship with Government—not only my own Department, but all others. Therefore, I had a great deal to do for those two years with representatives of the voluntary organisations and, certainly—and I am sure that my experience will be very similar to that of the noble Lord—one could not but be impressed, and sometimes moved, by the tremendous amount of dedicated and disinterested work that takes place among people of this kind. Certainly, I agree with the noble Lord, that, at a time of great national economic difficulty, there is no doubt that, whatever philosophical differences may exist, in many cases if the voluntary movement—if I may so describe it—does not take on certain functions, no one else will do so.

The blunt reality is that we as a country are in a position where we can define without any difficulty urgent social problems, but we shall be unable to devote enough in the way of resources to dealing with those social problems. As a result, we shall be heavily dependent on the work of people in voluntary organisations. To take only one obvious example, this is particularly true in the area with which I am involved; namely, the general question of penal institutions, probation and after-care, and so on.

In many of these areas we are increasingly dependent upon the disinterested work of a large number of people who are prepared to give of their time. Therefore, I very much agree with the general approach of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman. Certainly it gives us an indication of the importance of the subject which we have been debating this evening. In the situation which we have been discussing and which I have just identified, it is clearly desirable that the Government should determine their policy without unreasonable delay. Of course the examination of the two reports will take some time because, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, pointed out, many Government Departments are inevitably involved with both. Given its responsibilities, my Department will be particularly closely involved.

The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, asked whether the Government are thinking of producing a Green Paper. As the noble Lord will be well aware, the Government are under an obligation to reply in due course to the report of the Expenditure Committee. Such a reply is normally conveyed in a White Paper. Whether or not at a later stage it will be appropriate to publish a Green Paper I do not know, but certainly I shall take into account the suggestion of the noble Lord and make quite sure that it is considered by those concerned.

To sum up, as I indicated at the beginning of my reply, I take the view—and I think it is the view of all noble Lords who have participated—that this has been a valuable debate. Certainly it will be of value to both the National Council for Social Service and the Government. I should like to assure the House that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, knowing of your Lordships' interest in the subject and that there is this report from the Expenditure Committee in another place to which the Government have yet to reply, is determined to ensure that we should now proceed to formulate our views on these important issues as speedily as possible.