§ Mr. BurstowTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the proposal in the Cabinet Office report, "Private Action, Public Benefit", that charities with an annual income of under £10,000 would no longer be able to call themselves registered charities. [86290]
§ Beverley Hughes[holding answer 9 December 2002]: The Cabinet Office report, "Private Action, Public Benefit", was published on 25 September 2002. Its 61 recommendations set out a package of measures which aim to modernise the law and enable a wide range of organisations to be more effective and innovative.
One of the recommendations is that the threshold for compulsory regulation with the Charity Commission should be raised from those organisations with an annual income of £1,000 to those with an annual income of £10,000. Currently, active monitoring by the Commission applies only to those charities with an annual income of £10,000 or more.
The report recommends that the threshold for registration and the threshold where active monitoring kicks in should logically be one and the same. This would result in two-thirds of charities being released from the bureaucratic burden of registration, and is entirely in line with this Government's, emphasis on deregulation.
I can understand the concern that being unable to describe an organisation as a registered charity may have an effect on public confidence. In fact, the report recognises this, and a further recommendation is that all charities below the new registration threshold should have the status of 'Small Charities'. This would also allow tax repayment claims to the Inland Revenue to continue, and for funders to treat 'Small Charities' in the same way as registered charities.
Of course, at the moment these are only proposals. The report is out for consultation until 31 December 2002, and we shall consider the responses to this, and all the other matters addressed in the report, very carefully.