Blogs

False benefit claims

Finance | Ian Allsop | 31 Oct 2011

Ian Allsop sifts through the Tribunal’s decision on independent schools.

I survived my half-marathon (unless a ghostwriter is penning these words), completing the race before they had to sweep up, and reaching my fundraising target for the Scout Association.

I will now carry on with pages of self-indulgent waffle about the personal sacrifices I made so that a few kids can go camping, claiming my achievement on behalf of every fundraiser ever, as if I am the first person in history to run around for a couple of hours.

13.1 miles of deleted text later… But enough about me. Speaking of pain, my initial intention this month, in light of the Charity Fund Management Survey 2011 published in this month’s magazine, was to segue neatly into some blistering bon mots on the global economic situation. But something I read on one of those terribly helpful emails that get sent round with breaking civil society news forced me to reconsider.

This change of tack meant I missed my deadline though the editor can hardly complain, as technically it is partly his fault for things he did in his previous career. The headline screamed success for independent schools in their battle with the Charity Commission over public benefit. As with my original column, the judicial review, apparently, means the Commission will have to tear up its hard work and put it in the bin (a task, it is rumoured, to be delegated to Oliver Letwin).

And it was a great victory for the Independent Schools Council (ISC), right? After all, no less an impartial observer as the lawyer representing the ISC said so. But it became clear that things were not as clear-cut and, once people actually read the 14 million-page judgment, more considered analysis began to emerge using words such as ‘nuanced’.

Far from it being a slap in the face for the Commission, some said, it was actually a huge vindication of its interpretation of the law and its role in ensuring schools toed the public-benefit line or else risked being expelled, albeit with a need to revise an over-emphasis on bursaries. I was confused at this point and so immediately called for a judicial review to decide who had won the judicial review.

Public benefit

Public benefit and schools is one of those charity sector stories that regularly receives coverage in the mainstream media, but for years has been misrepresented and oversimplified. This was illustrated best when the Charities Bill was once referred to as the “Independent Schools Bill” by a paper which should have known better.

But then the whole Charities Act, if you are to believe the Daily Mail, was the creation of Dame Suzi Leather, a glamorous New Labour ‘quangocrat’ and ex-public-school head-girl, parachuted into the Charity Commission as chair to act on the social-engineering whims of lefty backbenchers out to shut down posh schools.

You might think that vital decisions about charitable status are made upon careful examination of charity law, but apparently not. How it works is that Dame Suzi sits behind a big desk and decides on a school-by-school basis which ones to close, using a complex algorithm based on whether the school regularly beats her own alma mater at hockey or if she likes its crest.

It shouldn’t be a political issue say the politicians, thus ensuring it remains a political issue. Which was why it was a telling moment when the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve MP (Conservative, educated at Westminster school), entered the fray by asking the Charity Tribunal to have a quick look at the Commission’s public benefit guidance.

One thing that did strike me, as pundits and commentators rushed to ‘out-pund’ and ‘outcomment’ each other, was the suggestion that the judgment will be vital in helping to maintain public trust and confidence in the charity brand.

But I am not so sure that the legal complexity is of any concern to most. No matter what great community work plenty of independent schools undertake, or how much financial assistance they give to ‘commoners’, the popular perception is of ‘toffs at Eton’.

This judgment will not change the views of those to whom it remains anachronistic that a school which educated half of the millionaires on the government front-bench remains – by law – a charity, no matter how many examples of public benefit they spray upon their famous wall.

Ultimately, the true test of Eton’s public benefit credentials may come down to whether or not you think a Cabinet stuffed with its former pupils is a good thing for the country or not.

Tweet

Who's Who: Ian Allsop