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Telegram to Sam

Finance | Daniel Phelan | 1 Sep 2010

Sam Younger will have to use his talents wisely to navigate the stormy seas after Hind's departure, says Daniel Phelan, and don't expect any waves of funding.

A new phase has begun at the Charity Commission with the arrival of Sam Younger (pictured) as its second chief executive. With a background spanning the BBC World Service (which he ran for a number of years and where his predecessor at the Commission, Andrew Hind was his number two) a brief sojourn as chief executive of the British Red Cross during a difficult period and various set-downs in quangoland since then, Mr Younger has a reputation as a smooth operator.

He’ll need all his silky skills as the Commission’s annual budget heads remorselessly downwards and its services and staff count have to be trimmed accordingly. And with HMRC’s recent muscular forays into charity regulation with, for example, the introduction of its draconian fit and proper managers’ test, Mr Younger may soon find there is a much bigger shark in the shrinking domain of his regulatory pond.

So what is the point of the Charity Commission? To keep charities on the straight and narrow and thus maintain public confidence in the sector? To support and advise charities in the proper conduct of their affairs? Can it possibly achieve all of this as it shrinks to greatness?

The Charity Commission is not perfect by any means but it is an important institution which does many things well. Crucially, it endeavours to maintain a clear line between what charities are and are not allowed to do and it insists that charities actually do deliver public benefit.

It also means the Commission has to be decisive in areas of human activity which everyone knows can be highly divisive, for example politics and religion. That is no task for the faint-hearted, nor is it one conducive to making friends in high places. For this as well as austerity reasons, Mr Younger, please don’t expect your budget to grow anytime soon.

Good judgement

On the subject of tricky decisions, under instruction from the High Court the Charity Commission has reviewed its decision not to allow Catholic Care (Diocese of Leeds) to change its objects in order to exclude homosexual couples from accessing its adoption services. After detailed consideration, the Commission has affirmed its original decision not to allow the change.

This is the right decision and the Commission deserves praise for its careful analysis of the issues and its refusal to allow unnecessary and unlawful discrimination to be introduced into a charity’s work.

That being said, the hugely important contribution to social cohesion and community structures made by members of faith organisations should not be underestimated and there are signs that the new government has no intention of doing so.

But balancing a person of faith’s right to hold a belief with the basic human right not to be discriminated against is always going to be fraught with problems. Perhaps, after all, politicians will always need someone else to take the flak on these more difficult decisions and the Charity Commission can rest easy in the knowledge that its name is on that particular tin for the time being at least. 

Daniel Phelan is editor-in-chief of Civil Society Media Ltd

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