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Sector must be able to campaign 'without limit'

Finance | 1 Jun 2007

Charities should be able to engage in political campaigning ‘without limit’ provided it is not party political activity, according to a radical report published last month by a collaboration of many of the voluntary sector’s most powerful organisations.

The Advisory Group on Campaigning and the Voluntary Sector, chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, claimed that in light of the new Charities Act, the Charity Commission can reinterpret parts of case law that currently stifle campaigning to allow much more political activity by the sector.

The group recommended that trustees should be ‘free to decide to engage exclusively in political campaigning in furtherance of their charitable purposes’, and that ‘a charity should not have limits placed on the resources that can be committed to political campaigning activities’.

The comprehensive 62-page report takes particular issue with the current Charity Commission guidance that states that charities can only undertake political campaigning if it is ancillary to their core activities in the long-term. This restriction exists, it said, because of the fear that removing it would ‘lead to a politicisation of the charity brand and would damage trust, goodwill and confidence in the sector’.

‘While this argument might have had some merit when political parties were stronger, it is much weaker in the light of the overwhelming evidence that the voluntary sector has become the natural home for a huge swathe of civic action,’ the report said. The group argued that a change to this interpretation of the law would be of public benefit and recommended that the Charity Commission substantially reinterpret the ancillary rule in its planned revision of its CC9 guidance on campaigning later this year. However, it added that the ‘fundamental legal framework also needs to be addressed and that piecemeal reform is not enough’. 

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