The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation has pledged to invest £517m over the next seven years in projects to reduce the incidence of under-nutrition of children worldwide.

Charities Property Fund is now the twentieth-largest charity in the UK by assets after the purchase of four car showrooms has taken its net asset value to £510m.

Blackpool, the town whose local economy will be the hardest hit in the whole UK by the government’s welfare reforms, boasts just 43 charities that work to prevent or relieve poverty – and only 23 of these provide services.

Charities should be required to publish their expenditure on campaigning and political work in their annual returns, along with how much of their income they receive from public sources, the Public Administration Select Committee has said.