Opinion

Whose benefit?

Finance | Ian Allsop | 1 Sep 2007

Ian Allsop observes a government grilling. 

The summer saw the Charity Commission grilled by the public administration select committee (PASC), an all-party group of MPs upholding the quality and standard of administration in the civil service. And it was a fascinating session, but not always for the right reasons. The Commission made all the right noises about accountability and transparency, as one would expect from a body committed to open board meetings. But the exercise must have tested its patience if not its intellect.

The two-hour slot was supposed to be about the Commission’s progress on public benefit but in the first 40 minutes the PASC kicked around more chestnuts than an autumnal walk. What was the Commission doing about public service delivery, admin costs, mission creep? Global warming, the starving in Africa?

I suppose the point of being on one of these committees is to ask awkward questions and expose problems, even if there aren't any. And there was evident glee in the voice of Tony Wright (Lab, Cannock Chase), the chair, as he pronounced that the previous two answers he had been given were contradictory. "We have a conflict!" he beamed around the room. We didn’t. He hadn’t been listening properly.

Charles Walker, (Cons, Broxbourne, floppy fringed), showed he had a real grasp of the modern charity world by tarring 190,000 organisations with one very broad brush. He confidently stated that “charities employ vast numbers of expensive executives and hugely paid lobbyists”. This wild assertion was adroitly argued away by Dibble, Chapman, Leather and Hind, with all of the authoritative calm one would expect from a quartet sounding like the moniker of a traditional law firm. But they must have been relieved when the real business, on public benefit, started.

The first big surprise was that it took a full five minutes until private schools got a mention. And no matter how hard the PASC tried to provoke an admission that the new rules would see swathes of charities, particularly schools, stripped of their status, Suzi and the team stayed steadfast. Gordon Prentice (Lab, Pendle) pleaded like a bemused Alan Titchmarsh questioning Monty Don’s treatment of his roses. “There will be a slight pruning, surely, no? There will not even be a little bit of pruning?” The Commission’s argument that the guidance would drive up the “quantum of public benefit that charities are providing” was not what the cull-thirsty MPs wanted.

When the questions moved to religion the session turned into a competition to see who could come up with the most outrageous example of an organisation that might be a charity. Paul Flynn (Lab, Newport West) cited pastafarianism, based on the belief that a blob of spaghetti is wandering through space. Rosie Chapman said she didn’t think it would satisfy the criterion of the belief in something which is greater than the self – at which point the MP interjected “ravioli”. In like Flynn indeed.

Kelvin Hopkins (Lab, Luton North) really got a head of steam up about the fact that charities are set up solely to gain tax breaks, which he called the essence of charitable status. He wanted a simpler approach (though which definition of simple he was using is debateable), where status is removed and “an organisation like yourselves would issue public grants to worthy organisations”. The usually unflappable Andrew Hind nearly fell off his chair but managed to reign in his incredulity and said that this would be an absolutely disastrous direction to go in, whereas what flashed through his mind was probably more colourful.

David Heyes (Lab, Ashton under Lyne) was interested in a conflict about conflicts of interest. He suggested that Commission employees should not make the ultimate decisions on schools and religions because they could hold strong personal convictions (unlike MPs presumably). In response Leather said that she and her colleagues would take turns in expressing their interests. (For the record, Suzi had a state and private education, as have her children and she is a practising Christian). Heyes then felt a bit silly and apologised for turning it into “some sort of McCarthy session”.

Finally, no doubt completely devoid of any self-interest on the part of the MPs, there was some discussion about whether political parties could be charities and Wright quipped that this would mean “we could stop having to give seats in the House of Lords to donors”. Leather said sharply: “Clearly we cannot sit here in front of you and say that we do not think you are for the public benefit.” But she might well have. Perhaps the PASC needs to turn the spotlight back upon itself and the quality of its own administration.

What all of this illustrates is the importance of charities effectively communicating what they do, because if those elected to serve cannot grasp it, can the public at large? Ultimately if MPs are truly representing the electorate, it is appropriate that some of its naivety is aired – even if it is a scary demonstration of true democracy in action. 

Tweet

Directory: Charity Commission
Who's Who: Ian Allsop