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Bash the footballers? 1

Fundraising | Vibeka Mair | 5 May 2011

Only a smattering of people bothered to show up at the Public Administration Select Committee hearing on bankers and philanthropy on Tuesday, and those that did were almost unanimous in their sympathy for the poor old bankers. Vibeka Mair was there to hear it all.

Perhaps it was a weekend packed with the first major royal wedding in 25 years, a decently sunny bank holiday and a US “victory” that caused the rather sparse turnout at Tuesday’s Public Administration Select Committee hearing on bankers, the financial sector and philanthropy.

Only five, mostly Conservative, select committee MPs attended, with the public gallery hosting even less people.

The witnesses lacked a fundraising representative, but did include Christ Blackhurst, City editor at the London Evening Standard; Mr Martin Brookes, chief executive at New Philanthropy Capital; Sir Sandy Crombie, a non-executive director at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Mr Robert Mirsky, a partner at KPMG and founder of Hedge Funds Care UK.

Halfway through a meeting organised to discuss bankers and philanthropy, Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke declared it was “time to move on from bankers” and look across the spectrum of rich people who could give.

The Standard’s Blackhurst agreed, asking why footballers like Wayne Rooney weren’t more aggressively tackled about their charitable giving.

Then most of the room decided that the City was actually doing lots for charity, it just wasn’t very good at telling anyone.

Blackhurst said it was a “mystery” that the City had failed to tell society what good it does.

Mirsky, founder of Hedge Funds Care UK, suggested that the hedge fund industry did not speak a lot about its giving, preferring anonymous donations. He also pointed out that the fourth-largest charity in the UK – Children’s Investment Fund Foundation – was funded by a hedge fund.

In response, PASC chair Bernard Jenkin praised the “unsung benefits of the hedge fund industry” and lamented that a great industry like the financial sector, which provided great tax benefits for the UK, was at risk because of reputation.

When the lone dissenting voice, Labour MP Paul Flynn, pointed out that hedge funds were largely responsible for the financial crisis, Jenkins called this “background noise”.

And there was not much comment when NPC’s Brookes, a former banker himself, gave statistical evidence showing that the richest 10 per cent in the UK give 1.1 per cent of charitable income, while the poorest 10 per cent contribute around 4 per cent of charitable giving.

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Directory: Children's Investment Fund | KPMG LLP | New Philanthropy Capital