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Death by a thousand cuts 1

Governance | Andrew Scadding | 20 May 2010

Amidst the 'butchery' set to befall the industry, Andrew Scadding makes an appeal for careful cuts to an unlikely resource...

There is going to be a cutting frenzy. Of that there can be no doubt. Knives are already honed to perfection, eyes glinting, teeth bared. The signs indicate butchery, not surgery.

This is a plea for the opposite approach, for planned, careful surgical cuts which remove fat not muscle. It is a plea in general terms, but in one specific area, which may surprise people who know that I have not always been the Charity Commission’s greatest fan, nor its quietist opponent.

If government is going to employ people to do a job, it must ensure as a matter of practical necessity, that they have the tools required. We have experienced the embarrassment and pain of the less scrupulous approach with every death in a snatch Land Rover in Afghanistan.

Now I do not for a moment suggest that lives will be lost if the Charity Commission is underfunded. But the Charity Commission, whatever its past faults, is seen by the public as the hallmark of excellence of English and Welsh charities.  Today’s announcement that there will be 60 more jobs cut at the Commission will, in the opinion of the outgoing Chief Executive, Andrew Hind, leave the Commission with resources which border on insufficient for its task.

Now I confess that whilst I spent many years as a critic of the Commission, I have been impressed by the progress that it has made under its present management, Mr Hind and Dame Suzi Leather. To take one very small, but I believe important example, the Charity Commission has an excellent website from which donors and supporters can obtain genuinely useful information about charities, authoritatively sourced. It has taken big steps towards justifying the public confidence it enjoys.

I have been told that a few years ago, the Danes closed their equivalent of the Charity Commission on the grounds that it was an unnecessary expense. This is a better course of action than having a Commission which is underfunded and moribund. At least the public knows that there is nobody protecting its interest.

I sincerely hope that this is not the route we take in England and Wales. Recently we have spent a good deal of time and energy, not to say money, agonising over maintaining public confidence in charities. The Charity Commission embodies that public confidence. It must be given the funding it needs to continue to sustain trust through effective and proportionate regulation.

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