William Shawcross told politicians yesterday that the Charity Commission shares more information with other agencies, including HMRC, than it receives in return and that he would like more information to come the regulator’s way.

The Commission's chair was giving evidence, alongside Michelle Russell, the regulator's director of investigations and enforcement, to the joint committee reviewing the draft Protection of Charities Bill.

He said: “I think it is probably true to say that we give HMRC more data than they give us and we would like that imbalance to become more balanced.”

Russell agreed: “We have all sorts of agencies that we engage with. If you look at the totality, the Commission does tend to give more than perhaps it does receive back.”

She said that the issue is “about partnership and encouraging some of those agencies to share data with us. It’s nothing really to do with the legal powers, it’s do with the strength of the strategic and operational relationships which sometimes take a long while to mature.”

Regarding HMRC she said: “It was true in previous years that we were giving much more information than we were receiving. Over the past year or so that imbalance has started to be redressed and there is much closer working relationship.”

Last week HMRC told the joint committee that it was sharing more than before with the Commission after taking fresh legal advice.

Shawcross said that the regulator would shorten some of its guidance next year, as it recognised that some charities found it complex and hard to follow. 

Russell also said that the Commission was making better use of the data available to it and gave the example of recently joining the national fraud database Cifas, which it uses to check trustees for potential links to fraud.

They told the committee that the regulator needed the new powers outlined in the bill, with Russell pointing that all the examples of when the Commission would use the new powers were “based on real case studies”.

‘Teething problems’ with the move to gov.uk

Shawcross admitted that there had been “teething problems” with the Charity Commission’s move to the gov.uk website earlier this year.

The Commission had been opposed to the move but was forced to merge its website into the central gov.uk one in the autumn.

Shawcross said: “We can no longer present all of our material in a way that was specifically targeted at charities and people who were interested in charities.”

He accepted that there are “some advantages” to the new site, specifically the improved search function and a higher number of visitors.

“We’re working to improve the website all the time,” he said.