The Charity Commission has been criticised by charity infrastructure bodies who say it “torpedoed” an amendment to exempt charities from the lobbying bill.
The amendment to the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill was put forward by charity lawyer Lord Phillips at the report stage of the bill in the Lords last week. But peers said they would not support it after receiving a letter from the Commission warning against it.
Phillips said charities did not need to be covered by the bill as their lobbying was already regulated by the Commission. But the Commission said an exemption was not “in the best interests of public trust and confidence in charities” and would increase its own workload to a level it did not “have the capacity to absorb”.
Chief executives body Acevo and sector research organisation the Directory of Social Change said they felt the Commission was putting its own concerns ahead of the good of the sector and was going beyond its remit in trying to make the law.
“The Commission decided to lobby against an amendment designed to protect its own constituents against a burdensome regulatory regime imposed by a poorly drafted bill,” wrote Alex Massey, a policy officer at Acevo, in a blog published today by civilsociety.co.uk.
He said the Commission's internal concerns “appear to have taken full precedence over the views of the sector”.
“In effect, the Commission’s letter asks for it to be divested of one of its core responsibilities – to ensure that charities remain non-party political in their campaigning and advocacy work,” he said. “What use is a regulator that doesn’t want to regulate? I’d suggest that the Commission should be extremely cautious about implying that it can no longer carry out its core functions.”
DSC: Commission has told Lords it 'can't do its job'
Jay Kennedy, director of policy and research at the DSC, said the Commission had “torpedoed” the amendment “at the eleventh hour” even though it was gathering significant support.
“We don’t agree with the Charity Commission’s arguments,” he said. “In fact we’re completely stunned by some of their points which seem to imply they aren’t capable of properly regulating the charity sector’s campaigning.
“They appear to have told 600 lords they can’t do their job.”
He said the Commission had gone beyond its authority in sending the letter.
“The Commission’s job is to apply the law, not make it,” he said.
A Commission spokeswoman said: “We believe we had a responsibility, on such a key regulatory issue, to set out what we perceive to be the practical implications of the amendment and our priority was to let peers know of our position to ensure a fully informed debate.
"If the amendment had been agreed we believed there would have been resource implications for the Commission. This point was made not as an argument against the amendment itself, but as a subsidiary point so that peers were aware of these implications. This was acknowledged in the House last Wednesday evening.”
