The Conservative Party should defend charities’ right to campaign and criticise the government, one of the party’s MPs has said.
Joe Robertson, a parliamentary private secretary for the shadow culture team, made the remarks when addressing the audience at the party’s annual conference in Manchester.
Robertson told a fringe event organised by Bright Blue that the Conservative Party should better recognise that charities “aren’t merely there to fill in the gaps and mop up where the state is ineffective” and are “a fundamental long-term part of the ways our society operates”.
On campaigning, he said that it was “perfectly acceptable” for charities to express views about government policy, which is “very different from being political or party political, which they shouldn’t be”.
He added: “I’m very relaxed about charities receiving government money, whether we're in government or not, and having a view about government policy.”
When asked whether he agreed that charities are “too left-wing”, Robertson responded: “Charities will campaign on issues around poverty reduction and improving health provision.
“Again, I guess there are connotations around that being left-wing policy, but I don’t really agree […] There’s output for charities that is left-leaning in terms of sort of the policy that they’re pushing.
“But I don’t really accept the premise that charities are somehow left-wing.”
Party should not ‘shy away from’ charity record
Robertson said that conservatives can be “a little shy and a little reticent to be strong in the space of charities”.
“It’s probably one of the few issues [where] we resign ourselves to a view – which is incorrect – but a view out there that this is not really a conservative area, this is something that the Labour Party perform better on and talk more about,” he said.
“That’s incorrect, and I don’t think we should shy away from our record on supporting charities.”
Call for NICs rise exemption
Robertson said he would like to see a future Conservative government “relieving the pressure on charities, starting with reversing some of the things that this Labour government has done”.
A previous critic of the government’s decision to increase employer national insurance contributions, Robertson said at the event: “She [chancellor Rachel Reeves] recognised that this would cause pressure and would cause harm within the delivery of healthcare, because that’s why she exempted the NHS.
“But delivery of healthcare and the NHS are not two interchangeable simultaneous terms, because there are a lot of charities out there that deliver healthcare and are not the NHS.
“But she didn’t relieve the pressure of the next hike on charities, and for a lot of charities, they don’t operate with a contract with government, with any government funding at all.”
