Proposals to allow the Charity Commission more powers to ban people from becoming trustees or officers of charities are a "huge regulatory land grab" and should be scrapped, a letter to peers has said.
The letter was sent to a number of members of the House of Lords by Jay Kennedy, director of policy and research at the Directory of Social Change. Kennedy expresses his concerns that new powers, proposed in the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill, show a “zero-tolerance” to people with criminal records.
The Commission has asked for powers both for individuals to be barred from being a trustee or senior charity employee if they commit an offence, and also to ban other unsuitable individuals on the same basis.
However Kennedy (pictured) said the proposed rules were too broad.
He said that the DSC in particular objects to the regime for “discretionary disqualification of trustees and the apparent extension of automatic disqualification to ‘officers, agents or employees’ of a charity”.
He said that the proposed reforms amount to a “huge regulatory ‘land grab’ by the Charity Commission that potentially threatens the independence of charities and also the attractiveness of volunteering as a charity trustee”.
He said that the clauses appear to give the Commission powers to disqualify anybody who, in its own opinion, should not be a trustee.
Kennedy said this is a “massive extension of state power into the right of citizens to volunteer and support charities”.
He also said that the proposal that would give the Commission the power to stop disqualified trustees from being involved in charities as an officer, agent or employee’ appears to go beyond the “normal regulatory relationship”.
Kennedy said: “This is not, and should not be the Commission’s job in our view. It’s a step too far and raises all kinds of problematic questions about human rights and employment law that have not been sufficiently addressed.”
“Some elements of this bill could threaten fundamental civil liberties and even the spirit of voluntarism,” he said.
Committee stage discussions
Speaking yesterday at the committee stage reading of the bill in the House of Lords, Conservative peer Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts said that he would reject the amendment which gives the Commission the right to perform random Disclosure and Barring Service - formerly CRB - checks, despite it being "well-meaning". He said this is because following the "terrible saga of Jimmy Savile and others", trustees are very aware of the risks that may hit trustees and their charities.
Despite this, he said that “the rows that there have been over unauthorised fundraising will be as nothing compared with the damage to a charity’s reputation if it is shown to be light-handed over the need to check its volunteers as appropriate.”
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town echoed Hodgson’s concerns that the lack of safeguards could result in significant reputational damage to the sector, and therefore the ability to be able to perform DBS checks (which replaced CRB checks) was necessary.
The Labour peer said: “We have seen the damage that was done both to the NHS and to the BBC by their complete failure over Jimmy Savile. I would hate to find that a charity where this sort of thing happened then damaged the whole of the charitable sector. That risk remains.”
She went on to say that she is concerned that “we are more concerned about money than about people”. She stated money-launderers have been added to the list of people who have been barred, but the safety of beneficiaries are “probably rather more important”.
Conservative peer Lord Bridges of Headley, the parliamentary secretary to the Cabinet Office, somewhat disagreed, arguing that the severity of some of these amendments, such as the DBS checks, could have an adverse impact on the number of people willing to become trustees.
He said: “We do not want to impose onerous or duplicative requirements that could have—to coin a phrase—a chilling effect on the willingness of people to step up to serve as trustees.”
