Since its establishment in 1982, the Charity Tax Group (CTG) has campaigned for the fairer tax treatment of charities to allow them to maximise the public benefit impact of their work.
Early on, CTG and others successfully lobbied for income tax relief on single donations of £600 or more by individuals. This led then-chancellor John Major to propose a gift aid scheme in his 1990 budget, which has since helped generate an estimated £75m for good causes.
In recent years, CTG has taken steps to grow as an organisation. After gaining charitable status in 2024, CTG appointed Luke Hall, a former Conservative MP and minister, as its first-ever chief executive, a role he has held since January this year.
From Lidl to Westminster
Hall is possibly the only former Westminster politician who knows the barcode of milk in Lidl (20076795) 10 years ago.
While studying archaeology and anthropology at university, Hall worked full-time at Lidl, starting as a shelf stacker and working his way up to become deputy manager.
Hall loved retail so much that he decided not to pursue a career in his chosen subjects and became store manager of the Yate branch of Lidl after leaving university instead.
“It was an incredibly fast-paced, challenging, demanding job and career, and I loved every minute,” he says.
“Retail is one of these industries where, if you work hard and do a good job, you can get on. The retail industry is a huge driver for social mobility.”
In May 2015, Hall stood for election and was elected as MP for Thornbury and Yate, a seat he held for nine years before losing it at the election in 2024.
Whilst an MP in 2019, Hall became parliamentary under-secretary at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government before being named minister of state in the same department.
Hall says that period was particularly challenging because of the pandemic.
“I was made a minister, and Covid-19 completely changed the dynamic of what every government in the world had to do and respond to.
“The biggest task I had was supporting local government, which was delivering all of these different services of vaccine rollouts and food parcels, trying to understand the financial and mechanical implications and all the different things you had to do.”
For instance, in 2020, he directed local authorities to offer shelter to all rough sleepers, as well as social care basics such as food, access to facilities, support and protection.
“We recorded rough sleeping information and ended up having the best level on protecting rough sleepers and the lowest level of rough sleeping deaths anywhere in the world that recorded this information.”
Entering the charity sector
While working in parliament, Hall’s wife was admitted to hospital 22 weeks into her pregnancy.
Their youngest son was born prematurely at 28 weeks, weighed 2.4 lb and stayed in a neonatal intensive care unit for 72 days before coming home.
“I was still a minister and was going back and forth to London, doing a speech in the morning and coming back and learning how to feed my son through a tube in the afternoon.
“Having to navigate through that opened my eyes. From that point on, the way I used my time in parliament changed completely.”
Hall became an advocate for premature and sick children, working closely with charities including Bliss and cross-party ministers and MPs, and driving legislative change to introduce stronger rights for neonatal leave.
“That was the start of the journey of how I ended up in the charity sector.
“You go through this journey where you assume that everything’s going to be fine because you just do things, and then it’s not.
“You realise it’s a whole world you didn’t understand or weren’t aware of, and you’ve got to try and navigate it.”
The work Hall did around neonatal leave – including helping pass the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023 – reinforced the “feel good feeling” he wanted to have when getting up in the morning.
“When I left parliament [in July 2024], I was clear that I’d go and work in the charity sector, but I wanted the role to be right and have impact.”
After working as head of external affairs and engagement at the National Grid for a few months, Hall came across the CEO role at CTG, which he says “was a no-brainer”.
“Another option was to work for a charity that supports premature children. I thought carefully about that type of role, which in some ways I’d love to do, but with an organisation like CTG, you have the ability to do a lot more than that.
“If you’re an organisation that can help charities pay less tax, that has a ripple effect across every charity in the sector, not just one.”
Tax system ‘skewed against charities’
Hall shares CTG’s values and drive to engage positively with the government, serve its members and partners and deliver change for the charity sector.
He believes that the tax system is skewed against charities and prevents them from spending more funds on what they were set up to do.
Giving the example of charities having to pay VAT on services that local authorities would not be paying, he says: “Charities should be spending the money that’s given to them on service delivery.
“Why should they be giving it back to the tax man to be reinvested in different things? They should be keeping it and be allowed to invest in and support the communities they serve.”
On gift aid, meanwhile, he says that the rules are outdated and were made for a paper-based era and that it is time to move to digital by default.
Partnership with government
As CTG’s first-ever CEO, Hall stresses that whatever he plans to do should not compromise the organisation’s “top-quality level of expertise” and what it has achieved over the past 40 years.
“The key thing you’ve got to be able to do as a minister is pick your priorities and try and deliver on them. That’s relevant to CTG because it’s a small charity,” he says.
“We’ve got to continue delivering the amazing service CTG has been delivering. That’s non-negotiable. The level of technical expertise is brilliant, but at the same time, I’ve got to think: ‘What are the things I can add to that and deliver on?’”
He also sees an opportunity for CTG to be bigger and more overtly proud of what it does and grow its reach.
In respect to CTG’s engagement with policymakers, he hopes to “take this a step up”, drawing on his experience in parliament to ensure CTG can get the best deal for charities.
“I start from the point that charities are unfairly penalised in the tax system. I’ll work with anybody of any political persuasion, any government, to try and rectify this.
“It’s incumbent on us to work with the government in a constructive way, which CTG has done for the last 40 years. I want us to be collaborative and bring people together to make those arguments.”
As a former minister, Hall says the government can mistakenly think that it is “in receipt of all the levers that deliver change when it’s not”.
“It’s about partnership between civil society, government, individuals and communities that make a difference,” he says.
“The call I’d make to this government – and every government – is to treat charities as an equal partner. Too many governments don’t do that. That’s not a party political point. It’s a status point.
“I want the government to recognise that for society to thrive and succeed, charity is as big a part of that as the government is.”
Charities’ needs come first
One of Hall’s initial priorities is to listen to the sector’s needs, as he acknowledges that “we don’t have all the answers”.
“I want us to have a model that continually listens and has that conversation. I want that to be a core part of our offering at CTG, that we’re not just an organisation that campaigns for change.
“On top of educating and supporting the sector, we should be a convener, with support mechanisms for other charities that want help, guidance and advice.
“We’re not an individual organisation here for our own benefit. We’re here as a charity that supports the sector to keep more of the money it earns and spend it on things that matter.”
He sees collaboration as the cornerstone of change, saying “the strength of the case comes in the collective weight of the argument”.
“It doesn’t come from one umbrella body continually sending out a press release saying something should happen.
“It’s about the voice of all of those different organisations lending their collective expertise, experience and support networks to make that case.”
