The Charity Commission has said it will not be putting resources into growing public understanding of what the sector does and how charities operate.
At the All Party Parliamentary Group on Charities and Volunteering, convened by NCVO, the regulator's chair fielded questions from charities about its role and priorities.
Baroness Tina Stowell, who became the Commission’s chair in March, said the regulator had a key role to play regarding public trust in charities.
She said the Commission’s role was “representing public interest to charities” and that to do this it had to have a clear understanding of “what the public’s expectations are of charities”.
Lord Hodgson, who led a review of the Charities Act, said charities were “moving to a different form of organisation” and asked whether this had contributed to a greater gap between public expectations and the reality of what charities do.
But Stowell said that it was not useful to focus on particular reasons for the public’s fall in public trust.
She said: “It is true that there are elements within the sector that people will use to substantiate their lack of confidence. What I would argue though is it is important for us not to necessarily fixate on those specifics.
“They are proxies in a way for this underlying concern to see that whatever you are paying your staff or whatever it is that you may be spending your money in different ways on as a charity, can that charity show on a consistent and ongoing basis that all the decisions that it makes to be effective are in pursuit of delivering that purpose.”
Pauline Broomhead, chief executive of the Foundation for Social Improvement, asked whether the Commission would help the public to better understand the “very different environment” that charities now operate in.
But Stowell said: “Our role is not to help the public understand better. Our role is to help charities understand what it is they need to show to the public.”
Sector charging
In recent years, the Commission has frequently suggested charging a levy on large charities to boost its funding.
The Commission’s latest strategy, published last month, did not mention this but it did say the regulator was under resourced.
Yesterday, Stowell said sector charging “is something that does remain very much on the table” and said the regulator would need more funding to fulfil its strategy.
She said: “We had to set out a very clear and bold picture about why the Commission exists, what it is that we are trying to achieve and how we need to do it, knowing that we do not have the resources to do that.”
Lack of power
James Legge, head of the Coutryside Alliance’s political department, expressed frustration with the Commission’s failure to remove an unnamed charity from the register after “10 years of breaking the rules”.
He said: “Do you have the power to deregister a charity that persistently breaks the rules? If you don’t, should you not be seeking that power?
“Because that is where public trust comes from. Because there are a lot of people who are very fed up with the way some of these charities are behaving and operating.”
Hodgson added that he thought it was “extraordinary” that the Commission was unable to remove a charity from the register by way of sanction.
In response, Stowell said the issue of deregistration was “an interesting and important point” but said the Commission was “testing the limits” of new powers it was awarded in 2016.
She said: “I don’t think at the moment we are in a position where we want to start demanding things that we haven’t got.”
‘Confusion in the sector’
Stowell said the Commission was focused not just on whether charities were achieving their objectives, but how they were achieving them.
She used the President’s Club scandal earlier this year as an example.
“You could argue that that charity met its charitable purposes. The problem was how it went about doing that.
“In reaching the conclusion that the Commission did, it was important that the Commission was able to vocalise that and make that point and that is how we can give public confidence that the way in which we are holding the sector to account is in line with their expectations.”
Elizabeth Chamberlain, head of policy and public services at NCVO, said in response that the President’s Club was a clear example of wrongdoing and that it would be difficult to make judgements on more complex examples.
She said: “There are lots of shades of grey where the Commission is going to have to navigate new waters.
“I would say there is confusion within the sector over some of the messaging from the Commission around what you mean by public expectations and how we are going to act on them.”
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