Oxfam’s director of communications said yesterday that politicians were using regulation to threaten the reputation of charities that disagreed with them.
Jack Lundie spoke from the audience at an event called The Future of Charity Campaigning, organised by a communications company, Weber Shandwick, after Charlie Elphicke (pictured), the Conservative MP for Dover and Deal, criticised a pictured tweeted by Oxfam last year because it lacked "veracity and accuracy".
Last year, Conservative MP Conor Burns reported Oxfam to the Charity Commission for being “overtly political” over a campaign against food poverty in Britain, particularly a tweet of a mock film poster entitled The Perfect Storm. Elphicke backed Burns, telling a BBC Radio 4 programme that it was “not right” for charities to campaign on political issues.
A report published by the Commission at the end of the year into the complaint ruled that Oxfam “should have done more” to avoid being seen as politically biased against the government.
Lundie said the current regulatory system allows there to be "an effective lever for politicians to be able to close down civil society space by using regulation to threaten their reputation".
Lundie asked the panel whether Elphicke was right that being inaccurate should really count as "inappropriate political activity", and said he felt it was wrong that charities' opponents felt able to use regulation to silence them.
He said: “It seems to me to be wide open to opponents of our policy to be able to use the mechanics and ambiguity of regulation to silence us or raise questions about our integrity and about the proper and appropriate use of charity funds.”
Elphicke said it was unfair of the charity to attack issues such as zero-hours contracts when MPs, including himself, had been campaigning for reform.
Other members of the panel were Labour peer Baroness Hayter, Trussell Trust’s chair Chris Mould, the Charity Commission’s director of policy and communications Sarah Atkinson, and NCVO’s policy manager Elizabeth Chamberlain.
