Outspoken Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke has left the Public Administration Select Committee and been replaced by fellow Tory Andrew Turner, who was the shadow charities minister back in 2005/06.

Elphicke has been a member of the PASC since the election in 2010 and has raised many hackles in the sector with his loud condemnation of chugging, charity campaigning, senior salaries and the Charity Commission’s approach to public benefit.

He was promoted in the recent reshuffle to become Parliamentary private secretary to David Lidington MP, minister for Europe, and as a result has now stepped down from the Committee.

Some of Elphicke’s more provocative remarks include:

• Telling The Daily Telegraph: “Ordinary people might struggle to understand why anyone is paid more than six figures in the charity world. This needs to be explained.”
• Writing in the Telegraph: “Think charity and you think of the volunteer rattling a tin, frontline work relieving poverty and vocation lined with compassion. You don’t think of mega salaries, inflation-busting pay rises and bank-style bonuses. Yet in too many cases, this has become the culture of the charitable sector.”
• Asking Nick Hurd whether the minister for civil society shared his concerns that "too many charities spend too much money on lobbying and on inflation-busting pay rises and bonuses for the boardroom, and that they ought to be concentrating more on the front line of helping people in need".
• Threatening that Parliament will outlaw face-to-face fundraising because it is an "infestation of modern life".
• Telling elders of the Plymouth Brethren that he thought the Charity Commission was “committed to the suppression of religion”, particularly the Christian religion.
• Accusing the Commission’s leadership of favouring Left-leaning think tanks while refusing charitable status to those on the Right.
• Suggesting at a panel debate at Conservative Party Conference in 2011 that charities that rely on statutory funding should be listed as separate organisations to those that don’t, and should not be able to lobby against funding cuts.

Elphicke’s replacement on the Committee, Isle of Wight MP Andrew Turner, is no stranger to sector affairs. He was the shadow charities minister in 2005 and 2006, in between Jacqui Lait and Greg Clark.  In that role he was the party's spokesman on the Charities Bill, up against Paul Goggins and then Ed Miliband. Turner also sat on the National Lottery Bill Committee in 2005.

More recently, he chaired the Small Charitable Donations Bill Committee which scrutinised the bill that created the gift aid small donations scheme, and already serves on the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee - the one which recently urged the government to delay the hugely unpopular lobbying bill for six months to allow pre-legislative scrutiny.

Turner is a particularly active MP – he has spoken in 62 debates in the last year, well above average among MPs, and voted in 86 per cent of votes in this Parliament – also well above average.

Bernard Jenkin MP, chair of the PASC, said Turner was an “experienced and popular colleague” who is “highly respected for his intellect and integrity”.

Turner said: “I enjoy getting my teeth into the detailed, cross-party work that takes place in select committees and the PASC is currently scrutinising some important topics, including crime statistics and the government’s plans for public service reform. I am looking forward to this new role.”