A Welsh Tory MP has criticised Save the Children and other charities for lobbying in Westminster.
David Davies, MP for Monmouth, has objected to an invitation from Save the Children to a House of Lords reception on the education of children. He claims that the event is an attack on the coalition government and ignores the fact that the country’s worst education results are actually in Wales, whose education system is under Labour control.
He told civilsociety.co.uk that Save the Children is “either unaware of the fact that education is a devolved matter and that the area with the worst PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) results in the UK is Wales and that the responsibility of that lies with the Welsh Assembly government or they are not interested in taking note of it because it doesn’t do their purpose politically”.
Davies went on to say that considering the charity’s chief executive, Justin Forsyth, has previously worked for two Labour Prime Ministers, he struggles to believe that it could be unaware of Labour’s role in the Welsh education system.
He added: “Either it is political or he is unaware of devolution or he didn’t read the report before he issued the campaign. It is one of those three things really, and none of which spoke really well for Save the Children.”
William Higham, Save the Children’s director of UK poverty, said: “Save the Children is not in any way party-political - we stand up for poor children and work to ensure that every child in the UK has a fair start in life. We have explicitly called for a national drive that is non-political to ensure that all children are good readers and our campaign, Change the Story for Children, has received cross-party support. We work in schools across Wales and the rest of the UK as well as calling for action from all political parties.”
Wales had the lowest PISA scores according to a recent OECD study. Labour’s Huw Lewis, education minister for the Welsh Assembly, issued an apology on Boxing Day for the falling schools standards.
Davies suggests that the Save the Children is part of a pattern of charities which focus more on lobbying the government on issues than on their causes. He is not the only MP to believe this as a recent study by nfpSynergy showed that the majority of MPs are wary of charities “being political”.
Majority of Tory MPs agree with Davies
The study asked 157 MPs what it means to them for a charity to be political and 78 per cent of Conservative MPs said it was a negative thing. However, only 23 per cent of Labour MPs and 38 per cent of Liberal Democrats also saw it as negative.
Head of professional audiences at nfpSynergy, Tim Harrison, said: “Things are getting tense for charities in Westminster. As the Lobbying Bill trundles through Parliament, the nightmare of charities being severely limited in politically representing their beneficiaries threatens to become a reality.
“Within this context, it is fascinating to see some of the background sentiment to this legislation and to note how wary MPs are of charities being too ‘political’ - a sentiment that is not shared by the public or journalists.”
Davies said of some of the biggest charities operating in the UK: “They’ve all just become great big lobbying organisations. I suppose it is a bit too much like hard work to do what they were set up to do. They just employ teams of people to hold receptions in Parliament and generally lobby MPs on the issue of the day. I appreciate that may be a generalisation but that is how it appears to be to me.”
This is not the first time Save the Children has been accused of being politically motivated. Last year its poverty appeal came under attack by Tory MPs.
Douglas Carswell, Conservative MP for Clacton, told civilsociety.co.uk at the time: “Justin Forsyth is doing very good work with Save the Children. But we must be aware of the danger that he was committed to a particular government for a sizeable amount of time.
“We have to be careful that charities are not converting appeals into political agendas.”
RSPCA 'no longer saves animals'
Davies has also spoken out against other charities and their political lobbying. He mentioned the RSPCA as an example.
He said: “The RSPCA used to, as far as I’m aware, save animals but now they spend most of their time complaining about fox hunting and trying to prosecute the hunts, which is not what they are set up to do.”
Responding to the criticism, an RSPCA spokesman said: “The RSPCA makes no apologies for doing what we were formed to do nearly 200 years ago - stopping animal abuse and without fear or favour, bringing those who harm animals to justice.
“We were formed to save animals and still save animals - whether by rescuing them from danger, removing them from abusive homes or prosecuting those who are cruel to them. In 2012 we rehomed almost 55,500 animals, rehabilitated around 15,300 and investigated over 150,000 complaints of alleged cruelty.
“The RSPCA will continue to speak out on matters where we believe animal welfare is compromised or could be improved, and uphold the laws enacted to protect animals. This is our duty.”
Davies also condemned the RSPB for its stance on climate change.
He said about the RSPB: “Perhaps they are still setting up bird sanctuaries, but as far as I’m concerned as an MP they seem to spend most of their time bleating on about climate change and demanding wind farms, which are not very good for birds anyway.”
In response the RSPB said: “The RSPB has a view that renewable energy is very important. Yet there are some developments we are against for the protection of birds, such as the Severn Barrage.
“We realise that climate change will be the greatest threat to wildlife and we are still committed to climate change. It is unfair to say that we are just bleating on as this undermines our fundamental argument. We need to do anything that we can to bring down this threat.”
