Last week, the Charity Commission’s surprise intervention on the lobbying bill caused much disconcertion within the charity sector. Alex Massey, senior policy officer at Acevo, explains why.
If you followed the Lords debate on the government's Transparency of Lobbying bill on Wednesday evening, you would have heard the assembled peers discussing a letter they had received from the Charity Commission in connection with an amendment to exempt charities from the Bill's provisions. You might have assumed that the letter would be in favour. After all, charities are already subject to strict rules around political activity, and the bill places significant extra costs and burdens on an already pressurised sector. But you would be wrong.
To the surprise of many, the voluntary sector's dedicated regulator wrote to the Lords to lobby against a charitable exemption. In other words, it decided to lobby against an amendment designed to protect its own constituents against a burdensome regulatory regime imposed by a poorly-drafted bill- an amendment that had the support of sector bodies ranging from the Charities Aid Foundation and Acevo, to the Small Charities Coalition and the Directory of Social Change.
The Commission declined to invite comment on the letter in advance. However, the segments read out in the House appeared to focus on the narrow, internal concerns of the Commission, rather than the wider issues facing the sector. “If an exemption were to be agreed”, wrote the Commission, “we would need to analyse the likely impact of this on our already stretched resources”. If the impact of the bill on the stretched resources of charities was considered, it was not apparent. Nor was any reference made to the wisdom of subjecting charities to a draconian bill designed to inhibit their campaigning activity.
In fact, the Commission's internal concerns appear to have taken full precedence over the views of the sector. The lack of interest shown by the letter in charities' well-publicised concerns about the bill is astounding. Thanks in part to the Commission's intervention, the amendment was dropped, and charities face being caught up by a truly dreadful piece of legislation.
In effect, the Commission’s letter asks for it to be divested of one of its core responsibilities- to ensure that charities remain non-party political in their campaigning and advocacy work. It’s certainly true that the Commission has been hit by severe budget cuts which have put it under pressure. Its intervention might well reflect genuine concerns for the future. But what use is a regulator that doesn’t want to regulate? I’d suggest that the Commission should be extremely cautious about implying that it can no longer carry out its core functions. Furthermore, the Commission’s intervention in a policy debate of this nature is highly unusual. As Jay Kennedy of the Directory of Social Change commented, “the Commission’s job is to apply the law, not make it.”
Although the sector has successfully argued for amendments to some of the bill's worst proposals, there should be no doubt that the bill as it currently stands will have a chilling impact on the sector's freedom to campaign on behalf of those is serves. Last week we secured movement on the inclusion of staff costs in spending limits, and next week we will be seeking progress on the issue of constituency spending limits. Acevo and others will continue to work hard to improve the bill as it returns to the House of Commons. But as charities await MPs’ verdict on the bill, they could be forgiven for asking: whose side is our regulator on?
Alex Massey (@ADSMassey) is a senior policy officer at Acevo
