Bradford Sue: Charities Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Bradford Sue: Charities Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:19948] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 I have to say on behalf of the Green Party that it is a real pity that we are seeing the Charities Bill come back to the House tonight for its second reading and all further stages under urgency. The community and voluntary sector has seen this bill as a really significant piece of legislation and I think it is unfortunate that we now have to deal with it in such haste. A complex bill such as this deserves the time and care needed for last-minute consultation and discussion especially during the Committee stage yet with such short notice it is virtually impossible to do that. I apologise in advance to the groups and individuals in the sector with whom I usually work for not having had the time to consult them on the final phase of the bill. 
In a way the fact that we are dealing with the bill with such unnecessary despatch in the House tonight typifies the whole unsatisfactory process on the bill from its conception to its delivery. The facts that the bill was conceived evidently in Treasury and was designed by the Ministry of Economic Development show just how out of touch the originating Minister or Ministers were with the realities of the community sector in this country today. The officials who worked with us on the Social Services Committee had a really tough job on all fronts and I have a lot of sympathy for them. They should never have been put into such a position in the first place. A bill that deals in such detail with issues of critical importance to all types of community and voluntary sector groups should have been all along within the purview of a ministry with substantial experience of the sector with the most obvious examples of such ministries being the Ministry of Social Development or the Department of Internal Affairs. The bill should not have been the responsibility of a ministry far more accustomed to working with “for profit” business than with the vast diversity that comprises the world of non-governmental organisations. 
The Government has very belatedly decided to hand the Charities Commission over to the Department of Internal Affairs with input from the Office for the Community and Voluntary Sector. That is a good step forward but it should have happened right at the start. A lot of the problems in the gestation of this legislation could have been avoided if the people who put it together had had the kind of substantial and hard-won experience of working with community groups that is needed when dealing with a whole series of complicated and sensitive issues. And any public servants with decent experience of working in this area would have known that the bottom line in terms of getting buy-in and acceptance would be widespread and detailed consultation locally and regionally as well as nationally rather than reliance on a limited and carefully selected task force to do the job for them. The history of this bill through Parliament exemplifies why and how even a well-meaning Labour Government still has a long way to go in terms of understanding not only how best to work with the third sector but also of understanding the need for the Government to treat all parts of the sector with the respect of an equal towards an equal rather than acting as a superior towards an inferior. 
I now turn to some of the details of the bill itself. I sat on the select committee which received many hundreds of submissions that critiqued in fine-tuned detail many many aspects of the legislation as drafted. I was as impressed as ever with the integrity and passion of community sector submitters in all their variety and with the fact that right across the spectrum people were almost universally committed to either major reform of the bill or throwing it out and starting again. I do not accept the comments made by several previous speakers including our committee chair Georgina Beyer that the eight points put forward to the submitters by the chair were the only ones they were concerned about. In fact there were hundreds of points of concern many of which were not touched on in the list of eight that was presented to the submitters. I am sorry that the Labour and United Future members of the committee chose to take the path of least resistance and to make a series of hodgepodge reforms of the bill rather than having the clarity of vision to actually throw it out and start from scratch learning from the overseas experience readily available to us and also utilising far more comprehensively the wisdom of all the groups that care about these things. 
There have been improvements made to the bill and I am glad of that. Some pleas from the sector were listened to and heard. We are pleased for example to see changes that mean compliance costs have been reduced that the prohibition on indemnifying officers has been removed—a totally ridiculous provision—that umbrella groups can register all their constituent bodies that the blanket disqualification of officers with certain convictions has been taken out and that the absurd requirement to have the group’s registration number on all written communication is gone. However serious concerns remain. For example we still have big issues around the definitions of “charity” “charitable purpose” and “public benefit”. The select committee in its wisdom decided not to expand or update the definition of “charitable purpose” which the Green Party believes is a missed opportunity to update a concept rooted in the law of early 17th century England. We are indeed truly immured in our colonial past. 
We also continue to have queries about advocacy and about the extent to which the advocacy function of community organisations can and should be regulated through the mechanism of this bill and of the Charities Commission once it is established. The Government has attempted to improve the bill by the addition of a provision to clarify that an organisation with so-called non-charitable secondary purposes such as advocacy will be allowed to register with the commission if its advocacy is in support of the charitable primary purpose. However I am still really apprehensive about the extent to which that allows the State to define what is and is not acceptable to itself as advocacy and what exactly is and is not charitable. That takes us back to the original definition problem. In the argument around advocacy I also remain as concerned as I always was right from the start that some groups with substantial advocacy functions will not even bother to try to obtain charitable status and the fact that they do not have it will have a downstream negative impact on their ability to gain funding. Funders will be looking for that registration number even if it is on fewer bits of paper and if a group does not have that number I fear the consequences. It will be far easier for funders just to say that if there is no number they will provide no money. 
Another area of disquiet for us even in the amended bill lies in the fact that although very limited appeal rights have been established there will still be an inability to develop common law that relates to the sector because those rights are so restricted. And from a more overarching point of view I remain completely unconvinced that this bill will actually or adequately address the need to find ways to expose and extinguish bogus and corrupt activities within the not-for-profit sector. The Government talked a lot at times about that being the trigger for the development of the bill—as Mr Hide did earlier tonight as well. But in fact I do not think that this bill will make much difference at all if any in that area. The worst levels of corruption and theft in the sector happen because some people are simply determined criminals and I do not see how the bill will aid in stopping that any more than the State sector legislation that we recently passed can in itself stop determined theft by public servants from Government departments. At another level the best way to deal with internal fraud abuse and other problems such as that in the community sector is actually through things such as good employment practices and the willingness of groups for example not to give false or misleading references for employees who move on to another organisation having left a trail of disaster behind them. Again that is not something that the bill can hope to solve. The answers lie in more willingness to share information when necessary between groups and in not leaving others to carry the can for a poor employment decision or for someone feeling sorry for a desperate job applicant. 
Beyond the amendments made during the select committee process the Government has also tabled further extensive changes to the bill this week. Those changes are mostly minor and beneficial in nature but none of them demonstrates the kind of major improvement that might have led the Green Party to change its position on this bill. We are voting against the Charities Bill tonight because we do not have confidence in the process by which it has been developed and because we do not think the amendments made by the Government go far enough towards solving the problems that the bill creates. We also lament the lost opportunity here. If the Government had had the patience to start the process over again and had worked cooperatively with the sector to draft a really exciting and positive bill Labour would have had our enthusiastic support from beginning to end. As it is this bill leaves a sour taste that all the minor amendments in the world will not fix.