Copeland Gordon: Charities Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Copeland Gordon: Charities Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:19964] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I want to make a brief comment first of all on the amendment from Dail Jones. He asked which submitter to the Social Services Committee had asked for those words to be dropped from the Charities Bill. 
I can tell him that one of the submitters was the Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society a charitable trust. It made the very sound point that in fact one of the things it does in terms of rehabilitating prisoners is to encourage them to give something back to the community by becoming involved in a charity. I would also point out to Dail Jones that his amendment would exclude not only Sue Bradford but also Nelson Mandela from being an officer of a charity. I for one would be very proud to have him as an officer of a charity with which I was involved. 
I would like though to speak for a moment about clause 56 a very long new clause that has been inserted into the bill. Rodney Hide spoke a little while ago about charitable trusts as if it was simply the case that all charities are also charitable trusts. But that is not the case. In fact one of the unique features about this bill and about the charitable sector is that charities come in many different shapes and sizes. Yes we do have charitable trusts under the Charitable Trusts Act but we also have incorporated societies under the Incorporated Societies Act. We have companies under the Companies Act and we have unregistered associations of people—Catholic parishes would be an example of that. We have charities that are set up under their own special Acts of Parliament such as the Anglican and Catholic bishops’ empowering Acts. We have charities that take the form of partnerships and we have many thousands of charities that come into existence through the operation of wills. It is the sheer bewildering variety of shapes and sizes of charities that makes it quite difficult to write law that states exactly how they should be registered exactly how they should be monitored and exactly how they should submit returns. 
The very innovative way of cutting through that great Gordian knot was clause 56 “Commission may grant exemptions”. Tonight I want to really commend the officials who drafted that very extensive clause because it essentially aims to equip the Charities Commission with a whole tool-box of exemptions that will enable it to fit the way it regulates a charity to the actual legal form and circumstances of that charity. Also in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 357 there is a small amendment to clause 56 which adds to the list of matters on which the commission can grant exemptions. It adds clause 16 of the bill to the list. If we go to clause 16 we find that it is in fact the registration clause. I think that completes as I said before some quite elegant legal drafting so that in all those different circumstances the commission will be able to be flexible with the aim of doing a good job of fostering charities in this country as it is bound to do and of ensuring that compliance costs are minimised. 
I really commend those provisions to the Committee.