Charities Bill [HL]

I go back to when I was chairman of a local education authority of a large rural   area of Scotland, which had a population of 400,000 and where there were six fee-paying schools. All those schools contributed enormously to the local community. As the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, suggested, it was to the community in general, not specifically to poor people necessarily. They did it through bursaries, through the sharing of premises and many other things. I understand that colleagues in Scotland of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, inserted an amendment in the Charities Act in Scotland which said precisely this. Those schools which gave most to the local community are saying that they will now find it very difficult indeed to do so. They do it because they charge fees at a certain level. Parents are willing to pay slightly higher fees in order that such local benefits should be provided. They like the idea. People in Scotland are very community-minded and they want this. However, I understand that this is regarded as enormously damaging—particularly in one of the schools in the area where I was chairman of the local education authority. I do not think that the Liberal Democrats have the best idea here. It sounds a very modest amendment, but I do not think that it is. The argument could be used, ““Your fees are too high. You can’t be a charity because you are not doing a proportionate amount in the community””. This is a balance that a school has to strike. I understand the feeling of the noble Lord, Lord   Campbell-Savours, that charity is the wrong approach in relation to a fee-paying school. However, it is something that the law has done and an arrangement that is made. It seems to me that this balance is crucial. I am sorry that we go on talking about Eton. I know that those on the other side have a huge prejudice against what is, in the experience of those who have been there, one of the best and most innovative schools in the country. I am not particularly wedded to the concept of these schools being a charity, but that is the way it is. Having discussed it with my friends in Scotland and although I do not know the wording there—I am therefore perhaps speaking somewhat off the top of my head, which one should never do with a lawyer—the general concept is contained within the Act in Scotland and, in the area where I live, is regarded as considerably damaging.