Charities Bill [HL]

We have certainly had a   wide-ranging debate on this amendment, with support for the proposal made by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, coming from interesting quarters. The Bill requires, through Clause 4, the Charity Commission to publish guidance on the operation of the public benefit requirement. The public benefit requirement is the requirement that a purpose falling within the list in Clause 2(2) must be for the public benefit if it is to qualify as a charitable purpose. The   commission has published a draft document, Public Benefit: The Charity Commission’s Approach, to illustrate how it would be likely, once the Bill is enacted, to go about its task of ensuring that charities meet the   public benefit test requirement. That document contains a section entitled ““Public Benefit—the Legal Principles””, which describes the legal underpinning for that task. In that section, the commission makes it clear that it will apply the general, overarching principles derived in ““Legal Principles”” to carry out public benefit checks on new and existing charities. It is obviously of paramount importance that the commission should be able to carry out effective checks on the public benefit of charities, both on new organisations applying to register as charities and to existing registered charities. Indeed, the integrity of the charity, and thus public confidence in charities, would be put at risk if the regulator was not able to do that because the Bill failed to provide it with an adequate legal platform.