Charities Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 22:"Page 9, line 17, at end insert—" ““(   )   The Lord Chancellor may, after such consultations as he shall think fit, establish a suitors’ fund to widen access to the Tribunal by assisting with payment of applicants’ costs and make rules for the purpose.”” The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 22 would insert in the 1993 Act via Clause 8 a permissive power on the part of the Lord Chancellor, after consultation, to establish a suitors’ fund. The purpose would be to widen access to the Charity Appeal Tribunal by assisting with the payment of applicants’ costs. The amendment would provide that the Lord Chancellor may make rules for the purpose in accordance with the provisions already in Clause 8. Some, and I am among them, think that the creation of the Charity Appeal Tribunal is arguably the most important single innovation in this measure. But it will be stillborn unless access to it is enabled. Access to the High Court, currently the only remedy outside the Charity Commission for an aggrieved would-be charity or charity, is not an accessible remedy. It has been a serious blot on the development of the common law definition of charity, for example, that the cost of access to the High Court being what it is, no one can afford to go there. I say no one—you may get one case every year or two, if you are lucky. It is no accident that the National Council for Voluntary Organisations has made this one of its two most important issues for amendment at this stage of the Bill. It is as much in touch with the voluntary sector in all its parts, particularly the smaller elements, as any organisation in the country. It knows as well as I do from long practice that unless there is some costs provision to enable the smaller charities in particular to have access, the tribunal will be seriously under-used, as against the need to use it and our hopes for it. Without some provision for assistance with legal fees—the amendment does not prescribe what that assistance might be or how it might be delivered—the tribunal will not achieve the purpose intended for it. It may be said that this will discourage lawyers making of the Charity Appeal Tribunal the sort of complex mess that some would say the employment tribunal has become and that if you keep the lawyers out, you keep common sense in. I dearly wish that were so, but charity law is as complex an area of law as any in our legal system. The issues that will go to the tribunal will, in the majority of cases, need lawyers to enable the applicant to have a chance of succeeding against the commission, because that is effectively what it will be. The commission will of course have access to its own legal staff; it can bring in and pay for outside barristerial help when it needs it. We will have unequal combat unless some provision is made for worthy cases where the applicant is unable to foot the bill. The Minister may say that this is a job for the Legal Services Commission. That is a long shot. Many of us have been saying for a long time that the Legal Services Commission should be doing a great deal more than it is vis-à-vis legal aid. I am afraid that legal aid is the great casualty of our welfare state. This is the place at least to have a longstop so that if the Government do not engage the Legal Services Commission in providing legal aid for these tribunal cases—and I do not think that they will because legal aid is not currently available for any charity case—then the Lord Chancellor can consult and establish a suitors’ fund which will at least improve access. I would never expect it to be universal; I would always expect it to be of limited scope. But I cannot emphasise too strongly that without real access to it, the Charity Appeal Tribunal, which has huge merit, will be stillborn. With those sentiments in mind, I beg to move.