Charities Bill [HL]

The noble Lord, Lord   Swinfen, has made a strong case for substantial reform to enable charities in rare cases to obtain the compensation to which, on any normal criteria, they are entitled. I believe that the present arrangements are highly defective, especially with the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s inability to intervene unless High Court remedies have been exhausted. As I endeavoured to persuade the Government in an amendment that I moved recently, charities are extraordinarily loath to pursue remedies through the courts, not only because lawyers’ fees are these days extremely high and demanding but because most boards of trustees feel that even when they have suffered a wrong, to risk substantial charity funds in pursuit of it is somehow against the spirit of their whole enterprise. I am entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, and congratulate him on his persistence in this matter. He has ploughed quite a lonely furrow. As I have always said, I am not castigating the Charity Commission, which on the whole does a very good job in extremely difficult circumstances. But the fact that that is the case is no mandate whatever for present arrangements, which leave charities, in rare cases, with no effective remedy and very substantial losses. I shall listen with great interest to the remarks of the Minister in response to the amendment. It quite likely does not fit the Bill as well as one might like—and I can think of a number of aspects of it that I would wish to see changed. However, I hope that he will not dwell upon the inadequacies of the drafting but, rather, address himself to the underlying defect which really does need to be addressed—by the award of proper and not just consolatory compensation.