Charities (Pre-consolidation Amendments) Order 2011

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for the way in which she gave a tour d’horizon of this statutory instrument. As she rightly says, this is a prelude to the consolidation Bill, which starts in this House next Thursday, although I do not think that anyone will be there—I notice that the Commons is not sitting on that day. A very important aspect of the debates on the Charities Bill that led to the Charities Act 2006 was that we were to have a consolidation measure. I was, I think, foremost in urging that and in getting the Government to put it into the Bill so that we could be quite sure that it would happen. As my noble friend again so rightly says, the danger with our efforts here is that, while they might be just about comprehensible to the specialist lawyer, the Charity Commission, the parliamentary draftsmen and the civil servants involved, they are a closed book to everyone else. Given that 95 per cent of our charities have no paid staff, and that all trustees are volunteers, it is a very serious predicament. Although the consolidation measure is more than 300 pages, it will go some little way to making life a tad easier for those who are doing the job on the ground. I should like to refer to two aspects of this statutory instrument. Noble Lords may agree that there can be few pieces of legislation more sleep inducing than the Charities (Pre-consolidation Amendments) Order 2011. Indeed, so arcane is most of the language that you have to be a bit of an egg-head to plunge into its depths.