My Lords, I am in a cleft stick; I have indeed got 15 minutes on the Clock, but my noble friend will accept that I have been interrupted five times now, which takes a wee bit out of one’s available argument time. I will keep this as short as I can. It is unfortunate—let us put it that way—that we have a letter at the 59th minute of the 11th hour which is, at best, unclear.
I know that a number of my colleagues have different points to make. It has been said, time and again, that there should be a level playing field between non-charitable NGOs and charitable NGOs. Well, yes and no. First, we have a whole lot of improvements for the non-charity NGOs. Secondly, however, the reason we persist in seeking this important change is precisely because charities are basically different in kind, not just because they have a separate branch of law and a separate regulator.
The bureaucratic consequences for charities having to meet the demands of two regulators will be significant. Although the thresholds have been raised, which is important, the number of charities that will still be swept up by this legislation is far greater than many Members of this House may think. It will be many
thousands. It does not take a great deal to rack up £20,000 if you are a charity with a few branches around the country.
Secondly, given that the vast majority of charities have no paid staff, the people who will have to implement this complex bureaucratic stuff are not professionals but volunteers. Simply tooling up a charity that is wholly run by volunteers to cope with this new regime and all that it means will be a massive and demoralising task for so many of them. Frankly, volunteers do not want to spend their precious hours getting to understand the legislation that we are in the process of putting on the statute book and then trying to get to grips with it in practical terms, filling in the forms and all the rest of it. The consequences, I put it to the House, will still be huge, despite the number of charities that are, on the face of it, taken out of the purview of these provisions by the raising of thresholds and the rest of it. I cannot emphasise that too strongly.
Let us suppose that you are a trustee of a charity. You will not have a paid chief executive, so it may be a senior volunteer who comes to you and says, “Look, Mr Phillips, we have this new legislation. We do not think we are touched by it because we do not think we will reach the threshold, but what do you want us to do?”. I am afraid an awful lot of trustees will say—