That is absolutely right. The noble Baroness did say that, but her amendment says, “All fundraising charities”. I know she slightly shifted the ground in the middle of her speech, and I accept that.
What, then, is the problem? There is reluctance in the sector to accept that every problem is everybody’s problem. There is a tendency to push the pea round the plate and to blame another sector, so the chuggers in the street blame the telephone collectors, who blame the direct mail people, and so on. They say, “It’s not our problem—it’s somebody else’s”. There is also reputational pride in individual charities: “We don’t do that sort of thing—other people do that”. Therefore there is a real need for the sector to understand that it is judged by the weakest link, and unless it takes steps to remedy it, the sorts of results the noble Baroness talked about will occur.
Secondly, there is a failure to see that the alphabet soup of regulatory bodies—the IoF, FRSB, the PFRA and the Charity Retail Association—is confusing to the public. They often appear to be acting quite separately; the FRSB’s report on Mrs Cooke said:
“Fundamentally, the FRSB Board believes that the IOF Code must be strengthened”,
as if they are completely separate organisations, way away from each other. It seems much neater to collaborate and work closely together.
There are three things that we should encourage the sector to do. The public need a single point of entry into the system—whether they wish to approach it by phone, by email or by letter—by which complaints or concerns can be addressed. All the bodies involved in
charity fundraising regulation and all charities need to pool their sovereignty into a single charity self-regulating organisation, called, say, the charity fundraising authority. That would be tasked with producing national guidelines and model rules with which local authorities should comply. If they do not comply they should explain why they are not complying. They should also provide internal best practice rules for fundraising, in particular about things like passing on names of donors to other charities, because the Olive Cooke case was about the pressure built up by repeated approaches from charities. The Government need to oversee this, either directly or through the Charity Commission.
This will be a challenge to the sector, which has not found it easy to accept change and responsibility for one another. I accept and agree that the situation is not satisfactory and action needs to be taken, but I wish good luck to whoever takes it on and suggest that they pack a tin hat.