My Lords, I thank my noble friend and other noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. The Minister is right that this is an important issue to discuss. I disagree only with his conclusion, as it seems to me that he has endorsed the amendment—he agrees with every word in it and his only argument against it seems to be that it should be not in law but in 31 pages of Charity Commission guidelines. That is exactly the problem for trustees. However well written 31 pages of guidance are, it is not a great comfort blanket to trustees. I take a different view, which is that a clear statement that trustees can read is a much better way of ensuring that they know the law.
The Minister and I are as one on the content; the law as it stands is fine and we are both content with it. The issue is that the transparency Act reads differently and is constraining. The Minister was not quite right to say that the position was the same in the previous election, because in that election only printed documents were covered and it is easy to see whether they support a particular party. The range of activities now covered includes meetings, press conferences and possibly hustings. Indeed, the church raised the issue of hustings with the Minister at the time, as a number of churches had traditionally had hustings. It is interesting to note how many fewer hustings there were this year, owing to the fact that the definition of the sort of activities that would be covered was expanded so much. The Minister has not quite got the descriptor right in saying that the position was the same as before. I was also sorry that the Minister did not give us a slightly more thoughtful response to the point made by my noble friend Lord
Lea. Perhaps he will consult the Charity Commission because clearly some important issues were raised and I hope he will follow them up.
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The noble Lord, Lord Leigh, and I agree on other issues. I think he said he has children who do not like birds. If I am right that he has children, if he takes them to any park or open area he will see that the RSPB does some extraordinary work; it does not just lobby. I was on Richmond Hill recently and saw a lot of the safeguarding that it was putting in there for birds. I am sure he did not mean to say that it only lobbies because it certainly does not and is out and about in a number of woods putting up special nesting boxes and all sorts of things to help preserve birds.
The examples that my noble friends Lady Pitkeathley and Lord Judd gave are important ones but the question is: would chief executives, which both of them have been, find as ready a response from their trustees today to do that sort of work, given the transparency of lobbying Act? That is why we will look again at whether this should be written in law because the law changed this year. Had it not, we would not have needed to bring forward this amendment. It is because one bit has changed that we feel the balance is not there. But for the moment, we will consider the wording of that and how we might take this forward. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.