My Lords, I am intrigued by the amendment. My response to it, on the basis of about 30 years of working with trustees of charities, many of which were unincorporated associations—some were not; some were incorporated—is that the prospect of losing one’s house as a consequence of a decision one made when acting as a trustee was one of the most sobering responsibilities of trusteeship. Indeed, were Lord Phillips with us today, he would explain how, throughout the history of charity law, even though charities have become much more complex as the areas in which they operate have become much more complicated, we have maintained the entity of an unincorporated association precisely to preserve the importance of trusteeship. That said, in my experience, trustees of unincorporated associations were always desperate either to try to get liability insurance, if they possibly could, or to incorporate, precisely to minimise their own risk.
We have kept unincorporated associations because they have an importance in the field of charity. It is important that we still have organisations in which individuals come together and are willing to put their own assets on the line in order to do good and to be judged as such. As with many of the arguments that I have listened to this afternoon, my response is that if there is a new body of evidence that this measure is required because a new form of abuse is going on, I am willing to look at it. However, I take issue with the noble Baroness, Lady Deech: this is not a simple tidying-up of a loophole but a rather large fundamental change to the law of trusteeship with regard to charities. She may be right and there may be a good reason why we should do that, but I would prefer to see a bit more than one briefing from a think tank—if that is not to damn today’s discussion—to say that this is necessary. It is actually a very big transformation of the way in which we organise charities.
5.15 pm