My Lords, perhaps it because it is the end of a long day or because I had a spat with the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, but I feel slightly scratchy about these two amendments and I feel bad about feeling scratchy about them because the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, has sat patiently through a couple of days of our debates. But I do not find myself happy with what is being proposed.
If we take new Section 292C and what the trustees of a charity must do,
“before exercising a power to make a social investment”,
they must consider,
“whether in all the circumstances any advice … ought to be obtained”.
Having done that, they need to obtain and consider the advice they think ought to be obtained. Thirdly, they must satisfy themselves that it is in the interests of the charity to make the social investment. That seems to me to be about as simple, as dutiful and as clear as could be. If we are not careful, we will constrain trustees further and put them in a position where they say, “Ought we to be doing more?”. That absolutely lays it on the line: do you need to take advice? Have you taken the advice that you decided you needed to take, and does it all match up with your charity’s objectives?
I can live with Amendment 19, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, but, as she said, any good charity would make sure that the beneficiaries were involved and it would take the stakeholder beneficiaries with it. Because I am a minimalist on these things, I do not think that it is necessary to put this into statute. Good charity trustees will do it anyway.
Amendment 20 is a different matter. I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, has said about the social return on investment; there is a lot of work to be done on that. I accept what he says about suitability, knowing your customer and so on, but to suggest that social investment has to be undertaken in the same form as that undertaken in the regulated financial markets is actually to shoot the whole thing straight in the head. The whole purpose of social investment is that it is different: not better or worse, but different. To try to force social investment into the pattern of regulation that is available for financial investments is to hobble and cripple it.