My Lords, it is excellent to address another of my noble friend Lord Hodgson’s issues—I will not call it a bugbear. Obviously I am sympathetic to the aim of wanting to simplify the legislation because in many senses less is more. My noble friend advocated the approach taken in his amendment in his statutory report on the Charities Act 2006. I hope I will be forgiven for reminding noble Lords of the Government’s response:
“In principle the Government supports the rationalisation of the appeal rights in Schedule 6 to the Charities Act 2011, provided it can be done in a way that does not … expose the Charity Commission to challenges where it decides not to intervene in a charity in keeping with its risk and proportionality framework (this is already capable of Judicial Review); or … create any significant new appeal rights that would add to the jurisdiction’s case-load”.
I believe that this was a sensible position to take. We must remember that the Charity Commission has limited resources. We would not want to expose the commission to challenges where it decides not to intervene in a charity in keeping with its risk and proportionality framework. As I have said, this is already capable of judicial review. Providing a right of appeal to the tribunal could result in an unmanageable workload of cases for the Charity Commission, diverting its resources to defending proceedings in the tribunal, many of which may be spurious or vexatious. Appeal rights in the event of the commission not making a particular decision would in effect enable others to direct the use of commission powers and resources, rather than it being left to the good sense of the commission to decide such matters for itself within the scope of its objectives, functions, processes and duties.
We consider that the balance is about right under Schedule 6 as it currently stands. There is a right of appeal against the opening of a statutory inquiry but no right of appeal if the commission decides, for whatever reason, not to open one. We do not want to overburden the tribunal with significant new rights of appeal that are likely to generate a large number of cases where none had previously existed.
I am not sure that everyone shares my noble friend Lord Hodgson’s viewpoint on the difficulty of interpreting Schedule 6 to the Charities Act 2011. There are some who are attracted to the structure of Schedule 6 and find it easy to navigate. It allows one to look up a particular provision and quickly see who can appeal and what decisions are available to the tribunal. It is not something that has been raised with the Government as causing particular difficulty, other than by my noble friend.
Most of the Bill is about giving the Charity Commission the tools it needs to do its job, so I hope my noble friend will understand that, although I approve of his eye for simplification, I am very reluctant to consider anything that could divert its resources from its core functions. I hope that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment on that basis.