My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. I welcome the fact that he joined the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley in supporting the need for that.
It is important that charities are as open and transparent as possible. There have been examples of this involving charities: one within the remit of the Charities Commission—after a “Panorama” investigation when some of Comic Relief’s investments were revealed, it was somewhat embarrassed and rowed back from them; and one outside the Charity Commission’s remit—as noble Lords may remember, when it was discovered that the Church of England was investing in Wonga, that was pretty hastily stepped back from. At this stage we do not know what other charities may or may not have in their investment portfolios, and I think that that is to be regretted. People giving money to charities have a right to know not just that the money is going to the charity’s stated purposes but how the money that they give could be used for investment, whether for social investments or traditional investments.
For that reason, I find it hard to take on board the Minister’s comment that we do not want to overburden charities; of course we do not, but we want things to be done properly. We are going into an area where charities have not previously been, and social investments are going to take some time to become widely accepted. During that period, charities being as open as possible and saying exactly who they were investing in would help with the public identification of social investments as an aspect of charity life that they were comfortable with when making their investments. So I do not find it a convincing argument on the Minister’s part that the burden placed on charities would be a reason for not accepting these amendments.
On the question of “from time to time”, I was not quick enough on my feet and the Minister had moved on to something else before I could ask him about it. The phrase “from time to time” may be a legal term,
but I still do not know what it means. How long should the Charity Commission wait before it says to a charity, “It’s now been five, 10 or even 15 years and you’ve never yet reviewed your social investment”? There has to be some cut-off point, whether that be decided by the size of the charity, the field in which it is involved or whatever. Surely charities have to have some idea and it cannot just be a case of saying, “Well, this has been a bit of a quiet year, so let’s just put out a review”—or, even worse, “We’ve had a busy year, so let’s not put out a review”, which would perhaps be open to misinterpretation.
So there is a looseness to this part of the Bill that I do not think the charities themselves will particularly welcome. Nevertheless, I have heard what the Minister has said. There are issues here that we could return to on Report, but for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.