"Charities badly need the social investment market to get off the ground and at the moment that’s incredibly difficult," said Anne-Marie Piper, charity partner at Farrer & Co, speaking at the Civil Society Question Time debate in Westminster yesterday.

She continued, "The legal structures are not really geared up for it and there a lot of problems that I and other charity lawyers would like to see addressed."

Piper added, "There are a lot of hard times out there at the moment" and "a lot of charities are finding themselves in difficulties, forced mergers, sadly insolvencies too, cutbacks, redundancy programmes – and there’s no immediate sign that’s going to change."

Piper was also underwhelmed by the recent consolidation of charity legislation via the Charities Act 2011: "Having legislation consolidated is always a good idea but there’s an awful lot of paperwork generated as a result of it and at the moment charities need to be spending less money with lawyers rather than more."

Watch Andrew Hind's interview with Piper here: