Rob Wilson yesterday told politicians that giving the Charity Commission the power to disqualify people who have been given a police caution from being trustees was “appropriate”, as each case would be dealt with individually.
The minister for civil society was giving evidence, alongside his senior policy adviser Ben Harrison, to the Joint Committee on the Draft Protection of Charities Bill.
Other witnesses have previously raised concerns about the prospect of allowing the regulator to disqualify people with cautions but no conviction.
When asked whether or not he felt it was appropriate for the Charity Commission to be able to consider police cautions in the same way as convictions, the minister defended the proposed powers.
He said: “There may be situations where, for whatever reason, the police may choose to offer a caution rather than take something to a full case. So, because the public trust in charities is so important, that trust could be damaged if the Charity Commission was not shown to have taken some action.”
Wilson said each case would be looked at individually and that the Charity Commission would set a “pretty high bar” when it came to disqualifying a trustee.
Without an internal appeals system being drafted into the proposed bill, any disqualified trustees who felt they’d been unfairly dismissed would have to contest their case at the Charity Tribunal.
“If the individual disagrees with the Charity Commission’s view then they do have the right to appeal to a tribunal,” said Wilson in response to concerns from the Committee. “And that is an independent way of settling the issue.”
Despite conceding that an internal appeal and review system would be “a good idea in principle”, Wilson remained hesitant throughout to support the idea.
“There is a very real danger that the Charity Commission could be bogged down by these appeals, particularly during a period of big change,” he said.
“The Commission receives a huge number of enquiries and requests for assistance. Just to give some idea of the scale, the Commission received 48,274 questions by email, 88,822 phone calls and 9,681 letters last year. So you can understand the scale of what they have to deal with. It is a daunting challenge for any organisation to respond to that scale of enquiry.
“We just don’t want to add more unnecessary bureaucracy that would risk grinding the activities of the Commission to a halt. So I think that while in principle, [an internal appeals system] is an interesting idea, I think in practical terms, it would be a wrong thing to do at this moment in the Charity Commission’s development."
Individuals could also be disqualified retrospectively under the draft bill, Harrison said: “The Commission would argue the risks are the same whether or not they are [currently] serving as a trustee or not.”
The minister also said he supports a proposal, not currently contained in the bill, that people disqualified from trusteeship should also be prevented from taking on executive roles within charities.
Additional reporting by Emily Corfe
