A suggestion by Conservative peer Virginia Bottomley that the Charity Commission should review the last four years of applications by charities to pay their trustees found favour with the regulator’s chair William Shawcross yesterday.
Bottomley attended the meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Civil Society where Shawcross delivered an update on the Charity Commission. During questions afterwards, she said she was “very delighted” Shawcross had taken over as chair, because he would “bring a fresh mind to some of these issues we have chewed over for too long”.
She then asked him what the regulator’s position was on payment of trustees, “when the chairman of the National Trust is required to do three days a week unpaid, and no negotiating, but the Wellcome Trust can pay each of its trustees something like £70,000 and most of them get a socking great grant for their own institution as well”.
Shawcross replied that the Commission didn’t really have a position on the matter, preferring to leave it to charities to make their own decisions about whether paying trustees was appropriate for them.
He said the regulator took the view that there wasn’t much demand from the sector to allow trustee remuneration.
But Bottomley appeared to disbelieve this, and told him: “I suggest you review the last four years of applications.”
Shawcross then responded: “That’s a good idea, we should look at that.”
Bottomley: too many charities are just lonely hearts clubs
Bottomley, who was Health Secretary in John Major's government, also commented that “most charities should be time-limited and closed down”.
In the business world, she said, organisations naturally tend to converge in order to cut costs and maximise profits, but in the voluntary sector this doesn’t happen because there are no equivalent market forces. As a result, “too many charities are just lonely hearts clubs in aid of some dying cause”, and should be closed.
“All these people who set up charities, for orphans in India for instance…after ten years I wish they would just call it a day and join in with another one. People are just burning the flame of the past.
“They would do so much better to shut down,” she said.
