Lord Grade, chair of the Fundraising Regulator, which is funded by a voluntary levy on charities, has said he is "not particularly in favour of" taking money out of the charity sector to pay for regulation.
Grade was not speaking about funding of his own organisation, but about proposals for a levy to fund additional work by the Charity Commission.
The proposed levy for the Commission would be similar to that run by the Fundraising Regulator, although it would aim to raise around £10m - five times as much as the Fundraising Regulator targeted - and would have statutory force.
He made his comments during a House of Lords debate on Stronger charities for a stronger society, a report produced last year by a Lords committee.
“I am not particularly in favour of charities paying for the regulator or of taking money out of the charitable sector in order to pay for regulation,” he said. “The government have huge expectations of this statutory body and should make urgent arrangements to have a settlement with it that reflects the responsibility that it has.”
He said the funding of the Commission was "an urgent matter" and that expectations of the regulator “go way beyond its resources”.
“Talk to any charity and it will always say that it has great respect for the Charity Commission, but that it takes ages to get an answer from it,” he said.
But he said more funding should not come from charities themselves.
Grade also called on government to encourage fundraising platforms to be “more transparent”.
The Fundraising Regulator, which is not a statutory body, receives no government funding and relies on charities paying an annual levy. Its approach to persuading charities to pay their share has been questioned a number of times and the Fundraising Regulator intitially struggled to raise enough money.
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