The Charity Commission’s desire for new powers to automatically prevent more ex-offenders from being charity trustees will not contravene the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, Charity Commission chair William Shawcross has promised.
The Commission has asked Parliament for new powers to ban people from being trustees and as part of this, wants to expand the list of convictions that are covered by the powers.
Shawcross is particularly keen that people convicted of terror offences are not able to join charity boards.
Last week at the Charity Law Association conference, a delegate in the audience warned that automatically disqualifying a wider range of conviction types risked infringing the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.
She said that a number of reformed drug dealers and gang members, for instance, play very valuable roles within charities and asked Shawcross for reassurance that any changes to the disqualification powers would only be made after research and consultation.
Shawcross assured her that the Commission “would not do anything against the rehabilitation of offenders legislation”, but added: “I do think it is remarkable that you can be convicted of a terrorist offence and still become a trustee.”
However, he also said that the new powers of disqualification were “some way off”. Most of the regulatory changes requested by the Commission are unlikely to be implemented until 2018 or so, after the Law Commission review next year and publication of a new bill incorporating its recommendations makes its way through Parliament.
OSCR calls for powers to remove charities from its register
The charity regulatory in Scotland has also recently called for new powers. The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) has said it should be able to remove charities that persistently fail to file financial documents and has called for a power to direct trustees to take action where it thinks charitable funds have been misapplied.
OSCR has also said it wants charities registered with it to have a link to Scotland.
