The Charity Commission has no regulatory concerns about the Institute of Economic Affairs. Really?

(A lightly edited version of this blog appeared in Civil Society News on 3 April 2024)

The Charity Commission received a complaint supported by The Good Law Project (GLP), in the names of three MPs and a parliamentary candidate from four political parties, and me, about the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), whose charitable purpose is the advancement of education. The complaint was closely argued and concluded that the IEA had a partly political purpose (which no charity may have), did not abide by the Charity Commission’s guidance about the nature of charitable education, and did not ensure sufficient distance between the charity and its non-charitable connected bodies.

With lightning speed, the Charity Commission replied to say that they had no regulatory concerns and were not going to raise any of these issues with the IEA.

This followed a speech by the Commission’s Chair to the effect that political think tanks are a good thing for our democracy, and that therefore the Commission would only in rare instances consider intervening because of some politically inspired complaint. Here are the issues at stake.

Shortcut guide to the arguments

1. Is the IEA partly political in its purpose?

The Commission’s line is that the IEA’s philosophy in favouring freedom and free markets is a legitimate broad value base for research and educational publications, just as (say) the Institute for Fiscal Studies has a broad value base in more conventional or middle-of-the-road economics. The counter-argument is that the IEA has always explicitly aimed to help shrink the state in all possible dimensions as a core part of its endeavour; and it is actually part of its founding purpose. That is political, as defined by the Charity Commission, and according to charity law, a charity must have an exclusively charitable and non-political purpose.

2. Does the IEA advance education as defined by charity law and the Commission?

The Charity Commission’s guidance is clear that charitable education must not be promoting a controversial and pre-determined point of view. It must present different sides of an issue as appropriate in a reasonably neutral and balanced manner, that lets the reader draw his or her own conclusion. You may feel that doesn’t sound like the IEA?

Trying to justify its continuing charitable status, the Commission has argued, on the one hand, that the IEA’s free market ideology is “relatively uncontroversial”. (Hands up all those who agree?) On the other hand, the Commission has also argued that because one think tank may put forward a case from one point of view, and another will put forward the case from a different point of view, it’s OK for a particular charity not to be reasonably balanced and neutral etc after all. (Hands up all lawyers who think that’s a tenable position?) With such obviously contestable arguments, the Commission cannot reasonably regard the matter as already discussed and closed.

The counter arguments are obvious. Since the IEA is consistently one-sided and selective in its militant shrink-the-state advocacy, which is a highly controversial and pre-determined position, not least after the Liz Truss debacle, it should not qualify as advancing charitable education.

3. Are the charitable and non-charitable arms of IEA too closely intertwined?

The Good Law Practice also argues in detail in the complaint that the non-charitable connected bodies allied with the IEA are often run by the same cast of characters, so that, as at the end of Animal Farm, the pigs looked at the men and the men at the pigs and nobody could tell the difference any more. I do not know why the Commission thinks this doesn’t require any courteous answer or investigation.

Victory for Free Speech?

The IEA have hailed the Commission’s decision that there is nothing here to investigate as a victory for free speech. In fact, it has nothing to do with free speech, because the issue is not whether the IEA should exist and say whatever it likes. It is whether it should be a charity and, if so, abide by the Commission’s guidance. After all, there are plenty of non-charitable right-of-centre think tanks like the Centre for Policy Studies, the Adam Smith Institute, and the Taxpayers’ Alliance, which are not so different from the IEA and make their contribution in a free society. Should they be charities, on the grounds that they too are a good thing? And there are plenty of think tanks that really do advance education as defined by the Commission. They are not a homogenous group, and it is a principle of good regulation that each one should be treated on its individual merits, with its own objectives, history and track record – not just lumped together with all the others.

Fair and consistent regulation

Summarily dismissing all these concerns is not in my view going to do a great deal for the reputation of the Commission for fair, consistent and balanced regulation without fear or favour. The concerns and arguments are not going to go away.

As a former Board Member of the Charity Commission, I have serious reservations about the article By the current Chair of the Commission in The Times yesterday about “political think tanks”, for the following reasons:
https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/charity-commission-chair-rejects-calls-for-think-tanks-to-lose-charity-status.html?utm_source=New+Main+List+From+Live+CIVIL+Site&utm_campaign=f836c42bc6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_03_13_01_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-f836c42bc6-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Firstly, the headline “Yes, the political think tanks deserve their charitable status”, and the ensuing text, gloss over the crucial legal principle that no charity can have a political purpose (as defined by the Charity Commission). Their purpose must be exclusively charitable.

Secondly, you’d hardly notice from this article that several political think tanks are not charities, for the excellent reason that their purpose is partly political or that they don’t offer charitable education, but controversial and one-sided polemics instead.

Thirdly, it is wrong to treat think tanks as if they are all the same. Those that have the advancement of education as their charitable object are bound by the Commission’s guidance as to what charitable education must be – reasonably balanced, neutral, showing the different sides of an argument so that readers can draw their own conclusions. It is a serious matter if any charitable think tank supposedly advancing education breaches this guidance. Promoting controversial, predetermined positions is not charitable education.

Fourthly, it is not enough as the Chair states that think tanks should avoid inappropriate political activity or actually “endorsing” a political party. The core point is that they must not have even a partly political purpose. And even if they don’t, they must be reasonably even handed in their relationships with different political parties.

Fifthly, each think tank should be considered on its own individual merits, and generalisations about them as a class are dangerous. If any think tank appears to be in breach of charity law and the Commission’s own guidance, people are right to complain to the Commission, and should expect a rigorous response based on the law, not on some generalised assumption that a think tank is a good thing. Any charity must deserve to be a charity and abide by the rules of charity law and the Charity Commission. How weird that the Chair of the Commission should gloss so smoothly over these important considerations.

Sixthly, the Commission’s new strategy emphasises fairness. And it isn’t fair either to those political think tanks that are not charities, nor to the vast majority of educational think tanks that abide carefully by the rules, if there are one or two think tanks whose purpose is partly political and who make a mockery of the Commission’s own guidance on the true nature of charitable education.

In Part One we argued that the advice offered by the Chair of the Charity Commission, that charities have a responsibility to model a better type of public discourse, kind, considerate and respectful, was flawed, but that we should not throw the baby away with the bathwater. There may be no one-size-fits-all “correct” tone laid down from above (the bathwater) – but Trustees do need to bring to bear some important considerations in deciding on the best tone of their communications. What does this baby look like?

How civil? Issues for Trustees

The most important consideration is: what kind and tone of communication is in the best long-term interests of our beneficiaries? Within that are a host of subsidiary questions.

• How can we grow and diversify our supporter base?
• How will our public interventions affect our supporters and volunteers – will it unite or divide them?
• What constraints if any on our public pronouncements must we recognise from our funders (and potential funders)?
• How do we balance the need for our communications to be clear and simple with the need to convince policy-makers that we are serious and understand the complexities of real life?
• What do the agreed values of the charity imply for our mode of public discourse?
• Depending on our theory of change, who are our most important audiences, and how are they most effectively addressed?

The answers will be as varied as charities are.

As part of that consideration, there is the question of long-term credibility if you are the sort of charity that wants to persuade influential elements of public opinion and decision-makers. Exaggeration and oversimplified presentation of issues is tempting but can have a cost in loss of impact, reputation and some forms of support. Inaccuracy has a higher cost. Dishonesty a yet higher cost. In my opinion, these are potentially far more lethal to reputation and effectiveness than righteous anger or unkindness towards those harming our beneficiaries.

The Nolan Principles of Public Life

In fact, so far from the behaviour of charities needing to be unique and special, we are back to the Nolan principles that apply right across public life: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. If we want to be a respected, influential sector of society, we should strive to embody those principles that set the standard for all those participating in public life. In my view, they are key to long term reputation and effectiveness.

Participating in a race to the bottom?

There is another consideration for Trustees (and all of us) that is not unique to charities. It was summed up for me by the philosopher Sasha Mudd in Prospect Magazine (Jan/Feb 2024) while talking about getting warring parties to live up to just war principles: “When the other side are perceived as savages who show no restraint, it is easy to believe they are owed no restraint in return. The bloody free-for-all that follows from this logic is the ultimate abasement of our humanity and makes no one safer in the long run.” The same is surely true of the verbal wars in social media and some mainstream media and broadcasting: if you treat other human beings with whom you disagree as if they were sub-human, they are likely to do the same to you and the cumulative effect is polarisation and people shouting abuse at each other from one echo-chamber to another, with the Nolan principles ground into the dust. Each time we play the person rather than the ball, we risk contributing to this process.

That raises for Trustees the questions: as responsible participants in public life, should we have any part in that downward spiral? And is our cause likely to prosper in a world that is coarsening in that way – bearing in mind that the extremists, bigots and populists can always outgun their opponents if those are the chosen weapons?

Conclusion

So here’s how I would reframe the Charity Commission Chair’s advice as crucial guidelines to charities about their public discourse. There is an important core of truth in his plea for civility. These are the considerations Trustees should bring to bear on their public communications:

1. They must do and say whatever they believe is the very best long-term way of advancing their cause for the public benefit.
2. They should adhere to the Nolan principles of public life.
3. They must operate within charity law and CC9.
4. Within that framework they should not shy away from criticism of individuals, contention, passion and forceful rhetoric where the cause requires it.
5. They should treat and refer to opponents as human beings and avoid the downward spiral of personal abuse, chronic polarisation and abasement where few charitable causes – or other noble aspirations for humanity – are likely to thrive.

[An edited form of this article was first published by the Directory of Social Change, of which I am a Trustee.]

The Chair of the Charity Commission (Orlando Fraser), has repeatedly told charities that they have a responsibility to be respectful, considerate and kind in public debate, modelling a kind of discourse that is better than the public discourse of politicians and the media. He has linked this imperative to charities’ unique legal status, and to public expectations of charities. In my view and long experience of charity law and governance, this analysis is faulty, but he’s trying to say something important and we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The Bathwater: A Faulty Analysis

Problems with the Chair’s analysis include:

• There is no apparent legal or case law basis for the contention that charities must adopt a particular style of discourse.
• It confuses the authoritative guidance of CC9, which does not include such a responsibility and is explicit that there is no prohibition on being controversial or emotional.
• It is vague. What sort of “respect and kindness” should we show to those who are damaging our beneficiaries, eg enslaving and trafficking young women, torturing or neglecting our animals, blocking our rights of way, decrying or minimising the threat of global warming? Vagueness is the enemy of helpful regulation.
• The messages of campaigning charities throughout our history have frequently been heated, controversial and unpopular, and aroused bitter public opposition in the short term, even when they are regarded with hindsight as beneficial.
• There is no one-size-fits-all “correct” tone for charities, because they comprise a diverse ecosystem. Some are insider lobbyists, some are fighting injustices and amplifying the voice of the marginalised and oppressed. In the case of religious charities, some may be hellfire preachers like John Knox, others more academic like Richard Hooker. All are legitimate.
• Overreach. It is Trustees, not the Charity Commission, who should decide what is the proper tone for their communications.

Before we dig deeper into the positive case for civility, let us pinpoint two more questionable assumptions in the Chair’s advice.

A Hint of Elitism?

Firstly, the proposed superior model of discourse has for me a whiff of elitism. This is a world where, however hideous the injustice being perpetrated, the “correct” tone approximates to the courtesy of schooled members of a respectable class. The Chair has explained that if you meet your interlocutors half way, you have a better chance of persuading them. Sometimes, yes – but not always. Such discourse is miles away from the world of asserting human rights against oppression, saving the rainforests from rampant destruction, or empowering marginalised people to raise their voices. It may be that the top brass of the Charity Commission are not so familiar with those kinds of charities? Do they even still harbour an incomplete stereotype of “charity”, evident in the Stowell era, that it should be about bringing everyone together and making everyone feel better, rather than, in many cases, about solidarity, rights and, in many cases, necessary contention?

False ideas of charities’ special behaviour

Secondly, there is the assumption that charities’ behaviour should be special and superior to other parts of society. This one ran riot under Fraser’s predecessor, Tina Stowell. She maintained that the public expected charities to demonstrate the chronically ill-defined “spirit of charity” in the way they behaved, and a higher standard than others, but close analysis of the research sponsored by the Commission into public attitudes never evidenced this claim. In so far as they knew what is a charity and what isn’t (in truth, not far at all), the research sample expected charities to be honest and open in the use made of their money, and to spend the money on the cause, especially on the front line, but there was no different standard of behaviour here. Thankfully, the Stowell era is over, but Fraser similarly bases his argument for a superior model of discourse on the “specialness” of charities – their unique legal status, and public expectations. In fact, there is no apparent link between our legal status and a particular tone in public discourse, and public expectations of higher standards remain unevidenced.

I don’t believe it is realistic or even desirable to expect those working in charities to be better people or behave to higher standards than other people in public life. Whether in the national Civil Service and the NHS, local authorities, the police and armed services, the legal system, or charities, leaders should lead by example and do their best to conform to the Nolan principles of public life: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. There are plenty of things that charities must or should do in order to advance their charitable causes for the public benefit, but being better behaved and a cut above other public servants is not one of them.

Reframing the Question

If there is no one “correct” tone of discourse handed down from above for such a diverse sector, it is best to reframe the question: if we are Trustees, what are the considerations we should bring to bear as we decide the best tone of our communications? That’s what we shall consider in Part Two.

[This article is one of a series first published by the Directory of Social Change, of which I am a Trustee.]

Defining the slogan

“Play the ball, not the person” is an old sporting metaphor for charities to consider when entering the arena of public policy debate. What it is saying is, in broad terms, “by all means attack policies and decisions that damage your beneficiaries, but don’t attack the individual’s character and integrity”. But why not? Is that a valid distinction? Is it an old-fashioned and empty slogan?

Accusing Ministers of Lying

There was an interesting case study in some of these issues recently when major national nature charities including the RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts were enraged by policy decisions that broke previous environmental commitments made by Ministers. The charities accused Ministers of having lied when they gave the original commitments. There was a big public row focused on the RSPB, and the RSPB apologized for its offending tweet, whereas the Wildlife Trusts did not and their CEO Craig Bennett continues to highlight the accusation of lying in a pinned tweet.

When criticising a person is valid

Let’s first deal with valid reasons for a charity’s criticising an individual Minister or Ministers, (or anyone else who has damaged the cause), as vociferously as the case may warrant. It is right to hold an individual to account for that person’s decisions. It is right to complain if they have broken a commitment. It is right to show how their decisions or actions will affect the cause. It is right to share publicly the anger and frustration of members and supporters of the charity. It is right to make the offender feel the heat on behalf of your beneficiaries. In my view, there is no need always to be polite or kind (whatever the Charity Commission Chair may say). In those senses, criticising the individual may be perfectly valid.

But what are the risks involved in going a stage further and attacking the personal character and integrity of the Minister (or Ministers collectively) or other miscreant involved?

Risks of attacking someone’s personal integrity

Firstly, the focus and the argument shift away from the cause to the character and intent of the miscreant. As the RSPB discovered, that takes the focus onto much more difficult terrain for the charity – because, after all, there are many reasons why Ministers (and other politicians) break commitments (eg changed circumstances, new priorities, Treasury veto, etc) without necessarily involving personal dishonesty, which is hard to prove. As a result, in this case, the story became at least as much how and why the RSPB felt it had to apologise, rather than the damage to the cause.

Secondly, the focus shifts away from the expertise and authority of the charity, which is expert in matters to do with nature (or whatever its cause is) but is not so expert on the individual motivation and character of a Minister. How narrowly charities should define their area of knowledge and authority deserves a whole article in itself, but in general any charity that moves high profile public contributions away from that area is taking a risk with the value of its currency and its credibility.

Thirdly, there is the possible impact on supporters and donors. There is no one-size-fits-all answer, as charities are so varied, but attacking an individual’s character, eg by accusing them of lying, or cowardice, or arrogance, is moving away from the shared vision and enthusiasm for the cause that binds a diverse Trustee body, membership or donor base together, and you may upset and lose some who think you should be playing the ball. If you attack the person instead, there is also a risk that people will read an underlying personal or party-political antagonism into this, detracting from your message. And there is also the impact on your interlocutors in Government and beyond: are they more, or less, likely to engage fruitfully in future if you attack personal integrity?

Fourthly, there is a wider but important issue about the coarsening of public debate, in social media and some print and broadcast media. We all recognise the dangerous tendency to polarise into echo chambers who shout abuse at each other and listen only to the views each already holds. There, the currency of playing the person is the norm: rather than address the argument, the job is done if you dismiss the person as a venal paid puppet, a self-seeker, a liar or some other sort of contemptible sub-human who is not worth listening to. These are the weapons of choice of populists, propagandists, self-publicists and those who won’t listen to those who disagree.

Trustees have to ask themselves: if we buy into this tendency to play the person (defined as attacking personal worth, integrity and character), what are we doing to the nature of public debate in this country on which our cause may depend? If advancing our cause requires people listening to evidence-based argument, is a race to the bottom likely to be good for it?

Conclusion

Those are the serious risks that have to be set against the sometimes widespread and positive attention grabbed by an arresting personal accusation. In the end, it’s the Trustees who have to weigh all this up for their particular charity. If it helps them reflect on all these considerations, perhaps that old sporting metaphor has its uses after all.

The Tory Vicar and Labour Archdeacon

It was in the 1990s that, passing a Church of England vicarage on my daily route to the London Underground, I noticed that the vicar – who subsequently became a well-known public figure – had Conservative Party election posters in every window facing the street. Possibly as a premonition of my future spell as a member of the Charity Commission Board, I put a note through the door suggesting that this was inappropriate.

My argument was that the church should not be party political, that this was church (not merely private) property, used for church business as well as family, and that overt party-political bias was bound to risk subverting his ability to be the Father-in-God to parishioners who differ widely from each other on party political matters.

His response arrived in my own letter box. His defence was:

• The vicarage was his home and it was his human right to express his political views in the windows of his home;
• He had discussed it with his Churchwardens (two senior Trustees) who did not object, and he didn’t think it damaged his ministry
• The Archdeacon’s house had Labour Party election posters in its windows!!

What would the Charity Commission think?

In those days, churches were still exempt charities, at arm’s length from the Charity Commission, and it is interesting to speculate what view the Commission would take of such a case now that churches are now directly regulated by the Commission. I personally remain a hardliner: I think it’s wrong for what is clearly a charity’s property, used not just as a private dwelling, to be used to advertise for a particular political party.

The reality of self-censorship

If you agree to lead a charity, there are many things you have the human right to do or say, that you nevertheless choose not to do because it might run counter to charity law or otherwise damage the best interests of your charity.

Choosing what to say publicly

For example, what sort of personal views do you choose to share publicly, whether on party politics or other matters extraneous to your charitable cause, if you are a well-known charity leader?

This was one of the contested issues in debate about the Charity Commission’s recent guidance about the use of social media. On the one hand, surely one must have the right to express opinions as an individual on social media? On the other hand, social media are public, not private, and therefore if people know you are a charity leader, there should be self-discipline about saying things that might damage the perceived party-political impartiality of your charity. The same discipline extends to saying other things publicly that run counter to the official line of your charity; and even to controversial statements that are outside the area of your charity’s objects but could nevertheless get right up the noses of many supporters or potential donors or interlocutors in government. You don’t usually undo any resulting harm by protesting you were only speaking as an individual – because you were speaking publicly and are closely associated with the charity you lead.

Sticking to your charity’s area of expertise and authority?

Similarly, it is surely a good general guideline for a charity, and its leaders, to stick in any charity communications to its area of authority and expertise – though defining the limits of that expertise is sometimes not straightforward. The privileges of charity status and the gifts of supporters are given to pursue the cause, not to use the charity, or our status as a charity leader, as platform for views on other matters. But this can’t be an absolute prohibition:

• If you are closely associated with a charity, does that mean you shouldn’t accept an invitation to appear on BBC Question Time, since you will then be called to give your opinion on all sorts of matters outside your charity’s core expertise? Surely not. We want charity leaders to be seen as significant and well-informed players in public debate.
• But should I express an opinion in public as a citizen on the latest polarised controversy that has nothing to do with my charity? To be weighed up in each case, but often: no. What matters is to ask and answer honestly: what’s my motivation for saying this? What am I achieving by joining in? Will it impact well or badly on the charity I lead? Will it affect those who support the charity or whom the charity wants to influence? Is there a harmless way of saying it? And is there someone else I could run it across before pressing the Send button?

If it could damage the charity – keep it private

These lines aren’t easy to draw, and will vary according to the nature and circumstances of different charities. But one thing is clear, even if that Tory vicar and Labour Archdeacon wouldn’t agree. Those of us who lead charities, like prominent civil servants, policemen, judges, politicians and many others, must choose to exercise our human right to express our opinions, in any kind of public forum, selectively, carefully, and in our case

• in accordance with charity law and CC9, and
• in a way that doesn’t damage the charity we are privileged enough to serve.

Otherwise, keep it private.

[This article was written for the Directory of Social Change, of which I am a Trustee.]

It’s time for Trustees to be thinking hard about how they can best use the opportunity of a forthcoming period of electioneering to promote the interests of their beneficiaries.

Proud history of charity campaigning

Advancing charitable causes has always involved vigorous participation in our democratic, collective decision-making.

It is no coincidence that the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, following massive campaigns of research, lobbying, demonstrations, petitions to Parliament, boycotts and brilliant media advocacy, was enacted as one of the early fruits of the Great Reform Act of 1832: campaigns for what Parliament now defines as charitable causes went hand in hand with the extension of the franchise.

In subsequent decades, campaigns for charitable causes in the democratic space promoted far-reaching changes – in the licensing of liquor, the emancipation of different religious minorities, the improvement of conditions in factories and mines, in the rights of children, in the protection of animals from cruelty, in the rights and status of women, in the protection of the countryside, Commons and other green spaces, in the cleaning of the air we breathe – to name just a few. This is not just an add-on or exception: it is, historically, a fundamental part of what the charity sector contributes to society in every generation.

An Opportunity, not a threat

That is why a general election is not to be seen as a threat or danger to charities, but an important opportunity. It’s a great moment of truth and accountability as politicians, however eminent, must stand meekly on the stage awaiting the verdict of the people read out by the Returning Officer. For the good of society, charitable causes need to be a salient part of the lobbying, debating and testing that leads up to that moment and shapes what will follow.

Charities can be absolutely sure that if they vacate the democratic space, other interests will be lobbying like mad for what they want, and their beneficiaries could be the losers. This is the big chance to ask party candidates what they will do for the charitable cause, make it an issue, and then hold them to account.

This is all the more important at a time when the short-term political dogfight, triangulating electoral calculations and media attention are all likely to ignore many vital charitable causes. As usual, the voice and interests of poorer people, and those subject to disability, discrimination and stigma are likely to be side-lined. Even existential questions relating to climate change and the critical decline of nature might well be downplayed. Parties might prefer to be silent about the atrophy of the resources and status of most local authorities, so vital to so many charities. And the poor state of social care and of mental health services. And the escalation of child poverty. And violence against women and girls. And younger people finding the dice loaded against them. And any number of other crucial issues of our time. Unless charities make sure they are not side-lined! The overall health and justice of society demands that charities use their voices with passion, skill and determination, so that their causes are influential in public debate, in the manifestoes of the parties and in the minds and commitments of parliamentary candidates.

A time for care – but not fear

Provided we stick carefully to CC9, the Charity Commission’s authoritative guidance on political activity, the risks of championing the interests of our beneficiaries during the run up to a general election are vanishingly small for the vast majority of charities.

We know we must not promote and support a particular party. At all times our motive and practice must be to promote and support our charitable cause alone. With our charity hats on, we must not tell people how to vote – which involves all sorts of issues other than our particular cause – and we must be perceived to be committed solely to our cause, regardless of party. This calls for care at all times, and particularly in an election period when party political passions are running high. I write as a stickler for scrupulous party-political neutrality on the part of charities. I personally think that if you are prominently associated with a charity, you should exercise self-discipline generally in what you say and do in public, even when not officially representing your charity, to minimize the risk of inviting corrosive party-political suspicion towards it. The latest Charity Commission guidance on social media is helpful in thinking about where public and private begin and end.

So, yes, be responsible (as usual) about your Trustee duties, but that is not at all the same thing as being timid and depriving your beneficiaries of a voice at climactic moments of democratic debate and choice.

Beware simplistic generalisations about what is proper for charities

“Charities should always be kind and bring people together, so political argument is not for them, because it’s divisive!”. This is a misleading but quite widespread over-simplification that has even sometimes made its way into the upper echelons of the Charity Commission. But it is not what CC9 says at all. Many charities do indeed bring the most diverse people together, which is a valuable gift, and avoid any contention, but many other charities rightly do not and never have done. As even our brief glance at the history of charitable campaigning, both religious and secular, has shown, some charities espouse unpopular causes, some represent and reflect the righteous anger of people who feel excluded, some are passionately affronted by injustice or collective neglect of what is important to their cause. Many charitable campaigns noted above aroused bitter opposition in the short term, even if they seem obviously right and inevitable in retrospect. To expect charities in general to avoid contention and be at all times kind and gentle is profoundly unhistorical and misguided.

Our democracy needs you

So Trustees: please don’t vacate the democratic space and leave it to sundry interests that care nothing for your cause.

The General Election could be called in a matter of months. Even if you don’t consider yourself a ‘campaigning’ charity, prospective new MPs and the new government of whatever party should understand your beneficiaries’ needs. How will that happen? For example:

1. Set an agenda item on your next board meeting to discuss.
2. Refresh your knowledge of CC9. 
3. Figure out who your prospective parliamentary candidates are in your area and make contact.
4. Join in or even arrange local hustings and speak up for your cause.
5. Use your charity’s expertise to assess what the different parties are saying (if anything) about your cause.
6. Play a proud part in the public debate about what your beneficiaries require from our next Government, as charities have done ever since the franchise was won and then extended. Our democracy needs you.

(An edited version of this article appeared in Civil Society News on 30 November 2023.)

There is a gaping hole in Keir Starmer’s five missions, as set out on the Labour Party’s website and in his recent party conference speech.

Framing the five missions, and repeated again for each individual mission when you look in more detail, is this call for unity and partnership: “These missions will only be achieved through relentless focus. They require government departments working together. Business working with unions. The private sector with the public sector. And a common partnership between national and local government.”

No prizes for spotting the hole: the entire third sector – civil society – is missing. What a dire omission.

Starmer’s conference speech

In Starmer’s conference speech, there is one admiring reference to the volunteers who love their communities and stand up for clean water. There’s an imprecise commitment to “give power back and put communities in control” but without any specific reference to voluntary organisations as part of this.

Apart from that, there’s nothing about civil society in the promised decade of national renewal – despite his huge emphasis on prevention and long-term solutions rather than the “sticking plaster politics” of the government; and despite the constraints on public spending.

You’d never know from his speech that 16.3 million people formally volunteered through groups and clubs in the UK in 2020-21 or that they, and a wider sector receiving about £30bn pounds from the public, might have something to do with national renewal or prevention.

Labour’s five missions

As the stage is set for a probable new Labour or Labour-led government, civil society is assigned the most meagre of bit parts even in the more detailed explanations of the missions on the party’s website.

For example, you might think that the mission to replace the “sickness service” by an NHS more attuned to prevention, healthy living and better health and social care in the community might have rather a lot to say about partnership with civil society?

Wrong. In the whole, lengthy explanation of this “prevention-first revolution”, there is one brief mention of civil society in helping to ensure health is a dimension of all policies, and one mention of “help from voluntary and community groups to tackle issues like loneliness and isolation”. And that’s it. All those thousands of voluntary and community groups already engaged in this mission: eat your hearts out.

What about the mission to “take back our streets”? A welcome principle is adumbrated that “a whole system approach to reform across all sectors both from government and civil society is needed if we are ever to break the cycle of crime, see fewer victims, and see offenders brought to justice effectively”, but this insight isn’t followed through and integrated in the policy proposals.

Voluntary organisations have a critical role in issues like violence against women and girls, knife crime, youth work, diverting vulnerable people from gangs, drug and alcohol addiction, the distinctive challenges of ethnic minority (global majority) communities, LGBTQIA+ people etc and, more broadly, community cohesion. But these barely even register in the exposition of this mission.

The fifth mission is “breaking down barriers to opportunity”. Same story. Despite the crucial contribution of civil society to early years support and childcare, to sport, music, drama and the arts, to mental health in schools, this is mostly invisible in Labour’s vision for the future.

According to Pro Bono Economics, civil society provides as much training as local authorities and about half as much as further education colleges, but you wouldn’t guess this from this Labour discussion of how to improve and diversify skills training.

Employees of civil society, and volunteers, are “working people” too

One of Starmer’s repeated propositions is that working people currently feel that they are taken for granted, or seen as pieces on a board game played by out-of-touch (currently Conservative) ministers, who don’t understand what real life is like. This is to be replaced by a fresh bargain: a Labour government will be trusted to respect, understand and serve working people, while the latter drive our country forward.

Please remember, Labour leaders, that those employed in civil society are working people, too. They have been increasing at almost twice the rate of the rest of the economy and now number nearly one million. So let’s hope they don’t feel that their contribution and real struggles for the public benefit are taken for granted or ignored in any vision for a new government. Nor 16 million volunteers, either.

Not a niche issue

This gaping hole is a startling failure, and a wake-up call both for Labour Party and civil society leaders.

If the Labour front bench is sceptical of the claims of civil society leaders themselves, they might like to start with Gus O’Donnell’s foreword to the recent report by the Commission on Civil Society: “The private sector, the public sector, and civil society each need to be operating at maximum strength if our country is to achieve its full potential in growth, sustainability and social progress […] All three have contributions to make which can improve the workings of the others. Where all three are pulling in the same direction they create a powerful force.”

Surely many Labour politicians will agree with every word – so please can they say so?

It is encouraging that Lilian Greenwood, shadow minister for civil society, heritage and the arts, is talking of developing a Labour strategy for civil society. But a reading of Starmer’s five missions shows that such an exercise needs to be more than a subject-specific piece of work entrusted to a junior shadow minister within their niche brief. What we are up against is an apparent blind spot for the whole third sector of society at the highest level.

Yes, there is rich scope for serious engagement and dedicated policy thinking about how a future government should interact with, and support, a healthy civil society – as there was before Labour’s 1997 election victory. But if there is such a failure thus far to integrate the massive role of the third sector in the core vision of national renewal, the core Labour offer to the nation, we haven’t even got to first base.

Time is short

Time is getting a bit short for Starmer and the Labour shadow cabinet to amplify, rebalance and enrich their core vision in order to recognise and embrace the contribution of civil society, without which any government will fail.

Helen Stephenson announced earlier this month that she will step down as chief executive of the Charity Commission in July 2024 after seven years. Many in the sector have expressed gratitude to the regulator’s longest serving CEO and Stephenson herself said she was “exceptionally proud of my time at the Commission so far”. Here are a few reflections on both ups and downs of her tenure as she enters her final 11 months in the job.

The invisible work of the Charity Commission’s CEO

Most of the work of the Commission’s CEO is invisible to an outsider like me. We don’t see the way she manages her staff. We don’t see how she handles the board. We don’t see the internal processes of decision-making that may result in improved effectiveness in different dimensions. It’s relatively rare to find systematic, objective evidence about the Commission’s impact and how it changes.

As a result, impressions based on her public messaging (as discussed below) can be inadequate. For beneath the public messaging lies a largely invisible whirlwind of activity. In Stephenson’s case, that is said to have resulted in a firmer grip on casework, with backlogs managed down; better services such as a contact centre open five days per week, and the user-friendly five-minute guides to help busy trustees and staff get quickly to the basics of the Commission’s advice.

I have no reason to doubt the Commission’s claims that she will leave a talented and cohesive staff team, and that the Commission is respected by other Whitehall departments as delivering good value for money.

Relationships with the charity sector

Stephenson also said that the relationship between the charity sector and the regulator has “definitely improved” since she joined the Commission.  The charity sector is so vast and varied that such a statement has limited meaning, but in so far as NCVO and ACEVO represent important parts of the sector, it is encouraging that both speak of a positive and open approach on the part of the Commission to working with them during and since the COVID pandemic.

As Stephenson has herself acknowledged, it’s a pity that it took the pandemic – two and a half years after she arrived as CEO – before more regular and better communication with these umbrella bodies began. There is now, nevertheless, a feeling amongst national umbrella bodies and their allies that engagement and listening by the Commission is better than it was even a couple of years’ ago.

Has the Commission become more open and accessible to different parts of the sector across a wider front? Does the Commission engage more with critics rather than freeze them out? Perhaps we can look forward to yet more progress in Stephenson’s final year.

Public messaging

For all its limitations, this is the way most people in the wider sector and beyond hear and judge the Commission’s CEO.

Looking back at Stephenson’s public messages, three strong plus points strike me.

Her personal enthusiasm for the work of charities comes across consistently and palpably.

From early on she has championed the Commission’s supportive and preventive work, as well as investigation and compliance, binning the simplistic mantra of the Shawcross years that the role of the Commission was “essentially a policeman”.

And she has consistently defended the right of charities to engage in political activities in support of their charitable objects, as set out in CC9 – a good anchorage in subsequent culture wars.

Her greatest misfortunes

Stephenson was unlucky to arrive as CEO when the Commission was quite preoccupied with the abortive effort to raise part of its funding from charities themselves. She seemed to expend time and effort leading this wild goose chase for much of her first two years, before in the end it was abandoned.

Her greatest misfortune, however, was the appointment of Tina Stowell as chair of the Commission in February 2018, just a few months after she had become leader. Even the strongest or deftest CEO can only influence, not control, his or her chair. However, fairly or not, the world is bound to assume that much of the messaging of the Stowell era was a joint enterprise with Stephenson, who articulated a lot of it in her own name.

Rather than sticking to the regulation of charities as defined in law, the Commission appointed itself the guardian of “charity” – as if love, compassion, altruism and kindness were the distinctive preserve of charities alone, rather than seen in many non-charitable organisations, our informal relationships with neighbours, our families and many public services. It was a disastrous recipe for confusion and mission creep. Even in her departure announcement, Stephenson spoke of the Commission’s role as “to protect this thing called charity (sic) that we as a nation and society value”.

The constant message from the leadership was that charities were failing to live up to the public’s supposed expectations of behaviour, that how charities behaved – embodying “charity” – was as important as what they achieved, that meeting such supposed public expectations was by implication more important than accountability to beneficiaries, donors or other stakeholders (public benefit was exiled from most of the leadership’s messaging), that it wasn’t enough to have a “worthy” (ie charitable) cause or conform to charity law and formal guidance, because what really mattered was that vague “spirit of charity”.

The public were supposed to believe that charities should show higher standards of behaviour and integrity than other sectors, and the Commission at times even claimed to “represent the public” (as opposed to the public interest).

All these propositions were either untenable or contestable and imprecise – a rotten basis indeed for regulation.

The conclusions and accompanying press releases of high-profile investigations (not least that into the Oxfam safeguarding scandal) and the Commission’s series of reports into public trust and confidence, repeatedly prioritised reinforcing these predetermined missionary messages over fairness and careful analysis, as I and others documented in detailed articles over the years.

Most of this has thankfully now vanished into oblivion, but we had to endure it for the majority of Stephenson’s tenure as CEO to date.

A good ending?

Stephenson’s first six years have, therefore, had their ups and downs. But under Orlando Fraser as chair, the Commission’s messaging is generally calmer, clearer, wiser and based on the remit given by parliament and on the Commission’s true area of authority and expertise. There is more engagement and listening to important sector bodies without compromising the Commission’s independence, and this openness can develop further. The gains in effectiveness, less visible to outsiders, are significant and can continue.

If the CEO has some responsibility for the downs, she also deserves credit for the ups. Perhaps her last year will be the best of all?

The RSPB recently apologised for a tweet calling three Ministers liars, after their decision to scrap current restrictions on housebuilders protecting water quality. What are the rights and wrongs of the whole episode?

1. Was the RSPB right to criticise Ministers publicly if the charity believes their decisions are damaging to their cause (and breach Government commitments on which environmentalists were relying)? Yes. That is completely legitimate and appropriate, as sanctioned by Charity Commission guidance CC9. Charities are of course free to campaign, and propose or oppose changes in law or administration, in support of their charitable objectives. And they don’t have to be polite, either: that’s a matter for the Trustees to judge in each case.
2. Was the RSPB right to call Ministers “liars”? No – unless the charity was sure that the conscious intention of MInisters was to mislead when they gave their various assurances that were subsequently (in the view of RSPB and many others, including by implication the independent Office for Environmental Protection) broken. There are plenty of reasons why politicians water down, jettison, re-interpret or redefine commitments made – you need intimate familiarity with them to know for sure if they were deliberately lying from the start. If you don’t know for sure, don’t say it, or you are asking for trouble and the story ends up being quite different from what you intended. The area of expertise and authority for RSPB is not the subjective state of mind of individual Ministers but the damage to nature and the breaching of undertakings on which they and their supporters were relying.
3. Was it right for the RSPB to put out an obviously highly controversial tweet without, apparently, clearing it with the CEO and Chair of the charity? No. That is seriously bad practice, undermining the ability of the Trustees and CEO to do their job properly. The CEO said that the normal protocols weren’t followed. The Trustees will undoubtedly want to know why not and consider what to do about it.
4. Was it right for any RSPB Trustee reading that tweet and worried that it might damage the charity to raise the matter urgently with the Chair and CEO? Yes, absolutely right. There is no need to search in that Trustee’s past for an explanation of why s/he would want to do that – it’s his/her duty.
5. Was it right for one of the Trustees, Ben Caldecott, to go public with his criticism as well as alerting the Chair and CEO? No. Trustees are collectively responsible and for an individual Trustee to attack his own charity publicly without waiting for a collectively agreed response is terrible practice. It undermines the collegiate nature of the Board of Trustees. In this case, it has led to lots of people assuming Ben Caldecott is the only one who raised concerns, or that the Chair and other Trustees decided on an apology because of him, even that the whole episode shows the power of dark money and Policy Exchange (where Caldecott once worked) infiltrating the charity etc – all of this an own goal resulting from Caldecott’s breaking normal rules of Trustee behaviour.
6. So was the RSPB right to apologise for the tweet? Yes, assuming the charity was unable or unwilling to try to justify accusing Ministers of deliberate lying from the start, and if they felt they could not robustly defend the tweet from criticism. It’s particularly unfortunate that the apology tended to undermine other environmental charities that had also accused Ministers of lying, but if the RSPB couldn’t defend their own tweet they were right to apologise.
7. Were the terms of the apology appropriate? No. It was unnecessary to constrain the charity by saying that in future their campaigning will always be “polite” and that they should attack the policy rather than the person. The RSPB has a proud history of not being polite to those responsible for the avian carnage of the millinery trade that led to its establishment, or boating parties of Hooray Henry’s who used to shoot seabirds for fun, or gamekeepers poisoning protected raptors. There is no prohibition in charity law, nor in the Charity Commission’s guidance CC9, against being impolite or against (vociferously) holding individuals responsible for actions or decisions that are damaging to the charitable cause.
8. Was it right for the Charity Commission to engage with the charity about this incident? Yes. When a big-name charity gets into a mess and feels it has to apologise amidst acute public controversy, it is right for the Commission to assure itself that the charity is taking steps to ensure that the same mess is unlikely to recur – as I am sure this great charity is already doing.
9. If one has to choose one overall lesson from all this, it would be: good governance may seem boring, but oh! how it matters.