Last month, Peter Bone MP used a Ten Minute Rule bill – and a comment piece on ConservativeHome – to raise the case of Preston Down Trust, an organisation of the Plymouth Brethren that had been denied charitable status by the Charity Commission.
The case, now the subject of a tribunal, has important implications for religious freedom in this country, and so it is good to see a balanced article on the issue appear on the Guardian website.
Written by James Gray (an independent campaigns adviser, not the Conservative MP), it provides some useful background:
The idea that charities should be able to demonstrate public benefit is not an unreasonable one. After all, the public nature of the benefits provided by charities is what distinguishes them from private associations like businesses or, for that matter, families.
When the 2006 reforms were first debated, a commonly given example of a religious organisation that would fail the public benefit test was that of a completely enclosed religious order. By definition, no public access to the activities of such an organisation would be possible – therefore it wouldn’t qualify for charitable status.
This seemed fair enough at the time. However, the Charity Commission now appears to be making an example of the Plymouth Brethren – where the situation is substantially different.
It is certainly true that, compared to the Church of England, participation in Brethren activities can involve greater demands upon the individual. But something similar could be said of, say, a community theatre group that only stages productions of a highly experimental nature instead of the more ‘accessible’ fare of mainstream amateur dramatics. Does the Charity Commission propose to deny charitable status to arts organisations when they get demanding – or is it just religion on the hit list?
The Preston Down case is complicated one and the issue of public access is just one of its strands. Nevertheless, one has to ask whether an unelected quango like Charity Commission is going too far in interpreting the law:
Some people may see this as political interference. But the alternative view is that it is the Charity Commission that is over-reaching itself. Adjudicating on regulatory technicalities is one thing, making value judgements is entirely another.