In Britain yesterday, the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee
published a report titled
The role of the Charity Commission and “public benefit”: Post-legislative scrutiny of the Charities Act 2006. Britain's 2006 Charity Act requires that to qualify as a charity, an organization must not only be created to advance one of a set of specified purposes, such as "advancement of religion," but must also be "for the public benefit." The Report says in part:
The Charity Commission... argued that there was a “lack of certainty as to the law relating to the public benefit requirement for the advancement of religion” since the passing of the Charities Act 2006. This lack of certainty, and the Commission’s interpretation of the Act, have led to the questioning of the charitable status of independent schools and the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church (or Exclusive Brethren) and concerns over the wider impact on faith charities....
We recommend that the removal of the presumption of public benefit in the 2006 Charities Act be repealed, along with the Charity Commission’s statutory public benefit objective. This would ensure that no transient Government could introduce what amounts to substantive changes in charity law without Parliament’s explicit consent. If the Government wishes there to be new conditions for what constitutes a charity and qualifies for tax relief, it should bring forward legislation, not leave it to the discretion of the Charity Commission and the courts.
Third Sector has additional information.
