Communities Committee, 17 Nov 2004

Meeting date: Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Official Report 95KB pdf

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Petition

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JNF Charitable Trust (PE779)

The second item on our agenda is consideration of petition PE779, which was submitted by Ivan Clark on behalf of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. The petition concerns the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund. Before we move to our consideration of the petition, I ask Patrick Harvie to make a declaration.

Before the committee discusses anything that relates in any way to charities legislation, I want to update my declaration of interests. Since I last made a declaration at committee, I have become a member of the board of directors of GALA Scotland Ltd, a company with charitable status. The purpose of the charity is to run the Glasgay arts festival in Glasgow. Although I have added the interest to my register of interests, I thought that I should also make a declaration today.

Does the convener want other members who are patrons of charities to make declarations?

It is not necessary for members to do so. If members wish to make public declarations, that is entirely up to them, but such matters would usually be included in a member's register of interests.

It is.

We return to our consideration of PE779, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to take all possible measures to ensure that the JNF Charitable Trust and similar organisations do not continue to benefit from charitable status in Scotland. Does any member have comments on the petition?

My comments are not necessarily about the specifics of the petition, which raises general issues on which the committee will want to take further evidence during the course of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Bill. Certainly the petition raises the general issue about a charity that is registered in England and Wales fundraising in Scotland, which was raised with the committee on its informal visits throughout Scotland. We should return to that subject when we consider the bill in greater detail. Given that we will start to do that within the next few weeks, it would be more appropriate to discuss the general issues then rather than today.

I note that the petition calls on us to ensure that

"the JNF Charitable Trust, and similar organisations, will not continue to benefit from charitable status in Scotland."

We are at the beginning of scrutiny of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Bill, but it is not for the committee to decide which organisations have charitable status in Scotland. We must put out a clear message about that, otherwise we could be inundated with such petitions. It is the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator's role to deal with such issues.

During my bedtime reading of the bill's policy memorandum, I noted that it says:

"the final Bill … only requires charities with significant operations in Scotland to register with OSCR. All charities either managed or controlled from Scotland or with significant operations … in Scotland will have to register".

Therefore, I do not think that we need to go any further with the petition. It is an interesting petition and it is good that the wider aspects that we heard about when we went on our pre-legislative visits have been brought to our attention. However, at this point, I do not think that we should take any action on the petition; we should leave that to OSCR.

I agree that it would be inappropriate for us to take any position on a specific organisation and its right to charitable status. However, we could make a point of considering and discussing with stage 1 witnesses whether exclusions on the ground of involvement in specific activities should be worked into the bill.

I support what Scott Barrie said. When we study the bill, we should take evidence on the United Kingdom charity and Scottish charity issue.

There is also Patrick Harvie's point that although a charity might appear to have worthy aims, what happens in practice might not be so good, which is the allegation in the petition. Without judging the individual case, perhaps we should consider whether the bill should give guidance to OSCR on how far it should take investigations into allegations that a charity's activities give rise to a political problem. That issue should also be included in our examination of the bill.

I support Patrick Harvie and Donald Gorrie. The issues can be appropriately dealt with when we are considering stage 1 of the bill and discussing and taking evidence on the definition of charitable purpose. Perhaps we should also consider OSCR's role in monitoring subsequent charities that are set up to see whether their activities differ from the initial operation. I make no comment on the charity mentioned in the petition, just a general comment that that would be more appropriate.

I think that we have a rare consensus on the committee.

It would be entirely improper for the committee to make judgments about individual charities, but the petition might raise an interesting point of which OSCR might need to take account. If a charity has charitable purposes but does other things that might appear not to be charitable, that ought to be taken into account and we need to devise a system to deal with that. It is timely that the point has been drawn to our attention.

I am grateful to all colleagues for their comments. There seems to be a consensus.

Two main relevant points arise as a result of the petition. The operating conditions in Scotland for charities registered in England and Wales were raised with the committee during its early evidence sessions. The other point is about the charity test.

I suggest that we agree to ensure that those two points are taken into account when we take oral evidence on the bill, and that we formally close consideration of the petition. In the meantime, we will write to the petitioner to indicate that we have decided to take that course of action. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Our next item of business is the draft report to the Finance Committee on the Scottish Executive budget for 2005-06, which will be taken in private.

Meeting continued in private until 11:11.