Charity gravy train must be derailed

AROUND eight in ten Britons made some sort of charitable donation in the past year and Scots are well up the UK chart of who donates most.

Clearly, we value charities and their contribution to the society in which we live and to humanity in the broader worldwide community.

We are happy to give – though, as Tory equalities spokesman Annie Wells says, we expect charities to be ‘whiter than white’. And that is what makes the dossier we present on the so-called ‘third sector’ today so deeply dispiriting.

Instead of committed volunteer individuals working for charities struggling against the odds to improve the lot of others, we expose fat-cat bosses on six-figure salaries and with gold-plated pension schemes. And there is a shadowy world of charities that exist only because they are bankrolled by £3billion of taxpayers’ cash.

Public money is being frittered away on schemes to support gay-only basketball while so-called ‘sock-puppet’ charities are props for SNP policies such as the deeply flawed Named Person scheme.

Of deep concern, too, is the corrosive effect all this has on charities that still fit with our template of what charities should be about: reliant on the goodwill of donors and staffed by volunteers.

Of course many of them still exist and do sterling work but there is a risk that the public – rightly sickened by the antics of so many others – will start to think twice about their donations.

If £3billion of their tax money is already being channelled towards charities, why should they reach further into their own pocket?

And the nagging issue of how much of our donations will reach the needy before being syphoned off in salaries is thrown into stark relief.

South of the Border, the Westminster Government has banned publicly funded charities from political lobbying. Why has no such prohibition been enforced here?

We also report today that the Youth Scotland umbrella group received £781,000 of public cash last year.

Some of this was channelled to train 213 people in the Scottish Government’s Getting It Right For Every Child.

This is the key underpinning of the SNP’s Named Person scheme, the deeply intrusive project that was intended to foist a state ‘guardian’ on every child in the land.

The deeply unpopular plan was heavily criticised for risking the break-up of families as parents’ role in family life was supplanted by the state.

The entire project is parked while the SNP desperately tries to salvage something of it after the key plank – secret sharing of information about children – was ruled illegal. But why was charity money, culled from taxpayers, used on such a blatantly political project?

Similarly, how can it be right that the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) – another umbrella body – received only £517 in direct donations but £10.25million of public money? It has upped its staff from 99 to 102 and pays four executives more than £60,000 apiece.

SCVO holds properties worth £4.12million and has land worth £1.87million. It looks less like a charity than a business. So why are vast sums of public cash being funnelled its way?

The impression is of a charity sector grown bloated on public subsidy and of distracted Scottish Government ministers – forever fighting fantasy battles over Brexit and independence – who have let matters slide.

The argument for a proper debate about charities’ funding and their role is urgent when so many good works depend on public faith that they do what it says on the collecting tin: work hard for good causes, not line the pockets of staff or allow themselves to become a front for a political party.