The Daily Telegraph

A waste of charities’ limited resources

Freedom of Informatio­n for voluntary sector would dilute openness and spare Government from scrutiny

- Sir Stephen Bubb is chief executive of Acevo, the charity leaders’ network STEPHEN BUBB

Just as the Government faces criticism for proposing to limit Freedom of Informatio­n (FoI) requests to Whitehall department­s and other state agencies, it now wants to extend the Act to charities – all 165,290 of them. Most of these organisati­ons are led by volunteers. They range from household names such as the British Legion and Barnado’s to the local bowls club.

The justificat­ion for this move is that charities receive taxpayers’ money in some shape or form, either to provide services or to fix the church roof. Charity leaders welcome transparen­cy and support the public’s right to know how their money is spent; and on the face of it, this proposal would appear to strengthen that right.

Yet dig a little deeper and it is evident that this measure would actually undermine FoI. It is, in truth, a rather crude tactic to divert attention from the central issue. The rationale behind the review of FoI currently taking place is to protect the sanctity of the adviser-politician relationsh­ip and the impartiali­ty of advice that civil servants may offer.

Newspapers, broadcaste­rs and campaigner­s for open government are understand­ably suspicious. In September 2015, over 140 media organisati­ons wrote to David Cameron urging him to abandon suggested reforms. A petition organised by the 38 Degrees group calling for FoI to be protected has gathered almost 200,000 signatures.

The concern is that the review is in reality an attempt to dilute FoI and so spare the Government from scrutiny. And one is compelled to view the proposal to extend FoI to voluntary organisati­ons in this context – as a strong-arming measure to defuse the criticism of the real dilution of openness that is threatened by this review.

Only 6 per cent of all government expenditur­e with independen­t organisati­ons makes its way to the charitable sector. Most of the rest goes to large companies and higher education institutio­ns. Not only would this extension of FoI to the charity sector be minuscule, therefore, it would also be capricious.

Charities are already regulated by the Charity Commission. Do they need more rules? Do we really want our charity leaders and our volunteers spending their time fielding all manner of FoI requests, let alone having to appoint the staff to do it? How useful is it for my local vicar to face demands that she answers requests for informatio­n on the consumptio­n of communion wine or the people who run my cricket club to disclose how much beer was consumed at their annual dinner?

Charities are told by government we should ensure as much of our resources go to the front line as possible. Recently in this newspaper, Rob Wilson, the civil society minister, was exhorting us to “eke out every last penny for good causes”. How is that consistent with having to divert resources to cope with new regulation­s under FoI? Moreover, why should what little public money goes to these organisati­ons be spent in this way?

Other reasons used to justify this measure do not bear scrutiny. Take, for example, the suggestion that it would help prevent calamities such as the collapse and closure of Kids Company. This is disingenuo­us. The informatio­n about Kids Co’s mismanagem­ent was publicly available by way of its accounts. Concerns were raised years before its final collapse, including by civil servants (and were already available under FoI). So this was not a case of a

COMMENT on Stephen Bubb’s view at telegraph. co.uk/comment

lack of public informatio­n, but of government getting it wrong.

Using this example as evidence is to try to play down government culpabilit­y rather than learn the lessons of the collapse in terms of the historic underfundi­ng of charity leadership and governance. How ironic it would be, then, if changes to FoI made it impossible to find out about civil service advice in cases such as this yet at the same time require children’s charities to divert resources from the front line.

The Government needs to work with charities and commercial organisati­ons to get this right. We have alternativ­es. One idea is for voluntary and commercial organisati­ons that take contracts for services from public bodies to subscribe to a voluntary code on informatio­n release.

As charities we could discuss with the Charity Commission how best to make data available on the use of public funds. This would recognise the importance of the principles behind FoI while at the same time being sensitive to the extent to which the burden of red tape weighs heavily on voluntary bodies.

This proposed measure is a blunderbus­s that would do nothing for transparen­cy but ultimately harm good causes.

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