The Scottish Government has issued a consultation on Scottish Charity Law
22nd January 2019 | Posted in: Charity, Company News, Government AnnouncementsThe Scottish Government has made a flying start to the new year by publishing a consultation on proposed reforms to Scottish charity law. The consultation can be found here Scottish Charity Law . As this consultation relates to proposed changes to legislation it has been published by the Scottish Government, but the process has been driven by OSCR and the proposals have arisen from OSCR’s experiences as a regulator under the current legislation.
Many of the proposed changes will come as no surprise to those who have been paying close attention by comments made by OSCR over the past few years either on their website or in the course of public events. Whilst the introductory remarks to the consultation make liberal use of the words “transparency”, “accountability”, “trust” and “confidence”, the consultation contains nothing radical and the proposed amendments can be split into two types:
- Those which aim to bring about consistency between the Scottish charity regime and other regulatory regimes in the UK (for example, the Charity Commission and Companies House); and
- Those which address inconsistencies or gaps in the legislation which have come to light since the introduction of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005.
The consultation paper is organised in ten sections and helpfully the more wide-ranging (and probably more controversial) proposals are set out in the earlier sections, with the more arcane proposals towards the end of the paper. The first two sections, in particular, will undoubtedly elicit strong opinions from those who respond to the consultation. These two sections propose changes to the law to allow the publication of unredacted accounts on OSCR’s website and the publication of the names (and possibly other details) of charity trustees.
As the law stands, OSCR cannot provide members of the public with this information, due to restrictions relating to privacy and data protection. Unless a charity voluntarily publishes this information (for example, on its website), a member of the public can only obtain it by asking the charity directly. If the charity were to refuse or ignore the request, it would be necessary to take legal action to force them to comply with the request.
The publication of the names of Trustees, together with some other details such as a contact address (which will not necessarily be their home address) on OSCR’s website would bring OSCR in line with Companies House, which publishes the names and contact addresses of the directors of all limited companies – including, of course, those charities which are set up as companies limited by guarantee. It would also bring the Scottish regulator in line with the Charity Commission, which publishes this information for all charities registered in England and Wales.
Given that this proposal would simply make the Scottish charity regime consistent with the English charity regime and the UK company regime, one might expect it to be uncontroversial. However, it is not difficult to imagine reasons why some individuals might want their connections to certain charities to remain confidential so there will no doubt be objections. Ultimately, of course, it will be for the Scottish Government to decide.
The consultation period is open until 1 April 2019 and consultation is open to the public. If you would like to contribute, you can do so online by following the link Scottish Charity Law
Photo by Jörg Angeli on Unsplash