Charities legislation comes before Holyrood
A bill to strengthen and update the current legislative framework for charities registered in Scotland has been introduced to the Scottish Parliament.
The Charities (Regulation and Administration) (Scotland) Bill follows a review of Scottish charity law undertaken over the last few years. It does not seek to alter the fundamental principles of the present legislation, the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005, but will strengthen the powers of the charity regulator OSCR and increase the information available about charities covered by the Act.
More specifically, the bill makes provision in the following areas:
- increasing the information held about charity trustees – both public information and internal information for OSCR’s use,
- updating the law in relation to the grounds on which a person is, subject to possible waiver, disqualified from acting as a charity trustee; extending this to certain senior management functions; and providing for a publicly searchable record of persons disqualified through having been removed from office in Scotland;
- extending the current rules allowing OSCR to appoint interim charity trustees to cases where the charity is not in a position to request OSCR’s assistance;
- providing for all charity accounts to be publicly available on the register, and allowing for the possible removal of charities which fail to submit accounts and then ignore communications from OSCR about that failure;
- requiring the recording of charity mergers in a publicly accessible record, and making default provision under which legacies transfer to the successor charity;
- refining the process in relation to inquiries, including by allowing inquiries to be held or to continue despite a change in a body or person’s status, and giving OSCR the ability to issue positive – as opposed to interdictory – directions following an inquiry, for example to manage a conflict of interest;
- requiring charities to have a connection to Scotland which makes their regulation by OSCR appropriate; and
- a number of minor or technical changes which do things such as formalise existing practices, close a loophole or otherwise clarify wording in the 2005 Act, align the position for charities of different types, simplify practices, specify deadlines for existing actions, and other matters.
Social Justice Secretary Shona Robison commented: "Current charity law is now 17 years old. The charity sector has changed significantly in that time and the legislation needs to be updated to reflect that. Charities have told us that they want these changes to help strengthen existing charity law and update their system of regulation.
"In order to maintain public trust and confidence in this important sector and its regulator in the years ahead, we are taking the required steps to increase transparency and to extend OSCR’s enforcement powers.
"Scotland’s charities raise more than £13 billion of income each year and this bill will give the public further transparency as to how that money is used."
Anna Fowlie, chief executive of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, added: "This bill is an opportunity to modernise regulation and ensure that OSCR has the powers it needs to fulfil its functions as effectively as possible. I also welcome the Scottish Government’s commitment to a wider review of charity law in the future."