Ms Helen Martin:

I will start with the first question about the progressive sanctions. We are trying, through the general scheme, to link existing breaches of the Act to the intermediate sanctions. The intermediate sanctions are already in place but are very limited in what they apply to. They apply mainly to the financial breaches. If proper books of account are not kept, for example, that could lead to an intermediate sanction. However, we are looking for other key provisions that are already in the Act to also be linked to an intermediate sanction in order that we have that ability. In the case of a failure to respond to a direction from the Charities Regulator for information, for example, our approach is very much to bring charities into compliance. Therefore, when we seek information, we normally do so on a voluntary basis first. We will ask the charity to provide us with the information. If it does not do so, or if it provides us with information that is incomplete, at that point we will consider whether we need a statutory direction. If that does not work, we are into the area of potentially having to appoint inspectors. Within that provision, there is a more serious provision again on getting information from charities, and charities have to comply with that. However, with a lot of those provisions there is no recourse if they are breached other than to take the charity off the register or prosecute those involved. All we are trying to do, therefore, is to link more things into the intermediate sanctions, which, as I explained earlier, requires the consent of the charity. I do not really see that as giving us more powers. It was very clear when Members, as lawmakers, made the original legislation that they believed, rightly so, that certain things, such as failing to respond to the Charities Regulator when it issues a statutory direction for information, are very serious. However, there is the missing link that we hope to convince people to put into this legislation. That will feed in and give us the ability to formalise the bit in the middle that we have at the moment, whereby we have brought the voluntary piece as far as we can and the only thing we have left is prosecution, for example. We know that it is a serious breach but we do not want to see an individual prosecuted. He or she will then have a criminal record. That should be kept for the very serious cases, and that is what we are trying to do. We are trying to bridge that gap. To the extent that there are concerns out there, I hope that today we have assured the committee and explained the thinking behind this.

That leads quite neatly to the Vice Chairman's next question, which was how many times we have had recourse to the High Court. We have been involved in two such cases. One is ongoing and the other the committee will have heard about. Sorry - there have been three such cases. I had forgotten one a number of years ago. Last year we were involved in a case when the Charities Regulator had to go in and seek a winding up of a charity because its own trustees were not in a position to do that. The reason the Vice Chairman has not seen a lot of recourse to the High Court is not that there have not been cases in which we thought we were being left with no option but to bring those involved to the High Court, but rather that we have been in a situation whereby we have thought that would be too extreme from a cost or resourcing perspective. The Charities Regulator is a relatively small organisation and we do not have a huge budget. We cannot be going to the High Court to have resolved what are important compliance issues but ones that are not that significant. If a compliance issue were that significant, we would appoint inspectors. It is a matter of proportionality. We talk about this all the time, but that is proportionality in practice. Therefore, the fact that the Vice Chairman has not seen High Court proceedings does not mean they have not been considered in hundreds of cases, but we have found other means to bring the charities into compliance. Sometimes, however, those other means of bringing charities into compliance are very resource-intensive. When we are looking at value for money, we have to say to ourselves that if there were some easier way for charities to bring appeals - by going to the Circuit Court, for example, or for charities going to the Charity Appeals Tribunal - it would be more cost-effective for all parties involved.

Anything in this general scheme is there because we have had to try to implement it. As we said earlier, we get hundreds and hundreds of concerns every year. Members will not know to whom those concerns relate. We do not publish that information for the very reason we talked about earlier, that is, reputational damage and so on. There is, however, a lot of work that goes on under the hood, particularly when we are dealing one-to-one with hundreds and thousands of charities every day of the year.