Hansard

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this stage 3 debate. I have previously referred members to my entry in the register of interests as a charity trustee. It is a great joy and honour to be a charity trustee. I am sure that many other members of the Parliament and many people across Scotland feel a sense of pride in the charities that they work for. It is important that we bear that in mind today as we discuss issues that will directly impact them and the charities for which they do so much good work.

I also put on record my thanks to everyone who has been involved in bringing the bill to its conclusion. In the classic style of the Parliament, I came to it late in the day. I joined the committee just in time to approve the stage 1 report and then to take part in the stage 2 proceedings, so all the hard work was done by my colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy, who worked with her committee colleagues to take the bill through its various evidence-taking sessions and challenged the Government robustly at various points to ensure that we have the best bill possible today. I thank her for that. I also thank everyone involved from the clerking team, the bill team and everyone who has worked to improve the bill.

As I said at the outset of my speech, we should take the opportunity to thank all those who are involved in charities across Scotland. We heard from the cabinet secretary some of the impressive statistics about the work that charities in Scotland do and the money that they raise for a range of charitable causes. It is important that we put on record our thanks to them.

Scottish Labour will support the passage of the bill at decision time. We believe the bill to be a welcome and overdue step to reform charity legislation. It will increase the transparency and accountability of charities, which is important in progressing charity law and bringing its key aspects into line with other regulatory frameworks in the United Kingdom—those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I will take some time to focus on where we can go further. I am heartened again to hear the cabinet secretary’s commitment to the wider review of charity regulation and law and to engagement with the SCVO. However, the review cannot just be about the structures; we have to take a fundamental look at how we can better support charities and the work that they do.

I highlighted in my speech in the stage 1 debate the importance of ensuring that we consider issues such as the funding cycle for charities. Many charities live year to year in terms of the funding that they receive from the Government or local authorities. That can prove challenging when trying to plan for the future or to make projects go beyond just the one-year phase.

Approaches such as three-year funding cycles have been talked about for a long time in the Parliament, but we never seem to have got to a place where we are offering charities a three-year deal. It is important that, in the conversations that the cabinet secretary has with the SCVO, she listens to its asks on behalf of the wider sector and tries to bring them into the scope of the broader work that she is keen to do on charity regulation and the advancement of charities in Scotland.

I want to briefly say something about Jeremy Balfour’s amendment 3, which was not agreed to. I outlined my concerns about the burdens that the register of controlled interests in land has placed on churches. I think that we need to look at that issue again. I will not rehearse the arguments that I made during our consideration of amendment 3, but I ask the cabinet secretary to reflect on what she has heard today, as well as on what she has heard from churches and other religious organisations over the course of the bill’s passage through Parliament, and to tell Parliament what more she thinks can be done to engage properly with the churches to give them the comfort and support that they need in order to be compliant with the law. The last thing that we want to see is anyone who is involved in those organisations in good faith facing any kind of challenges because they have not complied.

I reiterate our support for the bill, which we will support at decision time. However, we feel that we can go further to support our charities in Scotland, and we are open and willing to work with anyone—especially the cabinet secretary—in that vein to ensure that the review covers all the issues that I have mentioned and supports a good, thriving third and voluntary sector here in Scotland.