Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing

2 Mar 18

Now, we’re not on mutual Christmas card terms with the Henry Jackson Society.

Inter alia, we struggle to understand why the organisation’s aims are charitable.

However, we admit to having taken a peek at their new report: “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing.”

In between deriving amusement from the descriptions of other charities as illiberal and extremist [”pot” and “kettle” come to mind], we found in there, also, a lot about the Charity Commission.

Mainly, about whether the Commission actually does a good job as a regulator.

A regulator of Muslim charities that are problem charities, that is.

We decided to leave out that second part.

It’s a trick we’ve learned from the Commission itself.

More about this lying by omission [as opposed to lying by Commission] soon.

The report included one of our favourite quotes, being an extract from the National Audit Office’s 2013 report into the Charity Commission:

The Commission is not regulating charities effectively. It does important and necessary work and its independent status is highly valued, but it does not do enough to identify and tackle the abuse of charitable status. It uses information poorly to assess risk and often relies solely on trustees’ assurances.

Where it does identify concerns in charities, it makes little use of its powers and fails to take tough action in some of the most serious cases. This undermines the Commission’s ability to meet its statutory objective to increase public trust and confidence in charities.

We conclude that the Commission is not delivering value for money.

We have abundant evidence that the Charity Commission took this criticism to heart. The pendulum has now swung completely the other way in some respects, being these:

It… often relies solely on trustees’ assurances.

The Commission does not even talk to trustees now, so that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Sorted!

…it makes little use of its powers and fails to take tough action.

The Commission makes great use of its powers.

In the sense of quantity, that is, rather than “great” as in “doubleplusgood.”

It takes tough action.

What people need to understand is that the Commission does not understand when to use its powers and to act.

It understands only that, to earn its Brownie points, use its powers and act it must.

Trinity

#charitycommission #henryjacksonsociety #nationalauditofficd