There is a proposal from the Birmingham based charity "Islamic Help" to buy and then convert the former Smith and Nephew medical fabrics plant in Brierfield into a 5,000 place boarding school for girls.
The proposal has been widely covered in the Lancashire Telegraph and the Nelson Leader. Details of the Charity, Islamic Help, can be found on the Charity Commission website.
According to press reports, talks have been held between the Liberal Democrat's Parliamentary Candidate for Pendle, Afzal Anwar, and Islamic Help about the nature and scale of any proposed development.
I raised the issue at a meeting of the Public Administration Select Committee on Thursday 10 December. Here is an extract...
UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 109-iHouse of COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION COMMITTEE
WORK OF THE CHARITY COMMISSION IN 2008-09
Thursday 10 December 2009
DAME SUZI LEATHER and MR ANDREW HIND
Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 99
Oral Evidence
Taken before the Public Administration Committee
on Thursday 10 December 2009
Members present
Dr Tony Wright, in the Chair
Paul Flynn
David Heyes
Kelvin Hopkins
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger
Julie Morgan
Mr Gordon Prentice
Paul Rowen
Mr Charles Walker
________________
Memorandum submitted by Charity CommissionExamination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Dame Suzi Leather, Chair, and Mr Andrew Hind, Chief Executive, Charity Commission, gave evidence.
Q1 Chairman: Good morning everyone. Let me welcome the Charity Commission, in the form of Dame Suzi Leather, who chairs the Commission, and Andrew Hind, who is the Chief Executive. It is always a pleasure to see you. As you know, it is our job to keep an eye on what you are up to and, if I can say so, you do make a point of reporting your activities to us on a regular basis, for which we are grateful, and we have, at least annually, the chance to ask you some questions about it. Thank you for your letter in advance of this meeting and all the information that you sent us. Would you like to say anything by way of introduction?
....
Q11 Mr Prentice: I am interested in those charities that are raising money for a purpose which is outside their charitable objectives. I wrote to you, Mr Hind, about this and you told me that between 26 November 2008 and 25 November 2009 there were 33 cases which involved charities acting “outside their objects or misapplying charitable funds”. I am quoting back to you your own words. What happened to those charities? What happened to the 33 cases where they were raising money, basically, under false pretences?
Mr Hind: Each case will have been looked at on its merits. If there were cases of members of the public giving funding to a charity on the basis of misrepresentation we would ensure that funding given in those circumstances was returned. In most cases trustees will recognise the concerns that we are expressing, they will change their behaviour, they will ensure that they either act only in accordance with their objects in the future or, if we think there is merit in the case, agree with us an extension to the objects.
Q12 Mr Prentice: You said earlier you did not have any sanctions - you used the little red box and so on - but for people who are raising money under false pretences, presumably, there are criminal sanctions: people are prosecuted, put behind bars.
Mr Hind: Absolutely.
Q13 Mr Prentice: Has anything happened to any of those 33?
Mr Hind: Mr Prentice, I need to be clear. When I said we do not have sanctions, I was purely talking in respect of the Chairman’s first question, which was about charities filing their accounts with us. We do not have sanctions to make them do that. We have a whole range of sanctions to ensure that, where there is abuse of charitable status, where there is fraud, where there is misrepresentation serious things are done about that, including, of course (and there are plenty of examples of this), us passing cases over to the police and trustees are prosecuted.
Dame Suzi Leather: Actually, in the last month somebody has received an 18-month prison sentence for setting up a sham charity.
Q14 Mr Prentice: You will know about the case in my own constituency. I am generalising from the particular here, but Islamic Help is based in Birmingham and its main charitable objective is to be able to respond to emergency disasters quicker, but on its website it has been asking for money. It wants £1,050,000 by 10 January to convert an old medical fabrics mill into a giant boarding school for Muslim girls. As you know, the biggest boarding school for girls at the moment is Cheltenham Ladies’ College: 650 girls. What Islamic Help wants is a 5,000 place boarding school. I have written to you about this, and I think Islamic Help is operating way outside its charitable objectives. This is from its website. I am assuming you are in touch with them and asking them to return money to all the people who gave money thinking it was for this new educational institution.
Mr Hind: I am not sure that it would be right for me to engage in a dialogue---
Q15 Mr Prentice: People are still giving money to this charity.
Mr Hind: ---about the absolute detailed specifics of the case, but, on the general point that you raise, that kind of concern is something that we absolutely involve ourselves with on a robust basis and, if the evidence is that what you say is happening is happening, then we would ensure that something was done about that, yes.
Q16 Mr Prentice: It says here, and this is from the website: “Muslim watchdog. In this day and age Islamaphobia, women’s rights within Islam and other issues brought up against Muslims are one of the mainstream topics within the media all over the world.” In this college it is going to have a Muslim watchdog to advise, not the girls, but the sisters. The sisters will be given special training in how to tackle these issues professionally and appropriately.
Dame Suzi Leather: This is the subject of a current investigation.
Q17 Mr Prentice: Yes. I only raise it because people may still be giving money to this charity, Islamic Help, and I want people out there to know that you are investigating it.
Mr Hind: We are in contact with the charity, Mr Prentice. We will keep you fully informed. As ever, serious accusations get dealt with robustly by the Commission.
Later.....
Q90 Mr Prentice: Can I just say I think your website is great.
Mr Hind: Thank you very much.
Q91 Mr Prentice: I think it is easy to navigate. I found out a huge amount about charities that I was interested in by going onto your website. You are going to update it in January, I believe.
Dame Suzi Leather: Yes.
Q92 Mr Prentice: We have been talking about accountability. It is a great tool to shine a spotlight on charities via your website. Is there a section in the Charity Commission that deals with Islamic charities? Do you have a little group that just focuses on Islamic charities?
Dame Suzi Leather: We have for the last 18 months, two years had a Faith and Social Cohesion Unit. In 2004, I think, we started to do some outreach work with all sorts of faith organisations to find out whether the Commission was providing the kind of support, advice, help that they needed, and one of the main findings of that piece of work was that they wanted a specific unit that came from Muslim charities, they wanted a unit within the Commission that understood their faith, their organisational structures and could support them, and we were able to get some money about 18 months, two years ago in order to set this up, really to support the governance of Muslim organisations and mosques in particular. It was not ever intended, I do not think, that we would only ever look at Islamic organisations, but we would start with Islamic organisations, faith organisations. We had historically had a very strong relationship with Christian organisations, many of which actually are excepted from charitable status, but we had done a lot of work with them. We had much less good understanding of mosques and yet the Muslim faith was the fastest growing faith in this country. So I think we had a way to go on that. The purpose of the Faith and Social Cohesion Unit has been to bring more mosques into registered status and to strengthen the governance of the ones that are.
Q93 Mr Prentice: Are there particular problems, particular issues that affect Muslim charities?
Mr Hind: I think we would say there is a lower level of awareness of what it means to be a charity. I think that is something we see and it is something that is self-confessed, as it were, from Muslim communities, as Suzi was saying. What we have been trying to do is work with a number of umbrella groups around the Islamic part of the sector to build up that understanding.
Dame Suzi Leather: I think, from the financial point of view, a smaller proportion of the monies raised within those organisations was going through properly accountable channels. One of the benefits of this piece of work is that proportion has been increased, and it has been very successful; it has been welcomed. In terms of registration, since October 2007, when the unit was first started, we have had a 40 per cent increase in registration of mosques.
Q94 Mr Prentice: Okay. I spoke about Islamic Help and the 5,000 place Pendle Boarding School for Girls, but next door to me in Burnley there is the Al-Ehya Trust, which has just been renamed the Mohiuddin Trust, and they have purchased the old Burnley College and they are setting up Mohiuddin International Girls College which will have 1,500 places. I know it is not your job to comment on educational policy, I understand that, but the Mohiuddin Trust, when it talks about its objectives, mentions strengthening inter-community relationships and building stronger community integration and cohesion and, in that context, I just wonder if the Charity Commission would take a view on the number of girls at this International Girls College that would be drawn from overseas or the number of girls that would be taken to the school from the immediate locality because it could have a hugely destabilising effect on other schools in the immediate area. Do you understand what I am saying?
Dame Suzi Leather: I do not think that what you are talking about is really a matter for the Charity Commission, but one of the other changes we have brought about is we have introduced an Advisory Committee on Faith within the Commission, and that is a committee which meets two or three times a year and has representatives of all the main faiths in this country. One of the things we have been talking about recently is how we can strengthen partnership working between faiths an inter-faith activity. From a governance structure, from a Charity Commission point of view, there is quite a lot of interest in doing that. I think that in future we could have quite an important role in bringing different charity organisations that are faith based together to share experience, for instance, in how you do strengthen governance, how you do induct trustees, how you do ensure that your organisation is effective and efficient; but one of the benefits that might flow from that would be greater social cohesion.
Q95 Mr Prentice: I suppose I should know this, but how easy is it for a charity to change its charitable objectives? Is it a performance or is it relatively straightforward?
Mr Hind: Relatively straightforward, providing the substance of what the charity wishes to do in the future is broadly similar to what it wanted to do in the past. If it wanted to do something fundamentally different, then that would be something that we would have to discuss with them and ensure that we were satisfied that it complied with the legal framework.
Dame Suzi Leather: I would use the word “flex” rather than “change”. I think you can flex, for instance, the beneficiary class if there are changes to society. For instance, the Jewish care home based in Cardiff. No longer is there a sufficient Jewish population there to support a care home, so we have enabled that charity to flex its beneficiary class to include people who are not of a Jewish faith.
Q96 Mr Walker: Is that mission creep basically?
Dame Suzi Leather: No, I do not think it is mission creep.
Q97 Mr Prentice: I do not want to go over old ground. My main concern is where you have a charity which explicitly is there for the relief of disasters overseas, whether it just requires the stroke of a pen to change the charitable objectives to include educational establishments in the United Kingdom. That is what I am getting at.
Dame Suzi Leather: I would say that is well beyond “flex”.
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