PARLIAMENTARY EARLY DAY MOTION
STATUS OF CHARITIES (13 January 1998)

That this House notes the statement on page 43 of The Times of 1st December 1997 that 'Surprisingly, the law does not prevent any competent crook from registering or acquiring registered charities'; calls on Her Majesty's Government to encourage all those with power to allow charity collections on their premises, especially the managements of supermarkets and stations, to adopt the practice of insisting beforehand on the presence of a recommendation, from a first class source, on each relevant charity whose work is not already known to those managements - along the lines of the well-established Charity Check database system referred to in the same article; and further calls on Her Majesty's Government to consider urgently the reform of the Charities Act 1992, Part III, so that the current legal framework can be updated as soon as possible to help prevent money going astray that should instead go to genuine charities.

Sponsored by:
Mr Adrian Sanders (Liberal Democrat)