Charity Commission in contempt

Commission apologises to MPs after adverse finding

The Charity Commission committed a contempt of parliament when it took legal action in an attempt to stop the parliamentary ombudsman laying reports before the House of Commons, its committee of privileges said in a report published yesterday.

Committee members called on the commission’s board, which backed the legal action, to take responsibility for the contempt and apologise to the Commons “forthwith”. MPs must now decide whether to back the committee’s findings and recommendations.

Dame Julia Unwin

Dame Julia Unwin, who has been chair of the Charity Commission since the beginning of this year, said in response:

We accept the committee’s report in full and apologise unreservedly. We should not, in hindsight, have persisted in challenging through the courts the laying of the two reports before parliament. We regret those decisions and are taking time to carefully review the committee’s report and consider the lessons we need to learn.

We anticipate that parliament will formally debate the committee’s report in due course, but in the meantime we — the board and chief executive — will be making immediate apologies to the House [of Commons].

Background

The story began with two separate complaints to the commission, each going back more than six years.

One involved a claim by Damian Murray, 67, that the Charity Commission had failed to respond properly to his serious allegations regarding the possible concealment of child sexual abuse by a charity that founded and ran a college. The ombudsman, Paula Sussex CBE, ruled in his favour in January last year.

The other involved a claim by Lara Hall, 37, that the commission failed to respond appropriately to her concerns about her sexual exploitation by a trustee at a UK charity. The ombudsman ruled in her favour in May 2024.

In each case, the Charity Commission apologised to the complainants and paid them compensation.

But the ombudsman — whose statutory title is parliamentary commissioner for administration — decided that the injustices caused to them had not been remedied. She proposed laying before parliament what are called special reports on the two cases, using her statutory powers. The commission objected, arguing that the ombudsman had exceeded her jurisdiction, and issued legal proceedings against her in May 2025.

Before the case could be heard, MPs decided that a report on Murray’s complaint and a report on Hall’s complaint should be published under protection of parliamentary privilege. That was done last September. At the same time, MPs asked the privileges committee to consider the actions of the Charity Commission in bringing legal proceedings to prevent the ombudsman publishing her reports.

At the High Court in February, counsel for the House of Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle asked Mr Justice Fordham to hold that the commission should be refused permission to apply for judicial review. In the speaker’s view, the claim was both academic and non-justiciable.

Permission to apply for judicial review was refused in March. The judge said:

My decision is that the claim is academic and should not be entertained; that in any event the legal merits are unarguable; and that considerations of non-justiciability support the decision about not entertaining an academic claim.

The Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee, which supervises the ombudsman’s work, took oral evidence last month and will report in due course.

Committee’s findings

In its report yesterday, the privileges committee concluded that an attempt to prevent the laying of a paper before one or both houses of parliament was capable of being a contempt. Whether or not a contempt had been committed would depend on the context.

Next, it concluded that special reports laid before parliament under section 10(3) of the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 amounted to proceedings in parliament.

Turning to the actions of the Charity Commission, the committee said:

It could not be clearer that the Charity Commission sought to prevent or delay the laying of special reports in relation to [Miss Hall] and [Mr Murray] before parliament in which the [ombudsman] set out what she considers to be remaining and unremediated injustice. In short, a non-ministerial government department has sought to prevent parliament from receiving reports that criticise its behaviour.

Whatever the commission’s concerns about the [ombudsman] and [her] remit, the obstruction of provision of information to parliament is wholly unacceptable. We are surprised the action was ever considered or taken and more surprised that the Charity Commission persisted in its approach after being contacted by speaker’s counsel.

The commission’s chief executive, David Holdsworth, had told the committee “it was never the intention for parliament not to see the information”. So had Mark Simms, the interim chair. But, said the committee in its report yesterday:

as the Charity Commission’s pre-action letter specifically seeks to quash the decision to provide parliament with the information, these statements are patently untrue. Mr Holdsworth should apologise to the house for repeatedly saying that the commission’s legal action was not intended to quash the laying of the reports when that was precisely its purpose.

And this was the committee’s recommendation to the House of Commons:

It is our view that the Charity Commission clearly committed a contempt of parliament in seeking through legal action to prevent the parliamentary commissioner for administration from laying special reports before the house. The board of the commission, which backed the legal action, should take responsibility for that contempt and should apologise to the house forthwith.

As I reported in March, the Charity Commission saw itself as a regulator that had encountered a would-be super-regulator breathing down its neck and telling it what to do. But it failed to see the full parliamentary implications of its legal action and now admits getting this wrong. It has commissioned Sir Gary Hickinbottom, a former appeal judge and current president of Welsh tribunals, to review its decision-making in these cases.