The charity regulator should stay as far as possible out of debates about “wokeness”, the government’s preferred candidate to head the watchdog has told MPs, saying he does not believe charities are too political.
Martin Thomas told MPs on the Commons culture select committee that the Charity Commission should be firmly independent of government, and he saw no need to change the rules around political campaigning by charities.
Thomas’s appointment has come under particular scrutiny amid widespread concern in the voluntary sector that ministers wanted to appoint a pro-Tory chair. The previous commission chair, Tina Stowell, a former Conservative politician, was criticised by some for drawing charities into “culture wars”.
Thomas, when asked by the Conservative MP Damian Green during a pre-appointment scrutiny session on Thursday whether parts of the charitable sector had “become too political”, replied: “No, I don’t.”
He told MPs he thought charity boards should be more diverse. “It’s very important that it [a trustee role] should not be an extra feather that you put in your cap as a result of being a part of the establishment or middle-class life. It should be something that is for everyone.”
Thomas is a finance and insurance professional and chair of several charities. These include the Forward Arts Foundation, which is responsible for the promotion and enjoyment of poetry in the UK and runs National Poetry Day. He has no declared political activity.
The commission has been at the centre of several recent political and media controversies involving high-profile charities accused of “woke behaviour” and playing politics, including the National Trust, Barnardo’s, and the Runnymede Trust.
Each was exonerated by the commission after complaints by Tory MPs. In the case of the National Trust, the commission concluded it had acted “legally and responsibly at all times” in commissioning academic research into links between some of its country houses and the UK’s history of colonialism and slavery.
In September the then culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, caused a row when he published an article saying the next commission chair should be someone committed to tackling charities “hijacked by a vocal minority seeking to burnish their woke credentials”.
Thomas, when asked by the Labour MP Clive Efford what he thought of Dowden’s article, said it was unnecessary and trite. “The core point, if you take the rhetoric away, is that charities should be chaired by someone who believes charities should stay aligned to their charitable purposes,” he said. “That’s true, but it is also trite. It is of course the case that charities must stay live to their charitable purposes. To overlay that truth with dialogue about ‘woke’ or ‘anti-woke’ is extremely complicated because these are loose terms used in the debate about society, and they have no place in a regulatory dialogue or conversation.”
Guidance, backed up by law, already made it clear charities could not support or be part of any political party but were able to “engage in the political debate of the day to the extent that it furthers their purposes”, Thomas said. “While I wouldn’t want to be accused on its behalf of being complacent, I think the regime we have is the right regime.”
In 2018 the culture select committee refused to approve Lady Stowell for the role of commission chair but ministers appointed her anyway. Explaining the committee’s decision at Thursday’s hearing, the chair, Julian Knight, said: “The reason your predecessor did not pass muster is she gave probably the worst interview I have seen in 30 years of professional life.”
