Orlando Fraser’s views on “political think tanks”

As a former Board Member of the Charity Commission, I have serious reservations about the article By the current Chair of the Commission in The Times yesterday about “political think tanks”, for the following reasons:
https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/charity-commission-chair-rejects-calls-for-think-tanks-to-lose-charity-status.html?utm_source=New+Main+List+From+Live+CIVIL+Site&utm_campaign=f836c42bc6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_03_13_01_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-f836c42bc6-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Firstly, the headline “Yes, the political think tanks deserve their charitable status”, and the ensuing text, gloss over the crucial legal principle that no charity can have a political purpose (as defined by the Charity Commission). Their purpose must be exclusively charitable.

Secondly, you’d hardly notice from this article that several political think tanks are not charities, for the excellent reason that their purpose is partly political or that they don’t offer charitable education, but controversial and one-sided polemics instead.

Thirdly, it is wrong to treat think tanks as if they are all the same. Those that have the advancement of education as their charitable object are bound by the Commission’s guidance as to what charitable education must be – reasonably balanced, neutral, showing the different sides of an argument so that readers can draw their own conclusions. It is a serious matter if any charitable think tank supposedly advancing education breaches this guidance. Promoting controversial, predetermined positions is not charitable education.

Fourthly, it is not enough as the Chair states that think tanks should avoid inappropriate political activity or actually “endorsing” a political party. The core point is that they must not have even a partly political purpose. And even if they don’t, they must be reasonably even handed in their relationships with different political parties.

Fifthly, each think tank should be considered on its own individual merits, and generalisations about them as a class are dangerous. If any think tank appears to be in breach of charity law and the Commission’s own guidance, people are right to complain to the Commission, and should expect a rigorous response based on the law, not on some generalised assumption that a think tank is a good thing. Any charity must deserve to be a charity and abide by the rules of charity law and the Charity Commission. How weird that the Chair of the Commission should gloss so smoothly over these important considerations.

Sixthly, the Commission’s new strategy emphasises fairness. And it isn’t fair either to those political think tanks that are not charities, nor to the vast majority of educational think tanks that abide carefully by the rules, if there are one or two think tanks whose purpose is partly political and who make a mockery of the Commission’s own guidance on the true nature of charitable education.