Report of the Committee on the Law and Practice Relating to Charitable Trusts [Cmd. 8710]
| Date | 01 July 1953 |
| Published date | 01 July 1953 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1953.tb02126.x |
REPORTS
OF
COMMITTEES
REPORT
OF
THE
COMMIT~%E
ON
THE
LAW
AND
PRACTICE -TINO
TO
CHARITABLE
TRUSTS
[CMD.
87101
As
a
student and
a
teacher of law before the war
I
had some
nodding acquaintance with the law
a8
it affected chanties, largely,
it
must be confessed, in three relatively watertight compartments.
My knowledge of Real Property made me realise that there were
certain restrictions on the powers of
a
charity to receive and hold
land and in my study of Equity
I
had naturally been fascinated by
the judicial decisions, of which the Delphic Oracle might well have
been proud, from which the legal profession was expected
to
divine when
a
charity was
a
charity and when
it
was not.
Mom
over, my interest in Administrative Law had led me to realise
that there was
a
body of persons called the Charity Commissioners
who seemed to have been doing for quite
a
long time some of the
things to which Lord Hewart and his merry men objected. The
sphere of action of the Commissioners, however, seemed shrouded
in obscurity and that seemed to be the reason why so
far
they had
escaped the thunderbolts of Jove.
When
I
joined the Administrative Staff of the University of
London,
I
soon discovered that, while the University itself and two
of its largest colleges, which had been incorporated into the Univer-
sity by private Acts of
1905
and
1908,
were exempt from the
Charitable Trusts Acts, the remainder
of
our
colleges were not.
And
so
began
a
series of skirmishes on their behalf with the
Ministry
of Education to which jurisdiction over educational charities
had been transferred by Orders
in
Council under the Education Act
of
1899.
From the hit-and-miss nature of
our
encounters, however,
it became very clear that the law governing the administration of
charities was very much
a
law of imperfect obligation. But
in
1948
the calm was shattered by the decision in
Re
No.
12
Regent
Street,'
in which, at the instance of the Chief Land Registrar,
Mr.
Justice Jenkins decided that section
87
(2)
of the Education
Act.
1944,
differed materially from its predecessors and really
meant that all conveyances of land to educational charities were
void unless registered with the Ministry of Education within six
months. Then, in
1949,
the Attorney-General successfully opposed
the attempt of Royal Holloway College,
a
full constituent college
of the University of London, to obtain immunity from the Charit-
able Trusts Acts in
a
private Bill which it was promoting. The
appointment of the Nathan Committee
was
indeed the
deus
ex
machincl.
of what looked like becoming
a
tragedy.
1
[I9481
Ch.
735.
848
844
THE
YODEBN
LAW
BEVIEW
VOL.
16
My experience, therefore, leads me to endorse without reservation
“The statute law
of
charitable trusts
. .
.
now presents tc
lay trustees and, we may add, to not
a
few of their professional
advisers, an impenetrable jungle.
”
It
h
makes me appreciate the courage with which the Committee
has approached this tangled problem, the clarity with which it has
andysed the past and the present law
on
the subject and the
conciseness with which
it
has formulated the remedies.
To
be
sure, there had beexi
a
“John the Baptist” at work
bef~he.
The
publication by Lord Beveridge in
1948
of
Voluntary
Action
and
of
the volume
of
supporting evidence in the following
yeu had demonstrated beyond peradventure that the law relating
to
charitable trusts needed rethinking and reconsidering as a whole.
Perhaps
it
is
not ungracious to suggest that these books suggested
to
the
Nathan Committee the desirability of attacking its task
by
&st considering
the
value of the work
of
charities in the modern
Social
structure. Despite the scope of the powers and duties of the
Central Government and
of
Local Authorities in the field
of
the
Social
Services which are impressively summarised in Appendix
I
to
the
Majority Report, the Committee
came
unhesitatingly to the
conclusion that the community stood in as much need of voluntary
service
as ever
it
did
in
the past though, clearly, there was a need
of
new powers
to
enable charities to use their resources with greater
advantage
to
meet the changed needs of the present.
At
this
stage, some statistics may be of assistance (para-
graph
546).
Neither the Charity Commissioners nor the Ministry
of
Education could give accwate figures
of
the number of
charitable and educational trusts but estimated the totals at
80,OOO
and
80,000
respectimly.
Of
these
110,OOO
trusts,
the statement of the Committee (paragraph
108)
that-
(a)
a
quarter are a hundred years old or more;
(b) between onethird and two-thirds have an annual value of
(c)
less than
80,000
trusts
returned accounta
to
the Charity
(d)
the total
stock
and
securities held is estimated at
(e) the total value
of
the land held is unknown.
The
Committee provides a brilliant summary
of
the history
of
the law and practice relating
to
charities in a mere fifteen pages
(pp.
18-80).
After
attempts at much-needed reform at the
beginning
of
the nineteenth century, the Charitable TruRts Acts
of
1858
and
1855
created the Charity Commissioners, an independent
body
not responsible to a Minister of the Crown, which was given
full
advisory and supervisory powers over endowed charities,
i.e.,
charities the capital
of
which has
to
be preserved and which can use
only their income. Those powers included the right to require
the
submission
of
accounts and
to
control dealings in land.
In
E25
or
less;
Commissioners
or
the
Itfinistry
of
Education
in
1951
;
€100,000,000
;
To continue reading
Request your trial