Private schools improve charity chances
10 Mar 05
"Overriding purpose" amendment to Charities Bill defeated
Scotland's independent schools yesterday won a stage in their battle to retain charity status under new legislation passing through the Holyrood Parliament.
An amendment to the Charities Bill supported by the SNP and Scottish Socialists, that would have required any organisation seeking charitable status to establish an "overriding purpose" of providing public benefit, was defeated.
Schools will still each have to prove individually to the charities regulator that they provide a public benefit to the wider community. There are fears that some smaller schools may have difficulty crossing this threshold, but the independent schools' council yesterday accepted that this was a reasonable requirement.
Communities Minister Malcolm Chisholm said in the debate: "The bill does not make judgments about specific types of charity, but seeks to provide a robust test against which all charities can be judged.
"It is a key principle that all charities should have to prove that they provide public benefit before they can access the substantial benefits of charitable status."