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Charities Bill [HL]

My Lords, I understand what the Minister is driving at here and I do not want to strike a sour note at this hour. I am concerned about how one decides what are ““appropriate cases””. My original objective in pressing for the inclusion of the desirability of facilitating innovation was to ensure that the Charity Commission, with its new role and powers, did not put the voluntary sector into an unnecessary straitjacket. As I have said several times in the past, regulation is by its very nature risk averse—I have been a regulator in the City myself and I know how quickly one becomes risk averse. By contrast, the voluntary sector needs to be flexible and innovative to meet the needs of our rapidly changing society. It is interesting that the Better Regulation Task Force has just produced a booklet called Better Regulation for Civil Society: Making life easier for those who help others. Page 20, which is about social innovation, says:"““Regulation is often based on standard service models and can therefore threaten social innovation by those VCOs that provide innovative services, for example to people with complex and multiple needs that other organisations frequently cannot meet. For example, social care is regulated because of market failure. This means that people receiving social care often have imperfect information on what care is available and its quality. They also have little purchasing power to exercise choice. It would clearly be unwelcome if some kind of ‘one-size-fits-all’ social care regulation were to prevent VCOs from developing and providing innovative care and greater choice.””" That is the sort of thing that I was concerned about. With the original clause, I did not think that risk-averse box-ticking would prevail over the need to think creatively. With these slightly weasel words ““appropriate cases””—who decides it?—I am not so sure. So although I understand what the Minister is driving at, I would like him to reassure me further about how this subsection will be exercised.