What is a charity? Is it a private school that gives children of the well-off
an expensive education? For the past 400 years, we, as a society, have
answered yes. But now one woman has come along to change all that.
Dame Suzi Leather, whose icy-blue eyes have a determined glint, is about to
redraw the rules, dramatically changing the status quo of Britain’s middle
classes, as she forces changes on private schools and hospitals.
“Same as every other charity in the land, they will have to show that they
bring public benefit . . . including to people on low incomes,” said Dame
Suzi, head of the Charity Commission. “There’s a level playing field for
everyone now.”
If her words sound political – reminiscent perhaps of the more right-on
members of the Labour Party – that is no accident. The Government changed
the law, scrapping the automatic charitable status of private schools,
hospitals and religious organisations. But it then, rather cannily, left it
up to Dame Suzi to work out what that means. How many hoops must be jumped
through, how many poor customers to pay for, to earn back charitable status
and all the perks that go with it. Private schools alone get £100 million in
charitable tax breaks – and are terrified at what she will come up with.
It is one of the hottest of political potatoes, handed to an unknown and
unelected head of a dull-sounding regulator. But if Labour wanted Dame Suzi
to wage a class war on its behalf, it may have not quite got what it
bargained for.
Speaking from her London office, with a view of Parliament in the background,
she said: “You can’t drive changes in education policy through charitable
status.” That will be news to ministers trying to do just that.
“I know lots of people have lots of ambitions for what will be done as a
result of the public benefit changes,” Dame Suzi said. “But essentially we
are concerned with charity law and charitable status. So in the same way
that we are not trying to secularise British society and drive religious
organisations out of charitable status – that is absolutely not our
intention – in the same way, nor I think can we be trying to achieve
political changes that rightly belong to the political arena and ministers
and government departments.”
Was it right that the politicians copped out, leaving the unelected head of a
quango with such sensitive judgments?
“I do think it’s right to have an independent organisation doing that.”
Why? “Well, I don’t think you can take the politics out of the status of
independent schools. I think there is sense in taking the party politics out
of it. But there’s indisputably a political, with a small ‘p’.”
It’s a very fine distinction. Politicians from the Right as well as the Left
have seized this opportunity – the final guidelines on schools, hospitals
and religious groups will come out next year – to suggest that independent
schools, to the horror of many of them, might be forced to go much farther
in sharing facilities with state schools.
Meanwhile, many private schools have been hurriedly putting on open days for
local children in the hope that it will be enough to stop them going out of
business. Dame Suzi was pretty stern about that kind of sop. “In the end, we
will be presented with evidence upon which we will have to make a judgment,”
she said. “It’s difficult to see how opening up a school playing field for
one Sunday afternoon a year could in any way come close to justifying
charitable status. So in a sense that’s a no-brainer. But it’s going to be a
difficult and contested territory which will go, inevitably to the charity
tribunal. And I welcome that.”
And from there, on to the courts. When we asked her what kind of thing schools
should be doing to avoid that, she demurred from the details, but an example
that springs to her mind is quite an extreme one. She cites St Paul’s boys’
school in London, which has said that it will try to build up a sufficiently
large bursary fund that it can go “needs-blind” within 25 years, admitting
boys entirely regardless of income.
“That’s clearly a really important demonstration of commitment to improved
public benefits.”
Come next year then, will the public notice a change?
“Yes I think you will notice,” she said. “Because I think that charities,
particularly fee-charging charities, will be keen to demonstrate their
accessibility to people on low incomes. They will be reaching out more
visibly.”
In ways such as adverts? “Yes, I think so.” And private hospitals will, too,
be caught by the new rules. “You could have a private hospital that was
bringing no public benefit.”
All of which would appear to be lining up Dame Suzi to be one of the most
unpopular people in England in a year’s time – at least among a vocal
constituency of middle-class people struggling to go private. She smiled. “I
quite like doing difficult things”; these knotty problems were one of the
reasons why she took the job last year.
And yet, she has a surprising twist on this particularly difficult thing: she
isn’t going to make any of the judgments on individual private schools –
whether they have passed the public benefit test or not – herself.
“The decisions that will be made about independent schools are decisions that
I cannot personally take part in.”
Why? Because her daughter, the last of her three children still in school,
goes to a private school near their home in Exeter.
“So clearly that’s a conflict of interest.”
Is it really? Wouldn’t having a child at a state school be a conflict of
interest too? Instead, John Williams, a commissioner on the Charity
Commission, will be in charge. For the record, he and all his children went
to private schools. But Dame Suzi reckons that, since she is still paying
fees, that counts as a financial interest: “We’re very strict on conflicts.”
She was educated privately until she switched to a comprehensive school for
the sixth form. It was an unusual jump, and her career path has been
similarly unconventional, and marked by a big hole in her CV.
There she was, experimenting with job after job, market research, probation
officer, politics lecturer, three different degrees, when she stopped work
for ten years to become a full-time mother. It made sense, she said, as at
the time she was earning less than her husband, a politics lecturer. She did
a bit of freelance consumer work while she raised the children.
Then suddenly, she was catapulted straight into public life: chairwoman of an
NHS trust, and from there, head of some of the country’s most prominent
public bodies: deciding on everything from food safety to IVF. How did she
manage that: from housewife to Dame in less than ten years?
“Some very courageous appointment panels!” she laughed, and then, more
reflectively: “Choose your husband extremely carefully . . . a lot of the
glass ceiling is at home.”
You can see the appeal that Dame Suzi, who is 51, has for appointment panels:
she looks glamorous in TV press conferences, and is also considered to
exercise sound – if somewhat tending to the bold and progressive – judgment
behind closed committee-room doors.
And looking back now on her strange assortment of jobs and lack of jobs, it
all makes a kind of sense. From her time volunteering – as an unpaid
homemaker and, before that, for the Probation Service – she is evangelical
about its selfish benefits.
“At an individual level and collectively I think charities complete us,” she
said. “There is something about – at least there was for me – the kind of
befriending aspect of being a volunteer in the Probation Service, which
meant so much to somebody on the receiving end. Why are you here? Because I
want to be. I’m not here because I’m paid to be or I’m expected to be. I’m
simply here as a gift. And that is a completely different quality of
relationship.”
When she then went on to train as a paid probation officer, the experience
palled, and she moved jobs again. What connected all these threads? We had
stumbled, haltingly, across the idea of a parallel political universe, one
largely staffed by women, running from the women’s movement through consumer
interest groups to the social and voluntary sectors.
“If you exclude people from formal ways of doing things they find informal
outlets for trying to have the same impact,” she suggested cautiously. “And
I think that’s what happens to excluded people whether they are, at a
certain stage in our history, women or any other minorities.”
She became very thoughtful, choosing her words as carefully as she once chose
her husband.
“I think there is something terribly important about listening to what people
are saying, not what you want them to say or you think you would be saying
in the same circumstances.
“And that’s what I think the women’s movement was very good at, and I think
it’s also partly what the consumer movement tries to do.”
This then, is the value of her chequered CV. “I think an underlying theme is
there’s something about being comfortable with sitting slightly on the edge
of something, slightly outside.”
She may find that the hard decisions and ferocious arguments of the next few
years – school against politician, hospital against quango, religious group
against court – will propel her, whether she likes it or not, absolutely
centre stage.
Curriculum Vitae
- Born on April 5, 1956. After Tavistock School, Devon, studied politics at
Exeter University then trained in social work and probation. She has an MA
from the University of Leicester
- Spent much of her career in the consumer movement, including the Consumers
in Europe Group
- She has held 30 public offices, including chairmanship of School Food Trust
and the Exeter and District Community NHS Trust
- As chairwoman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority she made a
number of controversial statements, including: “There is more to life than
having children.” Backed the use of IVF for lesbian couples
- Appointed as chairwoman of Charity Commission last August, a few months
before the new Charities Act came into force. She was appointed MBE in 1994
and DBE last year
Sources: Times archive, Charity Commission website
