Privileges Committee hears all sides over Charity Commission breaching Parliamentary privilege on Ombudsman’s sex abuse reports
A rare but virtually unreported public hearing by the Privileges Committee on Budget Day revealed a sharp divide between the Parliamentary Ombudsman and the Charity Commission over the role of charities in safeguarding children and adults who have been sexually abused.
The hearing was sparked off by Parliament unanimously reporting the Charity Commission to the Privileges Committee after Stephen Hoare, the chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, decided the Commission had breached Parliamentary privilege by wanting to delay publication of the reports until after a judicial hearing being called by the Commission. I did a report here .
The reports which Parliament compelled the Ombudsman to publish with final conclusions covering complaints of a recent adult sex abuse case – Miss A – and a historic child sexual abuse at a school -Mr U.
Mr U later contacted my blog and waived his anonymity to give me a detailed account of what had happened at a Roman Catholic school in Blackburn when it was run by a paedophile priest. The blog about this is here.
Saira Salimi, the Speaker’s Counsel
The hearing began with a statement on the issue from Saira Salimi, the Speaker’s Counsel.
She told the hearing: “This is quite a difficult case, because it does raise difficult questions about
the relationship between parliamentary and legal accountability. There is a power conferring a discretion on a public authority to report in certain circumstances, and the report is made to Parliament. Although it looks at first glance like a function that might be reviewable by the courts, the interaction of parliamentary and legal accountability may mean that the decision is not justiciable.”
She said that if the issue of privilege had not been the raised the Parliamentary Ombudsman would have been inhibited from laying the reports before Parliament.
She added:” this is an unusual case where Parliament and the courts are on the same territory at the
same time. That is not unprecedented but is unusual, because of the self denying ordinance that the House normally maintains in relation to matters before the courts under the sub judice resolution. It is my hope that our intervention in this case will assist both the courts and Parliament in carrying out their respective roles, which are constitutionally distinct ands equally important.”
Karl Banister, Director of Operations, Legal and Clinical and Deputy Ombudsman at Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO). gave evidence.
He told MPs: “the[ charity] commission should have an independent person review Mr U’s case to consider whether the reasoning was adequately accounted for; consider whether the outcome would have been different; look for learning on how it engages in such cases;[and] look at
its risk guidance;” Similar recommendations were made in Miss A’s case.
It is these recommendations that the Charity Commission is objecting to and says that the Ombudsman exceeded her powers and that such recommendations are unlawful.
He revealed considerable attempts were made at mediating the dispute.
“My assessment was that it was better not to provoke the commission to issue legal proceedings. It is obviously unattractive for two public bodies to be litigating. Were they to do so, they would likely get an injunction, and that would be an additional cost to the public purse.”
However in the end the Charity Commission decided to go ahead with a judicial review. it said:”“a declaration that the decision of 14 March 2025 is unlawful”—that is, our decision that it was
not compliant—“that the 14 March decision is quashed, that the defendant pay the claimant’s cost of the claim or any other order the court considers appropriate. That is what the judicial review sought.”
The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee were informed and the Parliamentary Ombudsman stuck to its point that the Charity Commission had not fully complied with decision. It was then taken out of their hands and Mr Hoare, the committee chair, decided to raise the privilege issue and compel the reports to be published so the committee could consider them.
David Holdswoth, chief executive of the Charity Commission
The Charity Commission brought a team of people to hearing headed by the chief executive David Holdsworth.
He told MPs:”The decision of the PHSO in its letter of 14 March—that we should reinvestigate criminal matters already investigated by the police, the CPS or the wider criminal justice system but deemed not able to proceed—has grave implications, in our view, for anyone involved in running a charity and, indeed, for wider citizens’ rights under the criminal justice process.
It is also our view that the ombudsman cannot retake regulatory decisions made by the commission to force a different conclusion, replacing our judgment with its own. It is for those reasons that we reluctantly sought to clarify matters through the courts.”
It soon became clear – and this was reinforced during the national Child Sex Abuse inquiry – that the commission regards the Commission as primarily an administrative and registration authority not an investigatory authority.
It was also clear MPs and the Speaker’s Counsel thought that the matter could have been cleared up at a meeting of the PACAC committee without going to the courts.
But Felix Rechtman, head of litigation at the commission said:”: We are not saying that the PHSO decision is just inappropriate. We go further: we say it is unlawful, and matters of law are
reserved to the courts under our constitutional arrangement.”
It is quite clear this issue is going to run and run. The courts have not given the Charity Commission a date for a judicial review hearing yet. The commission will first have to get permission to bring the judicial review and then have a hearing. The next stage will be the Privileges Committee report on whether the Commission has committed a contempt of the House.
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