Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. I will be brief; I want specifically to speak in favour of Amendment 8, given that I raised this issue at Second Reading. I should declare my position as vice-president of the National Association of Local Councils. I agree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said. I have just one point to add. As the noble Baroness was speaking, I was thinking about a recent visit to Shropshire. A whole lot of town and parish council leaders and councillors were gathered in a room and talking about all the projects that their councils were running. One of the things I thought about were the photos and slides that were being shown, and how much volunteer effort was involved in the projects being displayed. The money is spent by town and parish councils because they are close to, and there in, the community. Often, it is a community effort to install the bug hotel in the allotments or to put up swift boxes around towns—all sorts of things that many people get involved in on a voluntary level. In taking money away from that, the multiplier effect is much greater. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said, we are talking about a tiny sum of money in central government terms but something that is hugely consequential in communities up and down the land. I spoke at some length on charities earlier but there are two specific points that I want to make. I mentioned earlier—the Minister did not respond to me on this—the idea of having a one-year delay for charities so that they have time to work out both the budget and ways to deal with the rise in national insurance; this was something that both the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Lord, Lord Randall, raised. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister about that point regarding a delay specifically for charities. I wish to pick up the point from the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, about complexity. An organisation either is or is not a charity. That would be a really simple way to see this, involving low paperwork. Complexity would be easy to introduce; for a small or medium-sized enterprise or something, it might be more complicated. I do not think, I am afraid, that anyone can compete with the Green Party on our views on simplification because we want to roll together income tax, national insurance and capital gains tax. If that were the case, the Green Minister would not be over there: we would be going through this in one day in the House—provided it was still constituted as it is now when we got to that stage.