LONDON (Parliament Politics Magazine) – After choosing a former Tory party candidate with ties to a rightwing thinktank as its preferred choice for the chair of the charities’ watchdog, the government has been accused of “looking after their own.”
Ministers have bypassed due process in favour of another Conservative loyalist by proposing to promote Orlando Fraser, a founding fellow of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), to the chair of the Charity Commission, according to Labour.
The charity sector was likewise hesitant about the pick, with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations expressing disappointment that ministers had failed to appoint someone “with full political independence.”
When Fraser meets before the parliamentary committee charged with scrutinising public appointments in the coming weeks, he is sure to be grilled. The committee is already enraged at the “shambles” of the appointment process, which has left the commission without a chair for over a year.
The chair of the Charity Commission is an essential post, and the public must have confidence that this function is independent, not party political, and that there are no conflicts of interest in the investigations the Commission conducts, Labour’s shadow culture secretary, Lucy Powell MP, said. Instead, it’s again another case of the Conservatives looking out for their own.
Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, chose Fraser after her first choice, Martin Thomas, quit four days before his scheduled start date in December due to a controversy regarding his former administration of a women’s charity. Before choosing Fraser, she does not appear to have reopened the appointment process.
Last year, the charity watchdog post was dragged into a political “culture wars” controversy after the outgoing culture minister, Oliver Dowden, warned the next chair should be prepared to investigate charities that engage in “woke” and “political” activities.
From 2013 until 2017, Fraser served on the board of the Charity Commission, which was criticised by the charity sector for its apparent politicisation under Sir William Shawcross. Several members of the board were alleged to have close links to rightwing thinktanks and Tory MPs.
After the commission’s attempt to restrict UK charity foundations from funding Cage, an advocacy organisation that supports persons accused of terrorism, was challenged in court, Fraser was named in the case. With Cage contending that the commission had overstepped its regulatory powers, the commission retracted its intended prohibition.
Fraser, a commercial barrister, ran for the Conservative Party in north Devon in the year 2005 but was defeated. Following that, he assisted in the writing of the CSJ’s Breakdown Britain report, which became a model for Tory policy on the voluntary sector. No party political participation has been declared by him in the past five years.
Fraser is the son of author Lady Antonia Fraser and the late Tory MP Sir Hugh Fraser, and was educated at Ampleforth School and Cambridge University. His grandfather was the late jail reformer and Labour peer Lord Longford, and his stepfather was the playwright Harold Pinter. He is married to Winston Churchill’s great-granddaughter, Clemmie Hambro.
