It is hard to keep up with the endless idiocy pouring out of party conference season. But one idea that hasn't had much attention yet comes from the sometimes perfectly sensible Justine Greening. She has announced plans to provide "match funding" for various aid projects.
This means, as the Independent puts it, that in the "run up to the next election" some £120m will be spent by the government on contributing to charity appeals. But that is to be only the beginning: "eventually Dfid expects to roll out the scheme to much smaller charity appeals including for instance those run by local churches and Rotary Clubs".
The idea here, says Greening, is that the government will be "taking the aid priorities of the public" and making them theirs too. That sounds nice. But it is, of course, ludicrous.
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For starters, the government already chucks absurd amounts of money into the charity pie every year. Gift aid already costs the UK Treasury over £1bn every year. That's £1bn that the average taxpayer didn't ask to contribute to other people's pet projects, and £1bn that the average taxpayer also has to come up with via the payment of yet more ludicrous taxes.
It's also not all the exchequer loses to charity don't forget that charities pay no income tax or CGT on their investment gains. That adds up too. Every penny that goes out in tax relief or match funding for charity is a penny that isn't available to pay for the core services we like to think we pay our taxes for (schools, infrastructure, the health service, etc). So why on earth put more in?
There are lots of fabulous charities in the UK. There are also lots of truly terrible and utterly pointless ones. We'd be much better off if, as a nation, we want to contribute to the likes of the World Food Programme if we skipped the nonsense and complications of gift aid and matching, cancel all relief to most charities, and have the state directly support the programmes it prioritises. You can read my past blogs on this matter here, here, and here.
PS As I have said before, if we must have tax relief on charity giving (and I really don't think we should) it is, I think, time to distinguish between what is a charity that fits into the brief of the state, and should therefore be considered a deserving charity, and what is not.
Soup kitchens? Yes. Cancer research? Mostly. Literary festivals? No. Opera? No. Theatre? No. The Brownies? No. Youth clubs in deprived inner cities? Yes. Donkeys? No. Red Squirrels? No. Think tanks? No. Save the Rhino? No. Private schools? No (a voucher scheme would be better). Personal/family foundations? No. Horse Sancturies? No. You get the idea.
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