Charities Suffer From APPG Rule Changes
2 min read
Charities are struggling to adapt to the “very difficult” process of establishing an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) following recent rule changes.
New rules for APPGs came into effect on 31 March, after a Standards Committee inquiry into their transparency and susceptibility to influence.
Each APPG must now have exactly four officers, no more and no fewer, and two of these must be from the House of Commons. MPs can now serve as officers on a maximum of six APPGs, and APPGs must have at least 20 members. No APPG secretariat is allowed to be provided or funded by foreign governments.
According to the latest register of APPGs, updated on 9 October, there are currently 138 APPGs. Before the general election, 553 APPGs were in operation. By comparison, in February 2020, soon after the 2019 election, 355 APPGs had already been founded.
Charities have been left frustrated by the rule changes. Vanessa Hebditch, director of policy at the British Liver Trust, said that while they don’t know the “full impact” of the reforms, early signs suggest it is now “more challenging to set up APPGs” and to “secure the necessary officers needed to meet the new requirements”.
She added that the British Liver Trust is a “relatively small charity tackling a huge issue” and none of its APPG members from the previous parliament were re-elected.
Julie Wootton, chair of Max Appeal, a charity helping those living with 22q11/DiGeorge Syndrome, said a 74-page document outlining the changed rules had been “very difficult” for a small charity like hers to manage, and that the “constant sea of changes” will see APPGs “wither”.
The new rules also require one Labour Party and one main opposition officer to sit on each APPG. Sharon Hodgson, Labour MP for Washington and Gateshead South, told PoliticsHome that identifying a Conservative MP who is willing and has space on their card to be an officer is difficult – a “weird consequence” of there being only 121 Conservative MPs.
Hodgson added that some of the APPGs the Standards Committee were “trying to curb in the first place” survived, whereas some of the smaller ones have “just been wiped out”.
PoliticsHome Newsletters
PoliticsHome provides the most comprehensive coverage of UK politics anywhere on the web, offering high quality original reporting and analysis: Subscribe
