Today I am publishing a consultation on strengthening the Charity Commission for England and Wales’ ability to tackle extremist and other abuse of charities.

As part of the government’s efforts to tackle extremism, the government intends to enhance the powers available to the Charity Commission to disqualify individuals from acting as a trustee and senior manager of a charity and extend the situations in which an individual is automatically disqualified from acting in those roles.

The Charity Commission already has a range of powers and takes robust action in cases of extremist abuse. Such instances cause significant harm to the charitable sector, so it is vital that the Charity Commission has all the tools it needs to tackle the abuse of charities, including by those who promote extremist ideologies. During 2025-26 the Commission’s specialist team dealing with terrorism, extremism and state-threat issues made a total of 656 disclosures to police and other agencies, issued 7 disqualification Orders (suspending a further 7 trustees pending consideration of their removal or disqualification), and issued 29 Official Warnings.

These draft regulations will help protect charities from malign influence by:

Automatically disqualifying individuals with unspent hate crime convictions.

Automatically disqualifying individuals with unspent convictions for national security offences.

Automatically disqualifying individuals with unspent convictions for providing false information to the Charity Commission.

The draft regulations will also strengthen the Charity Commission’s power to tackle extremist abuse of the charity sector by:

Strengthening the Charity Commission’s ability to disqualify individuals who promote or encourage violence or racial and religious hatred.

Strengthening the Charity Commission’s ability to disqualify individuals who have been deprived of their British citizenship or excluded from the UK

The consultation will be open for a total of 10 weeks and will close on 23rd December 2026. We are publishing draft regulations and a draft Impact Assessment alongside this consultation. I will place a copy of these documents in the Libraries of both Houses. We are seeking views from a wide range of stakeholders, including individuals in the charity sector and those with lived experience of convictions; responses will be critical to informing what final decisions are taken with regards to the Charity Commission’s powers. These final decisions will be outlined in a response, which we will publish once analysis of responses to the consultation is complete.

We hope that many people will take the time to respond to the consultation. I will provide an update to the House on the response to the consultation in due course.

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wms/?id=2026-10-14.hcws375.0