Author: Pulse Assent

Mark Field, Minister for Asia and the Pacific, said:

I am extremely disappointed that two Reuters journalists in Burma, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, have today been found guilty and sentenced to seven years imprisonment for nothing more than doing their jobs. They provided valuable reporting on abhorrent human rights violations in Rakhine State, and I have consistently called for their immediate release, including directly with the Burmese government.

In any democracy, journalists must be free to carry out their jobs without fear or intimidation. This verdict has undermined both freedom of the media and the rule of law in Burma. Officials from the British Embassy in Rangoon have attended the trial throughout, and believe that the judge has ignored the evidence presented to him, as well as ruling against Burma’s own laws.

This is a bad day for Burma, but those of us who have consistently called for Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo’s freedom will not give up. We call again today for their immediate release. We will remain in close contact with Reuters, and maintain our support as they consider next steps.

Further information

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Last week Minister Burt saw first-hand UK funded shelters which are offering enhanced and sturdier protection to the Rohingya people during the inclement weather. He also met with UK-funded aid workers who are providing vulnerable children in the camps with psychosocial support and witnessed the life-saving work to ensure malnourished Rohingya children have access to food high in nutritional value.

The UK Government continues to lead the way in the speed and size of its response to this latest crisis and one year on the focus is on making sure the Rohingya have access to the further support they need while they are living in the camps.

UK aid will provide access to skills training to improve the prospects for Rohingya men and women, better equipping them for the future. In his visit to the camps Minister Burt witnessed first-hand the skills being provided to Rohingya at a small activities centre, where men and women are being taught to sew.

International Development Minister, Alistair Burt said:

Bangladesh is in the midst of the rainy season and there are almost one million Rohingya people depending on the international community during this precarious time. Seeing first-hand the UK-funded work to construct sturdier and more resilient structures is a positive sign and demonstrates that we are doing all that we can to protect them. The realities of the camp have become even more real for me but I have been reassured that our support to this persecuted community is helping them to rebuild their lives.

Minister Burt will appear before the International Development Committee (IDC) in September and will use his evidence session as an opportunity to clearly demonstrate how UK aid is playing an integral role in ensuring the safety of vulnerable Rohingya people, especially during the monsoon and cyclone season.

The Charity Commission has today published the results of its latest monitoring reviews of charity trustees’ annual reports and accounts. The findings reveal a modest improvement in the quality of public reporting, but the regulator says that too many charities are still falling short in this area.

Public benefit reporting plays a key role in providing transparency so that the public can understand exactly what a charity does and how their donations are being used.

As part of its proactive monitoring work, the Commission scrutinised a random sample of 106 charity trustees’ annual reports and accounts filed with it to assess:

• how charities are meeting the public benefit reporting standards
• whether the accounts meet readers’ needs, including a separate sample of “small charities”

Telling your story well: Public benefit reporting by charities

Trustees have a legal responsibility to comply with the Commission’s guidance on public benefit reporting. All registered charities must publish a trustees’ annual report, setting out the charity’s activities for the public benefit.

The Commission’s review found that 51% of the charities reviewed demonstrated a clear understanding of the public benefit reporting requirement – a 5% improvement from last year’s result.

The majority of annual reports also included key aspects of public benefit reporting, with 71% explaining who benefitted from the charity’s activities, and 62% including a public benefit statement.

Some trustees had expanded their statement to explain why they believed their charity’s activities provided public benefit, whilst others discussed the difference that they had made, particularly to beneficiaries.

Do charity and small charity annual reports and accounts meet the reader’s needs?

The Commission examined whether the charities’ trustees’ annual reports and accounts as a whole met readers’ needs, based on a range of criteria.

For the sample of charities with incomes over £25,000, the Commission found that 74% of the trustees’ annual reports and accounts reviewed were of acceptable quality, meeting the basic benchmark set by the Commission.

The most common reason for inadequate reporting was that the trustees’ annual report did not explain the charitable activities the charity had carried out.

For the sample of small charities, the Commission found that 64% of the charities provided trustees’ annual reports and accounts of acceptable quality, meeting the regulator’s basic benchmark. The main reason for inadequate reporting was that the charity failed to provide one or both of the trustees’ annual report and the accounts.

The Commission has provided regulatory guidance to 89 charities included in the reviews in order to help the trustees improve the quality of future trustees’ annual reports and accounts.

Nigel Davies, Head of Accountancy Services at the Charity Commission for England and Wales said:

“Our research into trust and confidence in charities shows that the public no longer give charities the benefit of the doubt; they want evidence that charities make a difference when using their money. Public reporting is an opportunity for charities to tell their story and explain to the public what they do and how they use charitable funds.

“Producing a trustees’ annual report and accounts is not an administrative box-ticking exercise. It is a chance to show how your charity is making an impact and how you are delivering on your core purpose.

“Today’s results show that too many charities are still not meeting very basic standards when it comes to making key information available to the public. I am encouraged to see that an increasing number of trustees recognise the value of public benefit reporting, but there is clearly more work to be done across the sector.”

The full reports are available on GOV.UK.

Ends

Notes to editors

1. The Commission’s research into public trust and confidence in charities was published on 11 July 2018 and is available on GOV.UK.
2. The Charity Commission is the regulator of charities in England and Wales. To find out more about our work see the about us page on GOV.UK.
3. Search for charities on our check charity tool.
4. To assess whether small charities accounts met readers’ needs, the Commission included a separate sample of 110 small charities, those with incomes less than £25,000, who are not required to routinely file their trustees’ annual report and accounts with the regulator (except for Charitable Incorporated Organisations)
5. In addition to producing an annual report, all registered charities must prepare accounts and, where the charity’s income is over £25,000, arrange for them to be scrutinised through an audit or independent examination. They must also file their set of accounts with the regulator.

Prison governors will today be able to have their say on a new approach to incentives which encourages prisoners to take responsibility for their own rehabilitation.

A consultation is being launched on the new Incentives and Earned Privileges policy, which would empower governors to design their own programme of incentives tailored to the specific challenges in their prison.

Those who behave well and engage in meaningful activities such as education and employment programmes could receive privileges such as more time in the gym or additional visits.

Crucially, governors will be able to tackle poor behaviour by taking away privileges – returning people to a more basic regime and living conditions – and will have greater freedom to decide how prisoners move up or down privilege levels.

Prisons Minister Rory Stewart said:

Prisons must be places of safety, decency and purposeful activity to turn around the lives of those in custody.

This new framework will give governors the tools to set clear behavioural standards for offenders under their watch, and the consequences should these not be met.

Research on behaviour change shows positive reinforcement is much more effective at shaping behaviour than punishment and, while sometimes necessary, punishment alone does not effectively change behaviour.

Many consider that the incentives system is not currently as effective as it could be, with governors having too little flexibility to establish incentives that their particular cohort of prisoners value.

We are therefore providing governors with more freedom to design their incentive scheme to take account of the
local needs of their prison population and the facilities available in their prison. This means a prison with a good gym, or a wing with a kitchen area, could better use these in its IEP system in future.

Governors could also choose to increase the amount of time out of cell an individual prisoner receives to engage in recreational activities or exercise alongside education and work programmes.

And to better assist them in preparing for life back in the community, governors could choose to incentivise prisoners by offering additional visits from family and friends, with more flexible timings.

We will retain sensible limitations on governors’ freedoms, so that, for example, no paid for TV channels or other inappropriate incentives are permitted.

And for those who don’t follow the rules, a strict system of adjudications and punishments will ensure that governors are able to deal swiftly with those who refuse to engage. Punishments range from the removal of privileges to harsher measures such as prosecution and additional prison time.

Notes to editors

• The consultation will launch today (3 September) and will run for a period of 28 days.
• The new system will retain 3 privilege levels: basic, standard and enhanced, but remove ‘entry level’ which Governors tell us is bureaucratic and penalises prisoners who are new, setting up an adversarial relationship with staff from the outset.