A former minister says he would scrap small medical charities if he were still in government.
Guy Opperman told a fringe event at the Conservative Party conference yesterday that he would “intervene in the medical world massively” to reduce the number of charities.
Opperman, the Conservative MP for Hexham, was speaking on a panel hosted by the think tanks Pro Bono Economics and Onward.
The former pensions minister, who lost his job when Liz Truss became Prime Minister last month, said: “If I was a legislator I would intervene in the medical world massively, and I would effectively mandate that you can’t have small charities.”
Addressing small charities directly, Opperman added: “The blunt truth is [it is] a really inefficient use of your resources, and you are replicating stuff that everybody by and large is doing.”
Opperman told the event that, when he had surgery for a brain tumour in 2011, “30 to 40” charities were involved. “I would scrap the lot and amalgamate them all into one or two at most different charities, so that we can drive forward real change there,” he said.
He argued that the charity sector should look to the example of very large charities instead.
He said: “The best example is Macmillan Cancer. That is an amalgamation of dozens of cancer charities.
“It is also probably the most effective cancer charity in the world as a result, because they have bulked up and they have capacity for greater influence and capacity to provide a better service around the country.”
Macmillan Cancer Support did not comment on Opperman’s claims, but confirmed that it had been involved in only two mergers in its 110-year history.
Opperman concluded: “Don’t worry. There is no chance of me being a minister any time soon.”
He used the same event to tell charities to “stop dabbling in politics” and focus on their services, as Third Sector reported yesterday.