Regulator ups engagement with Amnesty International UK over removed report
The Charity Commission has escalated its engagement with Amnesty International UK to a compliance case, after the charity published a report describing the author JK Rowling’s sexual violence charity as “anti-rights”.
This follows Amnesty International UK’s decision to permanently remove the report, which listed Rowling’s Beira’s Place among more than 100 organisations it classed as “anti-rights”, including fellow charities Sex Matters and the LGB Alliance.
Amnesty International UK has since removed the report from its website and expressed “regret” about its publication, saying it was uploaded without going through established internal review processes.
Lawyers acting on behalf of Beira’s Place warned of intent to sue the human rights charity, saying the report was defamatory.
The human rights charity filed a serious incident report with the Charity Commission, which has escalated its initial assessment to a regulatory compliance case.
For the full story, click here.
Century-old charity changes ‘old-fashioned’ name
The British Wireless for the Blind Fund has become Visably as part of a wider rebrand.
The charity was founded 98 years ago by a group who built a makeshift braille-dial radio, or wireless, for the blinded war veteran Sir Ernest Towse.
A survey of more than 400 people living with sight loss, carried out in partnership with nfpResearch, found that less than a third of them had heard of the charity.
Among those who did know the organisation, many associated the brand with words such as “old-fashioned”, according to Sophie Jones, the charity’s chief executive.
Visably said it hoped the new identity would enable deeper bonds with its existing supporters and build relevance among new audiences, with driving future income being a key strategic aim of the project.
For the full story, click here.
Charity leaders to join the House of Lords
Five people working for UK charities have been appointed to the House of Lords as Sir Keir Starmer left office.
The Prime Minister’s office announced the following people would be ennobled as Starmer’s two-year spell at 10 Downing St came to an end: Alison Garnham (Labour peer), chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group; Cathy Ashley (Labour), chief executive of the Family Rights Group; Parvais Jabbar and Saul Lehrfreund (both Labour), co-founders and co-executive directors of The Death Penalty Project; and Tim Leunig (Liberal Democrat), chief economist at Nesta and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.
Garnham, who has been in the top job at the Child Poverty Action Group since 2010, said: “We’ve seen some good first steps towards reducing child poverty but there is much more to do. I look forward to working from the Lords to ensure every child in the UK has a fair start.”
The Death Penalty Project, which was founded in the 1990s by Jabbar and Lehrfreund to defend the rights of marginalised people and challenge the use of the death penalty around the world, said the pair would bring their “extensive expertise in human rights, criminal justice and international law to parliamentary debate and scrutiny”.
Leunig said being a member of the House of Lords was “very much a part-time role”, with the house only sitting for 102 days last year, so he would be speaking to his “various current employers forthwith” about what his new position would mean for his other responsibilities.
“For the record, I wish our second chamber was elected, and I pledge to vote to abolish myself and my colleagues at all opportunities,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
Marcus Davey, the former chief executive and artistic director of the arts venue the Roundhouse, was also made a Labour peer.
For the full story, click here.