Lord Joffe, who is chair of the Giving Campaign, said that "charities must tailor the level of their 'ask' to the income and wealth of the donor" if they want to address donation levels. Between 1992 and 2002, personal incomes rose on average by more than 25%, and yet individual giving fell by the same percentage during this time. Many wealthy people simply do not know what is an appropriate amount to give, he said.

Against a backdrop of increasingly professional fundraising, tax benefits introduced to stimulate giving and an unprecedented level of prosperity enjoyed by the very rich, Lord Joffe told the House that the wealthy had to set an example in order to increase the overall level of giving.

He praised billionaire philanthropists Lord Sainsbury and Hans Rausing, both of whom featured in the The Sunday Times Rich List's Giving Index, for their generosity but called on other well-known billionaires such as Sir Richard Branson and Bernie Ecclestone whose names did not appear on the Index to follow their example. Lord Joffe's suggestions for reversing the decline in giving included establishing a general giving benchmark for the whole of society of 1.5%, with those earning over £100,000 a year donating 2% plus of their income.

"If the 1000 members of the Rich List, with wealth in excess of £200 billion were on average to increase their giving from 0.7% to 1.7%, which they can so easily afford, this alone would raise the current level of giving by £2 billion to £9.3 billion and would set an example to the other 220,000 millionaires in the UK and to the mass affluent," he said.