Charities ‘have never been more needed’ to tackle division in society, the government’s preferred candidate to chair the Charity Commission has told MPs.

At her pre-appointment hearing Dame Julia Unwin told members of the Culture Media and Sport Committee that charities need to be “supported to take part" in "complex debates” as the sector is “a central pillar of our free society”.

She said: “In our current crisis where there is a lack of trust and deep division in communities, and the playing out of a global conflict in the UK, charities have never been more needed.”

Unwin is a former chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, for nine years until 2016 and spent five years as a charity commissioner during the 1990s.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced earlier this month that Unwin was the government’s preferred candidate for the role

“I think civil society’s powers to connect across boundaries, devise new ways of operating and be creative in long standing social problems and responsive to new ones, is a real prize for this country,” Unwin told Committee members.

“A good and enabling regulator will be very firm when things go wrong but very open on new ways of working.”

Her comments mark a continued departure from those of previous chair Baroness Stowell, who while in post until 2021 had warned charities against becoming involved in political discussions, urging them to “leave party politics” and “culture wars out of their work”.

In contrast, her successor Orlando Fraser had said in 2022 that "charities can model a better kind of public discourse than the aggression we sometimes sadly see from the party-political debate” and “can help teach others how to inspire and inform, rather than stifle and poison, reasoned debate".

At the hearing Unwin also answered MPs' concerns about the role, after they failed to endorse either former Conservative Party general election candidate Fraser or former Conservative Party minister Stowell. Both took up the post despite the Committee's views.

‘Chequered’ recent history of the role

Committee member Rupa Huq, Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton, also pointed out that the only government preferred candidate to be endorsed by the Committee in recent years, Martin Thomas, was forced to resign before taking up the post.

It emerged that Thomas was being investigated for inappropriate behaviour by a charity he had chaired. Charity sector leaders had urged the government to re-run the appointment process but instead ministers selected Fraser from the initial shortlist.

Unwin acknowledged the role has had a “chequered” recent history but added “before that it has had a strong leadership, and I hope I can emulate that”.

She added that, unlike Stowell and Fraser, “if you don’t endorse me, I will do something else with my time. The chair of the Charity Committee needs the endorsement of this committee”.

'Crisis in trusteeship'

Unwin also warned MPs that charities "face a crisis in trusteeship" as the burden of the role "has got greater and the extent to which they are held accountable are making it much less attractive and more problematic for people in other roles to do it".

She added that an erosion in "the ready supply of the early retired" to take on trustee roles "is an issue" facing charities and that the sector "may need to go further to show the advantages of being a trustee".

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