The leading candidate to become the new chair of the Charity Commission has told MPs he will not allow the regulator to be dragged into media- and government-led “culture wars” – and would even intervene to defend a charity that he felt had been unfairly treated.
Orlando Fraser, a onetime Tory parliamentary candidate with links to a rightwing thinktank, has been selected as the government’s choice to run the watchdog. On Thursday he defended himself against criticism that he was a political appointee, saying he was no longer in the Tory party or even a Conservative.
The commission has been at the centre of controversies involving charities such as the National Trust and Barnardo’s, while former culture secretary Oliver Dowden said he wanted the regulator to pursue “woke” and “political” charities.
Fraser, a commercial barrister who was selected for the role earlier this month by the culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, told MPs on the digital media, culture and sport select committee he was committed to a “fair, balanced, and independent” approach.
His selection was met with dismay by Labour, which said the government had “looked after one of their own” and by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, which questioned whether he was fully politically independent.
But Fraser, who stood as a Tory parliamentary candidate in 2005, said he had left behind his political interests and was committed to impartiality. He defended his stint as a Charity Commission board member between 2013 and 2017, when it came under attack for perceived politicisation under previous chair William Shawcross.
Asked about any personal links with Boris Johnson, Fraser said: “I’d like to say on the record, I’m not a friend of the prime minister and I have never been a friend of the prime minister.”
The previous holder of the £62,000-a-year role, ex-Tory minister Lady Stowell, stepped down a year ago after criticism in some quarters that she had pursued a political agenda. Her planned successor, Martin Thomas, quit in December, four days before he was due to start, over a controversy involving his past stewardship of a charity.
Labour MP Kevin Brennan asked Fraser if he could assure the committee he would not get involved the government’s culture war agenda, backed by tabloid newspapers, which sought to prevent charities from pursuing legitimate charitable aims.
“Absolutely not,” Fraser replied. “We will not be an arm of government in any way at all about that kind of issue. All we will ever do is look at the facts and decide the facts based on charity law. If there is an issue we will do something about it, if there isn’t, we wouldn’t.”
Fraser said the extent of the commission’s involvement in arguments about so-called “woke” charities would be to assess through a “narrow legal prism” whether there had been a breach of charity law. “If there’s a problem it should do something, if there is not a problem, then it shouldn’t,” he said.
In some circumstances he would defend the charity, he suggested. If the commission had found no legal case to answer against a charity that did good works but had been “damaged by what looks like an unjust media attack”, then the commission, he said, “should be prepared to say something”.
Brennan said Fraser’s late grandfather, Labour peer Lord Longford, had been savaged by the tabloid press and Tory ministers because he campaigned for the release of moors murderer Myra Hindley.
He asked: “If Frank Longford was around today campaigning on these things, would you be supportive of ministers who accused him of wokeness?”
Fraser replied: “I would not have the Charity Commission being an arm of government and assisting in any way with an anti-woke agenda, full stop, with anyone, whether it was Frank Longford or not.”
Fraser had links to the rightwing Centre for Social Justice thinktank and was involved in the creation of its influential Breakdown Britain critique, which helped drive David Cameron’s Big Society agenda.
