Bill Harvey: Rethinking the charitable sector

The charitable sector has come in for a bit of a beating in the press lately, much of it deserved. It does, I think, offer an opportunity to think again about the role charities play in the healthcare sector. Much of current research in health is supported by charitable donation. Also, many charities offer care services funded in varying degrees by donation.

A few years ago, on one of those TV debate programmes much targeted by the likes of Chris Morris, someone who declared himself to be a humanist announced that all charities should be made illegal.

His reasoning was that they provide services that a government should be providing through a fair, though presumably high cost, tax system. His views were ridiculed by the audience, and this seemed to be as much disgust at the audacity of somebody questioning our saintly charities than disagreement with an unsustainable tax burden.