That ban on taxpayer-funded charities lobbying the government...

… is not so much loopholes as a gate without a fence.

From the BBC:

Organisations given UK government grants will be banned from using the money to try to persuade ministers to change the law or increase spending.

According to a House of Commons briefing, the estimated total income of the UK voluntary sector (not including charities) in 2012-13 was £40bn, of which £13bn came from government grants.

Many people, including lawyers, somehow believe that money can be earmarked, streamed and traced. It can’t*.

For example, ‘charities’ which are ninety per cent taxpayer funded can still use the other ten per cent of their income to pay for lobbying and spend the ninety per cent on whatever the government asks them to spend it on. So this measure achieves nothing, apart from perhaps restricting the amount that such charities can spend on lobbying slightly – the question is, as usual, was the measure supposed to achieve anything or is the loophole intentional?

And how do you define lobbying? If a ‘charity’ pays for advertising to sway public opinion, knowing that politicians will bow with the wind, is that still ‘lobbying’ in the narrow sense?

The only solution is to prevent charities in receipt of a single penny of public money whatsoever from doing any ‘awareness raising’ or advertising whatsoever. Unless of course ‘raising awareness’ is the whole point, like for example road safety campaigns (reminding kids to look left and right, warning against the dangers of drink driving etc). But these things are so basic, the government can do it themselves without resorting to an overpriced quango.

* It riles me for example when somebody wins a few quid on the lottery or something, and people ask them “What are you going to spend it on?”. That lottery money just goes into the pot. Instead of giving the usual answer “Buy a house/buy a car/go on holiday” it would be just as correct to answer “I will spend it on normal household expenditure and then save up my normal salary to buy a house/buy a car/go on holiday”