Dame Susan Catherine "Suzi" Leather, DBE DL (born 5 April 1956 [1]), sometimes known as Susie Leather, has been the chair of the Charity Commission since 1 August 2006.[2] Previously she was chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.[1]
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Education
She was educated at St Mary's, Calne, then at Tavistock School, and received a BA with honours in Politics in 1977, a BPhil in social work in 1986 from Exeter University, and an MA in European politics in 1978 from Leicester University.[1]
Career
From 1979-84, she was a senior research officer for Consumers in Europe. From 1984-86 she was a trainee probation officer. From 1988-97 she was a freelance consumer consultant. From 1997-2001, she was chair of Exeter and District NHS trust.
From 2000-02, she was first deputy chair of the Food Standards Agency. From March 2002-July 2006, she was chair of Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. Joined the board of United Kingdom Accreditation Service in 2006 alongside her colleague Professor Michael Mainelli (a political recommendation from the Downing Street office of then Prime Minister Tony Blair) to improve their quality standards regulation. From May 2005-July 2006, she was chair of the School Food Trust.[1] She gave up the HFEA and School Food Trust positions for the Charity Commission position.[2]. She saw her qualification for that position as coming from her experience as a regulator rather than expertise with charities: “My main contact [with charities] has been through volunteering — I have no experience personally of working for charities. I don’t think I had a very well developed sense of what the Charities Bill was going to do, so I can't describe myself as a charities expert in any sense”, and therefore spent her early months in the post absorbing information about the sector.[3]
Ms. Leather has held over thirty public sector posts in the last fifteen years which has led some right-wing commentators to question her own motivations and the motives of those who appoint her. The Adam Smith Institute accused her of pursuing a "political agenda" on behalf of politicians who lacked the "moral courage" to tackle the issue themselves.[4]
HFEA Controversy
During her tenure at the HFEA, controversy was aroused around a statement of Suzi Leather's that a child's absolute need for a father figure was "nonsense".[5] This statement was heavily criticised by pressure groups. Jack O'Sullivan, of the campaign group Fathers Direct which campaigns for the rights of fathers, said that "while discrimination against single and lesbian women was wrong, the benefits of a father figure were proven by scientific studies".[5] The lobbying group Comment on Reproductive Ethics issued a statement calling Ms. Leather's comments "political correctness at its most absurd".[5]. The view expressed by Dame Suzi was however entirely consistent with the results of available research into the outcomes for children in families of different structures, including several large-scale epidemiological studies. While psychological adjustment and school outcomes are on average worse for children of single parents, there is much overlap of the distributions, so the need for two parents is relative rather than absolute; and outcomes for children in two-parent lesbian families are indistinguishable from those for conventional families, so that the need appears to be for two parents, rather than for a father as such.[6]
Private Schools controversy
The Charities Act (2006)[7] added to the traditional list of "charitable purposes" for which charities can be established (the prevention or relief of poverty, the advancement of education, the advancement of religion, and so forth) a requirement that their activities should be carried on "for the public benefit"; and it required the Charities Commission to determine what how it would be established that the public benefit was being served. In pursuance of this requirement, in 2009 Dame Suzi instigated an investigation into private schools in order to determine whether non-profit education providers should continue to be accorded charitable status automatically. She has stated that she cannot "see why charitable status was always merited". Specifically, it was decided that, while providing education is a charitable purpose, doing so only in exchange for an economic fee does not meet the requirement that the purpose is carried on for public rather than private benefit. A fee-paying school could nonetheless deserve charitable status, for example if it offered bursaries, or provided teaching or coaching children from surrounding schools, or otherwise contributed. As of July 2009, five private schools in the North West of England had been investigated and it was concluded that two of the five gave insufficient benefit to the public and had therefore failed the proposed test. These school would lose their charitable status in a year’s time "unless they gave out more bursaries".[8]
The legality of the Charity Commission's position has been challenged, and Dame Suzi has been attacked, by advocates of fee-paying schooling. It has been alleged that the Commission may have exceeded its powers under the 2006 Charities Act:
The Charities Act neither created a new public-benefit test nor authorised the commission to create one. That much was admitted by Dame Suzi Leather, the chairman of the commission, in a speech she gave in 2007. According to Stanley Brodie (QC), the proper interpretation and application of the public-benefit test is governed by longstanding case law, which the Act preserved. There is no authority for the public-benefit test as enunciated by the commission. It follows that the directions given to two private schools on the basis that they have failed the test are almost certainly without lawful foundation, as is the threat to deprive them of their charitable status.[9]
This assertion however seems to be in conflict with Section 2 (1) (b) of the Act, which states that a purpose is charitable if it "is for the public benefit".
Damehood
An active member of the Labour Party, Leather was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in January 2006.[1]
Family
Ms. Leather lives in Exeter with her husband, Professor Iain Hampsher-Monk, and their three children (one son and two daughters).[1]
References
- ^ a b c d e f "The Guardian profile: Suzi Leather" (Sarah Boseley, Guardian, Friday 12 May 2006)
- ^ a b Dame Suzi Leather to chair the Charity Commission (PublicTechnology.net, 20 June 2006)
- ^ Times Online business report
- ^ The Telegraph report on Suzi Leather
- ^ a b c BBC report on controversy over Leather's comments
- ^ Golombok, S. (2004). Solo mothers: quality of parenting and child development. International Congress Series, 1266, 256-263. doi:10.1016/j.ics.2004.01.095, and papers referred to in that article
- ^ Office of Public Sector Information: Charities Act (2006)
- ^ Simon Heffer, July 15 2009. "There's a class war to be fought over the future of private schools", Daily Telegraph
- ^ Stanley Brodie QC, 21 July 2009."Charity Commission is government stooge"
External links
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