NCADC gets its award

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The fierce media row about the Community Fund’s award of £336,261 to the National Coalition of Anti Deportation Campaigns has been ended, for the moment, with the Community Fund’s announcement on 22 October that a two-month review of the award process and recipient had confirmed the original grant decision.

Speaking immediately after the decision, Gerald Oppenheim, Community Fund’s communications and policy director, said: ‘The Strategic Grants Committee have just had a two-hour discussion about this. Putting aside all the media and political furore, the committee asked themselves, if we were looking at the grant now, knowing what we know about it, would we make the award now? And the answer was, we would – subject to extra conditions.’ The two extra conditions were firstly that the NCADC should ensure that its policies, activities and publications, including its website, are not doctrinaire; and second, that it should not use lottery funds to pursue cases where deportation is part of a terrorist sentence passed by a criminal court. The campaign group said it was willing to abide by the CF’s terms. The committee had also received legal opinion which said there was no evidence of illegality by the NCADC.

The CF also announced that it had asked the National Audit Office to undertake an independent review of its handling of the case, to report back by the end of November.

Finally, the CF said it would be tightening up some aspects of grant assessment in the light of the incident. In future, websites and other communications used by applicants will be checked out ahead of an award being made, and the fund will also be producing new guidelines on political and campaigning activities by grant recipients, to help clarify its attitude to these in the way that the Charity Commission has done for registered charities through its guidance note CC9. Commenting on the case, the CF’s chairperson Diana Brittan, whom the Daily Mail singled out during its campaign to get the grant revoked, and who has received death threats, said: ‘We absolutely defend the right of the NCADC to support individual cases of people facing deportation. We take the view that anyone facing deportation, any asylum-seeker, any refugee, is a vulnerable person and should be entitled to help. The UK has a long tradition of charities campaigning. We defend the right of the charitable sector to campaign.’ Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, said: ‘I still have doubts about this particular organisation. But the decision to award the grant is the Fund’s alone, and the Government will defend its right to make it free of interference from politicians. From time to time, because of the nature of the lottery, there will be controversy about grants, but the decision about whether a grant is made is not one for ministers, it is a decision for the Community Fund as the relevant distributor.’