S/L/72. 'The adoption of the new definition of charity recommended in the Strategy Unit Report (2002) would make little difference to the current law. The Report seeks to address a number of matters that are largely points of detail relating to the existing definition. The Report fails to grasp the wider issues of whether the law should permit the creation of non-charitable public purpose trusts and whether tax privileges should continue automatically to follow charitable status'. Discuss

This paper examines whether adoption of the new definition of charity recommended in the Strategy Unit Report (2002) ['Private Action, Public Benefit: A Review of Charities and the Wider Not-For Profit Sector -2002'] would make a dramatic difference to the current law. The paper highlights that the Report seeks to alleviate certain existing barriers and anomalies induced by the current definition of 'charity' which is intended to give trustees more freedom and flexibility to operate the charity. However, the paper also discusses that the proposals fail to address the deeper deficit in the current law of charities concerning the unjust position of non-charitable public purpose trusts and the conjoined charitable validity and fiscal immunity of other purpose trusts, which many fail to recognise as two branches of the same problem.