The Charity Commission’s board must take responsibility for its decision to launch legal action against another public body, according to a new report by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC).
The PACAC described the actions of the Commission as ‘a shining example of how a public body should not conduct itself.’
The dispute centred on two investigations by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) into serious safeguarding failures at two separate charities.
On 9 September 2025, the Ombudsman laid reports on the investigations before the House of Commons. The reports set out concerns about how the cases had been handled and the responses to the safeguarding issues.
However, the Charity Commission challenged the decision to publish the reports by launching legal proceedings for a judicial review. The move was widely seen as an attempt to prevent the findings from being shared with MPs.
The House of Commons intervened to ensure the reports were published. The High Court subsequently dismissed the Commission’s legal challenge, and the regulator accepted the ruling.
PACAC welcomed the court’s decision but questioned how the Commission had reached the point of taking legal action against another publicly funded organisation.
The committee also rejected several claims made by the Commission about the Ombudsman’s role, including suggestions that the PHSO had exceeded its legal powers and had asked the Commission to carry out a criminal investigation. MPs described the latter claim as ‘astonishing’.
The committee emphasised that the Ombudsman has sole responsibility for deciding whether to present a report to Parliament when it believes an organisation under investigation has failed to comply with its recommendations.
The consequences of the legal dispute went beyond the cost to taxpayers, MPs said. The Commission was found in contempt of Parliament, while the individuals who had raised the original complaints experienced significant stress and upset.
The chair commented: ‘The handling of these two highly sensitive cases by the Charity Commission Board should be exhibited as a shining example of how a public body should not conduct itself. A litany of poor decision-making has backfired horribly, leading to bad outcomes for everyone.
‘We must not forget that poor handling of cases such as these has real life consequences. First, the individual complainants have been put through a further ordeal which need never have happened. Second, when cases such as these are mishandled, it shakes public trust that the system will support them if they are the victims of an injustice. The Charity Commission’s legal action against the Public Service Ombudsman has done further damage to that trust and it is now the job of the Board to win that trust back.’
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