Last night on Radio 4, Front Row focused on a subject which in one sense is at the heart of the Arts provision in the UK. In doing so the interview by Samira Ahmed with three very well connected people including one ex Government Minister showed how deeply out of touch at least two of them are with the world around them. That their ignorance was not challenged brings into question the behaviour of the two journalists and the programme itself. The interview can be downloaded from here, it is about 10 minutes into the programme. The catalyst for the discussion was that of Safeguarding following the Kevin Spacey revelations. The programme had written to the Charity Commission to question them about the issues that had emerged at the Old Vic Theatre and the Commission had written back pointing out something that most charities would be very aware of, that safeguarding is a vital responsibility of Trustees of all charities. I recall in 2001 when I was in the process of setting up some charities that this was the case then, and it was one of the requirements even for the Trustees to be CRB checked if there was any involvement of the charity with vulnerable adults or children. The programme invited Lyn Gardner who is a fellow journalist of Samira in the Arts scene along with Malcolm Sinclair who is an Actor and President of Equity and finally Ed Vaizey who was a Government Minister responsible for Culture and now an MP in the Oxford area and Trustee of two national charities. The failing of this interview was to leave all listeners with the view that there is gap in provision of Trustee Training in our nation and frankly this made me very angry as there is no gap and if Ed and Malcolm took 2 minutes out from their important days to do a quick internet search they would find this out for themselves.

Malcolm Sinclair told us he is involved in a number of charities outside of the world of the Arts and yet claimed Trustee’s are expected to pick up knowledge and skills as they go along, “we’ve all been caught short on this”

Then Ed Vaizey spoke up “Any Trustee actually or a Governor of a school, the responsibilities that you take on are pretty wide and actually pretty serious and there is very little training available. It may well for example since  we are looking at practical solutions that the Charity Commission should look into the kind of training that trustees of any type of charity receive……..There is nowhere for me to turn, for example to do a half day workshop on my responsibilities as a Trustee of a Theatre.”

Putting to one side the fact that Ed and his Government have slashed the Charity Commission budget over the last 7 years so his call for them to do more is at best very naive. Ed’s constituency is in Oxford. The Oxfordshire Community and Voluntary Action states on its website “We are here to help you help others by supporting and empowering volunteers, networks, partnerships and non-profit organisations big and small.” and one click on the training tab brings you to a page that states “OCVA trains volunteers, trustees and staff working in voluntary, community and non-profit organisations across Oxfordshire and beyond. We aim to improve your skills, knowledge and confidence with accredited and non-accredited training; leading to personal and career development.”

Now to be fair I did not check to see if OCVA offer a half day workshop for Trustees, but the Trustees of a Theatre have exactly the same responsibilities as the Trustees of any other charity. It is time that MPs and ex Ministers like Ed Vaizey got their publicly funded researchers to explain to them how to search the internet before they appear on national radio and state things that are patently untrue, potentially misleading many thousands of listeners. Perhaps Samira and Lyn could have pointed this out to him and Malcolm before they left the various studios. Perhaps Front Row could do a postscript piece tonight!