New Charity Commission powers designed to silence Muslim and Palestine solidarity work

• On 14 October 2026, DCMS launched a consultation on expanding the Charity Commission’s powers to disqualify charity trustees and senior managers. It closes on 23 December 2026.
• Anyone with an unspent conviction for specified hate crime or national security offences would be automatically barred from charity leadership.
• The Commission could also bar anyone deprived of British citizenship or excluded from the UK, and anyone whose views it judges “reasonably likely” to promote hatred. Neither would require a criminal charge.
• The changes appear set to be made through secondary legislation, avoiding the full scrutiny of a parliamentary bill.
• Since October 2023, the Commission has opened more than 400 cases connected to events in the Middle East and made more than 80 police referrals.
• Disqualification orders under existing powers have already risen from 11 to 37 a year.

London — The government’s new proposals for the Charity Commission are a power grab, exploiting fears and prejudices about Muslims and the Palestine movement to hand the regulator near total control of the third sector and the means to crush dissent within it.

The proposals represent another pillar of a sustained clampdown campaign on the movement against genocide in Palestine. Since October 2023, the Commission has opened more than 400 cases connected to events in the Middle East and disqualification orders have risen from 11 to 37 a year. The new powers must be analysed in the context of a greater use of proscription powers, protest restrictions, the Bell review and the push to embed the IHRA definition into all parts of societal activity.

The regulator borrows the language of extremism and national security to expand its own reach. Making trustees answerable for every speaker, post and slogan will produce exactly what it is designed to: fear, self-censorship and a compliant, toothless sector unable to campaign against injustice.

Both of the case studies DCMS uses to justify these powers involve Muslims, and its equality assessment is derisory since no attempt has been made to collect data. History teaches us that the Commission is no more than a state weapon to curb the ability of Muslim charities to provide humanitarian assistance to the victims of genocide. This is a regulator once chaired by William Shawcross, who went on to lead the review of Prevent. He was a former director of the Henry Jackson Society, an Islamophobic neoconservative think tank. In 2014 the Commission pressured charities to cut ties with CAGE, before conceding in the High Court that it had no power to do so.

Anas Mustapha, Head of Public Advocacy at CAGE International, said:

“Every one of these powers rests on a decision the state has already taken against our communities, whether a minister stripping someone of their citizenship on secret evidence or a prosecution for speaking about Palestine. Charities are one of the last spaces where our communities can organise, give and speak together, and that is exactly what the state wants to control.”

CAGE calls for these proposals to be withdrawn in full.