Cllr John Leech MP - Expert Advice On Leaflet Fraud

John Leech MP cannot be trusted to provide true facts to vulnerable people. Through a combination of naivity, incompetence and wanton carelessness, not to mention deliberate distortion, John misleads them. He has, unfortunately for the people of Manchester Withington, been promoted well above his abilities.

The Metro News dated Friday 19th is now out and about. Perhaps they've read THIS and realised that so-called fraud expert Cllr John Leech MP has strayed well outside his areas of expertise. Their website does not carry his wonky fraud master class.

His areas of expertise do of course include stretching the truth regularly beyond breaking point, hoaxing dying cancer patients and their families, and fibbing that old people are going to be regularly falling into open graves at a cemetary. When they are still alive.

What he does not know about is charity law, company law or the interaction of the two. Yet he gives advice on the very important issue of bogus campaigns which is essentially itself bogus. With ridiculous schoolboy errors.

It is simply not true that a campaign with a company number is not a charity. Totally untrue. Take Oxfam. Following John Leech's advice would lead to rejecting Oxfam and most major charities, which are also registered as companies and in most cases own further companies.

Oxfam's governance structure is:

Oxfam GB (charity 202918) is also a Company Limited by Guarantee (registered in England 612172) and is the 100% owner of Oxfam Activities Limited, and of two backburner subsidiaries. Oxfam GB also owns 50% of Progreso Cafés Limited (5125426), a 'special share' in Coffee Producers Company Limited (5144719) and 10% of Café Direct plc (141496).

Oxfam is one of 13 national or regional members of Oxfam International which is a Netherlands Charity 41159611.

You can click here and a 447Kb PDF of Oxfam's 2005 - 06 Report and Accounts will be downloaded.

Many doorstep clothes collections are not run by charities. They are businesses. A few of these businesses are two-bit scams. But others provide employment locally and do genuinely help people to trade their way out of poverty by buying and selling clothes. Some are quite impressive. Charity registration is not the answer for every good cause.