From the chief executive of the Charity Commission SIR – In response to your report “Adoption agency renews fight to stay open” (October 8), I do need to say that this was a complex and sensitive decision which the Commission took great care in making. However, the Commission did not “ignore the ruling in favour of the agency” by the High Court judge as the report suggests. The Commission did as directed and worked in accordance with the principles set out by the court. This was to consider again the charity’s request to change its governing document in order to limit its services to heterosexual couples.
The court considered that the charity had made a case for being allowed to discriminate but it specifically left the question as to whether the facts it relied on were sufficiently weighty to justify discrimination. The law says that charities can only discriminate if there are particularly convincing and weighty reasons justifying the discrimination.
We concluded that the reasons Catholic Care set out did not justify the discrimination.
Yours faithfully, SAM YOUNGER Liverpool