Instead, the beneficiaries are represented by the Attorney General for England and Wales as parens patriae, who appears on behalf of The Crown.

The Commission, as the first point of contact, is tasked with regulating and promoting charitable trusts, as well as providing advice and opinions to trustees on administrative matters.

When the Commission feels that there has been mismanagement or maladministration, it can sanction the trustees, removing them, appointing new ones, or temporarily taking the trust property itself to prevent harm.

These requirements vary depending on whether the gift that establishes the trust is given during life, after death, or involves land.

[1] In cases where the gift involves personal property and is made inter vivos, there are no formal prerequisites; it suffices for an oral declaration to establish the trust.

Instead, the Attorney General of England and Wales sues on behalf of beneficiaries to enforce a charitable trust.

Because of this lack of a relationship, the trustees' powers are far wider-ranging, only being regulated by the Charity Commission and actions brought by the Attorney General; the beneficiaries have no direct control.

The House of Lords found that size was not the issue; the group did not count as a section of the public because of the "personal nexus", or common relationship, between the settlors (British American Tobacco) and the beneficiaries.

The nature of charitable trusts means that the definition of "public benefit" varies between Macnaghten's four categories.

[12] The 1601 Act stated that charities for the benefit of the "aged, impotent and poor people" had an appropriate purpose; it is accepted that these may appear individually.

This appears to indicate that a millionaire who loses half of his income may be considered "poor", in that he is unable to have the lifestyle he is accustomed to.

Some limits were set to this provision by Lord Simonds in IRC v Baddeley,[15] where he wrote that: There may be a good charity for the relief of persons who are not in grinding need or utter destitution ... but relief connotes need of some sort, either need for a home, or for the means to provide for some necessity or quasi-necessity, and not merely for an amusement, however healthy.

[16] The "poverty" category is a "major exception" to the rule on personal relationships laid down in Oppenheim v Tobacco Securities Trust.

Academics Richard Edwards and Nigel Stockwell argue that this is because allowing such trusts to exist relieves the rest of society for having to provide for poor people; as a result, there is "public benefit" in a wider way.

This includes the education of the young, a particularly wide category, described by Lord Hailsham in IRC v McMullen,[20] as "a balanced and systematic process of instruction, training and practice containing both spiritual, moral, mental and physical elements".

"Education" also includes research, as long as the subject is useful and the gift makes some requirement that the information be made available to others and disseminated.

(2) In the absence of such a contrary context, however, the court will be readily inclined to construe a trust for research as importing subsequent dissemination of the results thereof.

A body for specific artistic purposes may be charitable, as in Royal Choral Society v IRC,[24] as is the promotion of a particular composer, seen in Re Delius.

[28] For the purposes of this category, "religion" was seen to mean a faith in a higher power, and does not include ethical principles or rationalism, as in Bowman v Secular Society.

[32] Curiously, and individually to religious charities, the public benefit requirement is justified by the assumption that, according to Cross J in Neville Estates v Madden,[33] "some benefit accrues to the public from attendance at places of worship of persons who live in this world and mix with their fellow citizens".

The first of these "sub-categories" contains trusts for the benefit of the sick and old; the Preamble to the 1601 Act gave "aged, impotent and poor people" as acceptable beneficiaries for a charity.

[42] Charitable trusts have historically been invalid if they include "purely recreational pastimes", as in IRC v City of Glasgow Police Athletic Association;[43] even though the purpose of the charity was to improve the efficiency of the police force, the fact that this included a recreational element invalidated the trust.

The courts are willing to accept charitable trusts for recreational activities if they benefit people as a whole, and not just the people covered by Section 1(2)(a), as in Guild v IRC,[46] where Lord Keith stated "the fact is that persons from all walks of life and all kinds of social circumstances may have their conditions of life improved by the provision of recreational facilities of a suitable nature".

[47] Charitable trusts can't be used to promote political changes, and charities attempting such have been "consistently rebuffed" by the courts.

An illustration of its strictness is Bowman v Secular Society, where it was held that even when attempted changes to the law were ancillary to the main goals, it was still unacceptable.

This is a matter of degrees, and was discussed by Slade J in McGovern v Attorney General,[56] when he said that: The distinction is between (a) those non-charitable activities authorised by the trust instrument which are merely incidental or subsidiary to a charitable purpose and (b) those non-charitable activities so authorised which themselves form part of the trust purpose.

[66] Under Section 110 of the Act, the Commission is tasked with giving advice or opinions to trustees relating to the performance or administration of their charity.

[68] Schemes may also be used to fix administrative difficulties caused by uncertainty, as in Re Gott,[69] or even to completely defeat the gift.

The trustees may apply to change the core purpose of the trust, which while enacted through a scheme, follows the doctrine of Cy-près.

[76] Schemes for initial failure, on the other hand, ask the court to decide whether the gifts should be returned to the testator's estate and next of kin or be applied to a new purpose under cy-pres.