Quite a Rogues Gallery, is it not?

Crisis, the charity that operates at the sharp end of homelessness; Oxfam, which endeavours to ameliorate hunger and poverty at home and abroad; the Trussell Trust, responsible for the greatest number of the food banks that shame contemporary British society. Villains all, or so that ever-more-cuddly Tory Party would have us believe.

As we reported yesterday, Martin Sime, chief executive of the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations, used a speech to the Institute of Fundraising to highlight the damage being caused to the ability of charities to attract major donors, liable to be put off by serial attacks on their activities by a raft of Westminster Government ministers.

At the heart of it all is an irony that would be laughable if it wasn't downright tragic. Food banks, as anyone who has witnessed them will confirm, are the larders of last resort for people unable to feed themselves or their family. For many it's a once unimaginable loss of autonomy and dignity. But here's the thing: the figures show that more than one- third of those reduced to getting their nourishment through the kindness of strangers are there because their benefits have been removed at a time of greatest need by agencies given targets to get people off the books. The number of benefits sanctions is rising exponentially in this supposedly robustly recovering economy.

When the Government learned from Trussell who was using the facility and why, they did the only decent thing possible; they shot the messenger. The chairman of the trust had a ministerial word put in his ear.

Austerity Britain increasingly relies on charitable and third-sector interventions to try to cushion families from hardship. Oxfam, more usually known for its work in the developing world, has a number of programmes running in the UK. The result: a Tory MP fulminates that they are little more than a left-wing lobbying group. Of course they are. Feeding the hungry, addressing drought and disease, introducing innovative farming methods: obviously little more than a bunch of Commie agitators.

Or how about Crisis, specialising in the young homeless, warned off campaigning on their behalf, told by that nice Andrew Lansley to get back in their box? Or the Howard League for Penal Reform, inveighed against by Justice Secretary Chris Grayling? And who could forget the impressively intellectual advice from former minister Brooks Newman that charities should "get back to their knitting"?

This is a course of action Mr Newman might have been better advised taking himself, rather than taking selfies of his fleshly delights to fire off to supposed young Tory activists. To think this was the chap put in charge of getting more women into politics. Maybe he misread the memo. At the heart of all this is an iniquitous piece of legislation that, like so much political doublespeak, ushers in fresh restrictions on civil liberties under the guise of openness and transparency.

The Transparency of Lobbying, Non Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014 certainly brings some transparency to the attempt to muzzle anyone with the temerity to query government policy, most especially in the field of welfare where the Secretary of State has contrived to spend more money on failed half-baked schemes than he could ever hope to save from the benefits bill. Take a bow Iain Duncan Smith, survivor of so many departmental debacles.

The act is explicitly designed to prevent anyone using funds at the next General Election to prevent criticism of the Coalition's policies and their sometimes desperate effect on vulnerable families. In fact, it's worse than that.

The people who know most about that vulnerability, the charities that mop up the social debris, are being warned off even speaking about the evidence of their own eyes. But while the charitable sector has to make do and mend, stretching meagre resources ever more thinly, the Pirates of Privatisation are doing very nicely, thank you. The major private providers can be relied upon to circle round the fattest contracts when the Westminster Government finds another piece of family silver to chuck into the auction.

Of course, few have any expertise in the fields where they bid for business. Enter the charities, fobbed off with the difficult and dubious after the big boys have picked off the low-hanging fruit. A classic example is the work programme where the main contractor takes a handsome profit from finding jobs for the skilled and able, leaving crumbs from the table for the voluntary sector to struggle with the hard to place.

I'm advised that this is known in the trade as "park and cream": park the problem clients and cream off the profitable ones.

Meanwhile, a rather more sinister form of lobbying goes on with apparent impunity. Step forward the small army of ministers who have left office only to walk smartly into the arms of businesses happy to access their contacts books and their insider knowledge.

Step forward the platoon of party hacks stalking the Commons corridors given passes as researchers, or aides, or whatever it takes to get the plastic necessary to home in on political targets in the mother of parliaments.

Step forward those who hire themselves out in an entirely different charitable arena where they perform like trained seals at "charity" dinner tables stuffed with rich donors who might just like the odd favour next time a contract comes up in their corner of the marketplace.

And then there is our joyously transparent honours system which is throwing more people on to the red benches than there are parking places for their bottoms, but not to worry because only a small coterie are in there for the politics.

The House of Lords is a very congenial place indeed in which to do business; awfully useful when you're, ahem, lobbying investors old and new.

And what an awfully nice little bauble with which to garland those who finance the cause or can be depended on to do your lobbying for you. The latest chap to venture forth in ermine cladding is Sir Andrew Green, whose claim to fame is being the chairman of Migration Watch UK, which campaigns for greater immigration controls. How very topical.

It was pointed out that Lord Green, as he will shortly be known, will be a cross bencher, and unattached to any one party. Of course he will, just as real charities that lobby on behalf of those they serve and support are not affiliated to any one party either. Apart from anything else it would be financial suicide.

But there's a clear difference between campaigning against poverty and want and campaigning for one or other side in a general election.

If Andrew Green can be ennobled for free speech, the least those in our charitable sector should expect is the freedom to open their mouths where they encounter injustice.