Policy background Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity
JM Barrie’s gift of the rights to "Peter Pan" in 1929 has provided a significant source of income to Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity. The copyright first expired in the UK and the rest of Europe in 1987, 50 years after the death of JM Barrie. However, Lord Callaghan successfully proposed an amendment to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, giving Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity the unique right to royalties from publications and performances of "Peter Pan" in perpetuity.
	Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity wished to take advantage of the new policy on independence for NHS charities, but had difficulty in doing so, because the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 specifies that the "Peter Pan rights" are vested in special trustees appointed under NHS legislation for Great Ormond Street Hospital. The Department of Health made an agreement with Great Ormond Street Hospital whereby the existing NHS charity transferred most of its undertaking by assignment to an independent charitable company limited by guarantee. The Department of Health also appointed that new charitable company as corporate special trustee of the existing NHS charity under section 212 of the National Health Service Act 2006 in respect of the "Peter Pan rights".
	At present the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity is unable to fully complete the conversion to an independent charity, as the NHS charity has to be kept in existence until the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 is amended, to avoid its statutory rights being lost. According to the Charity, this causes a number of complications, including the risk that legacies to the charity may fail, as a result of which significant charitable donations could be lost to the NHS provision of healthcare at Great Ormond Street Hospital. In addition because the charity is operating two charities side-by-side, it has a duplication of governance arrangements, separate accounts and may need to submit duplicate returns to the Charity Commission.