Trustees are the unsung heroes of the charity world. They are responsible for making sure that charities do what they say on the tin, behave responsibly (especially in financial terms) and are well run.

A typical board of trustees will have six members and three is the minimum, though larger organisations have correspondingly larger numbers.

There are over 800,000 charity trustees in the UK today. They are divided roughly equally between males and females and their average age is 57.

Only one in three is under the age of 50 and just one in every 50 is under the age of 30. One in 20 is from a black or ethnic minority background.

Perhaps 2,000 trustees are appointed or re-appointed to their posts every week, a number which is not large when you consider that on average eight brand new charities are created in every constituency in the country each year, each with its own board of trustees.

Whilst three quarters of our population engage in voluntary activity at some point each year, many of them on a regular basis, when asked how they might support a local charity, fewer than 5 per cent of people responded with the idea of becoming a trustee.

That explains why the Trusteefinder web site is able to list 5,000 vacancies for charity trustees, a figure which is probably only scratching the surface.

At a time when so many charities are under pressure – from the recession, the perennial need to obtain and secure funding and often the rigours of success – the role of trustees is vital.

We should be doing more to recruit, train and retain these selfless individuals and my adjournment debate will give the minister ample opportunity to spell out how she intends that the government will do this.

On the face of it, there is cross party agreement on the value and role of charities themselves. Underneath the waterline the similarities in the approach of the main parties are less obvious.

But whether the trend towards partnerships, co-working between sectors and generous funding continues, or whether in the future charities find themselves standing on their own two feet and working more independently, without the support, funding or structures that partners bring, the role of the charity trustee is likely to become even more important than it is today.