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6.52 pmMr. William Powell (Corby): The House owes a great debt to the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and his Committee. I am delighted that we have a full opportunity to discuss the Committee's report this evening.
Time was when Parliament used to discuss matters relating to the Church of England rather more regularly and fully. It is often forgotten that when Lord Beaconsfield--Benjamin Disraeli--won his great general election victory in 1874, he had no legislative programme to hand for his first Queen's Speech; he did not come to office pledged to change all the existing laws, as modern Governments do. Because the parliamentary Session required some legislation to occupy hon. Members' time, he suggested to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Tait--who was very concerned about matters relating to ritual and so forth--that it might be appropriate for the first Session to be taken up largely with ecclesiastical legislation. Of course, there was chaos in the House for months. It was then decided that it would be very bad for the House to devote too much time to discussing legislation relating to the Church of England. Nevertheless, we should welcome a modest opportunity--extending beyond an hour and half--to reflect on what is a great scandal for the Church of England, and its consequences. The Church, too, owes a great debt to the hon. Member for Birkenhead and his Committee, not least for the moderate and considered way in which he introduced the debate. The House also owes a debt to my right hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Alison). He has occupied his present office for some years, with the highest distinction but also with perfect parliamentary manners. It would be easy for someone occupying such a position to inflame the minds of a number of hon. Members, and for Church issues to spin out of control; my right hon. Friend's capacity--near- genius, indeed--to keep matters in perspective has been a marvellous parliamentary sight over the years. Although he will receive few plaudits in the House for his conduct, he deserves a considerable tribute. I am happy to tell him now how much I appreciate not only his speech this afternoon--which was very helpful in explaining what is now under way--but the general conduct of his office over a long period.
As I have said before, I am the son of a clergyman who was, for a time, a pensioner of the Church of England. I therefore have some personal knowledge of the way in which payment of both stipend and pension to the clergy has worked in practice. I am also vice-chairman of a body involving Members of both Houses, called "Church in Danger". Hon. Members who take an interest in such matters know that I am nothing if not a high Tory, and a high Tory always believes that the Church is in danger.
The great sermon preached before the Lord Mayor by Dr. Henry Sacheverell established the phrase "Church in danger". He so enraged the weak Government of the day that they decided to impeach him. A great impeachment trial took place in Westminster Hall, and the London crowds were much exercised by the good divine's sermon. In due course he was convicted, and his sentence was that the sermon should be burnt. Accordingly, the hangman- -
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on Tower hill, I believe--burnt the good doctor's sermon. Of course, it subsequently became the best-selling sermon of all time, as it richly deserved to: those who preach that the Church is in danger not only tug at the consciences of high Tories such as me, but underline one of the most profound truths about the Church of England. Only two or three years ago, a diocesan bishop told me that the Church today faced three great dangers. The first was the secularisation of society; we would all agree with that. The second was the danger of schism, which was sharply focused at the time by the ordination of women. The most profound danger, however, lay in the financial consequences of the scandal that the Select Committee has brought to the House's attention so effectively-- although I see some truth in the claim that the Committee merely brought all the evidence together, and highlighted it for the benefit of a wider public audience than readers of the ecclesiastical newspapers and press releases. But it is certainly the case that the generous tribute which has been paid to the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury for the speed with which he acted when the scandal first came out was entirely appropriate.There are those who say, and one still sees it in the columns of certain newspapers, that the Church Commissioners should apologise for what has happened, so I was delighted earlier this week to see the Bishop of Chelmsford, who for a short time was in the Gallery, reiterate in The Times that he had indeed, on behalf of the Church Commissioners, made a handsome apology to the Synod on a number of occasions. There is absolutely no question but that the Church Commissioners generally have admitted, and admitted handsomely, that serious errors of judgment were made. It is on the consequences of those serious errors of judgment that I want to make a few remarks this evening.
I would say, in parentheses, that the Church Commissioner who was most responsible for the scandal, Sir Douglas Lovelock--we have, alas, heard too little from him about his own personal responsibility in this--was a distinguished public servant. But his undoubted distinction as a public servant came as a tax collector, not as an investor of public funds. I hope that those who are responsible for the selection of appropriate people to act as commissioners and trustees of Church funds look to those with relevant experience in the handling of these matters, not merely to whether they have had a distinguished public career which has been brought to a conclusion by the compulsory age of retirement for our civil servants.
One of the main issues that has arisen here this evening concerns the question whether there should be legislation to deal with the consequences or whether, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Selby said, speaking on behalf of the Church Commissioners and, I think, on behalf of the Church of England at this stage, it should be by way of Measure.
I entirely support the remarks made by the hon. Members for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael). There are wider public issues in the reforms that must now be made than exclusively ecclesiastical ones, and the Church Commissioners and the Synod must understand that the legislation is bound to involve wider public issues than lie strictly speaking in their remit. Therefore, the agreement whereby Parliament would stay out of Church matters has to be read in the light of the fact that there will be Church
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matters that legitimately and genuinely involve wider considerations. At that point, Parliament is the appropriate body to handle it, not the Church.Secondly, the machinery by which any kind of consultation could exist for what my right hon. Friend the Member for Selby suggested is, alas, pitifully inadequate. The Ecclesiastical Committee is not a committee of Parliament. It is a statutory committee established by Act of Parliament, and it can carry out only those functions laid down in the 1919 statute. Most of us who serve on the Ecclesiastical Committee--a number of us are here present this evening--think that that statute is in need of urgent revision, and I would be the first to make that point.
I hope that my right hon. Friend, in talking to those with whom he is involved, will say that the time has now come for a committee to be established between Parliament and the Synod which would revise the functions that are carried out by the Ecclesiastical Committee. The only duty we have on the Ecclesiastical Committee is to decide whether legislation is expedient. In the best legislative tradition, the word "expedient" is simply not defined, and not one of us really has any sensible idea of what it might mean.
Leaving that aside, the Ecclesiastical Committee cannot amend and, if it recommends amendments, and those amendments are subsequently accepted by the Synod, the Synod has to begin the whole legislative process again because the Measure that it has sent to the Ecclesiastical Committee, and ultimately to Parliament, is incapable of amendment when it has completed its entire passage in the Synod. Therefore, the Ecclesiastical Committee can make only recommendations and, in due course, both Houses have to decide what they make of it, if they do so at all.
In order for the Ecclesiastical Committee to play a more meaningful role, it would be necessary to revise the legislation under which the Ecclesiastical Committee sits, and that would require a fresh Act of Parliament. It must be obvious to the House, as I outline these procedures, that that is not a way forward.
Therefore, I hope that my right hon. Friend will not only reflect on what has been said--I am sure that he will--but that he will be quite firm with those with whom he works in the Church Commissioners and in the Synod and say that they must really pull themselves together and recognise that this is a matter pre-eminently involving the Church today which must be dealt with properly by a Bill before Parliament because the issues themselves are wider than ecclesiastical issues. That surely is conclusive.
Having said that, I want to move on to some of the consequences of the scandal. Whatever the sum of money that has been forgone may be at the end of the day, there is no doubt whatever that there is a financial hole which is of considerable importance for the future. There are now more clergy pensioners than there are clergy. That is an entirely new situation, but it shows the financial burden which now has to be met in order to deal with pensioners. The truth of the matter is that that balance is likely to move more in favour of pensioners in the future.
We are already experiencing the consequences of that. I called upon the incumbent of one parish in my constituency the other day and he told me that, before he came to the parish, there was a four-and-a-half-year interregnum--four and a half years without a resident clergyman. There were, of course, plenty of retired clergy
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prepared to conduct divine worship, but that is only part of a clergyman's duty. A clergyman's duty extends way beyond the duty to be in church on Sundays and to conduct divine worship. There is the pastoral work, work to be done in Church schools, and much else besides, and none of that was done because of the long interregnum. It is not surprising that the congregation fell apart.Another parish in my constituency has a large population of rising 9,000. It may be that there are parishes in our big cities which have a larger nominal population than that, but in Northamptonshire that is a large parish. That parish has been without a clergyman since August last year and, as I understand it, there is no imminent prospect of one arriving. Of course, there are clergyman to conduct divine worship on Sundays, but in a parish of 9,000 the pastoral work needs to continue. The reason why there is no clergyman at the moment is that there is no money to pay him. The phasing through of appointments, lengthening those interregnums all the time, is one of the most serious consequences which is already being experienced. There are those--my father was one of them--who thought that after world war two the most pressing problem that the Church faced was a re-endowment and that there should have been a major effort to boost the overall funds of the Church. A brilliant administrator such as Archbishop Fisher may have been the right person to carry out such a reform. Unfortunately, Archbishop Fisher allowed himself to be drawn into the cul de sac of canon law reform, and most of his time at Lambeth spent on administrative matters was taken up with matters that would now be regarded as being of comparatively little importance. It would have been a great help if the urgency of financial reform, which the projection of pensions had made plain would be a major charge on the Church, had been recognised. That opportunity was missed and today we face the consequences. The Bishop of Durham is conducting a major inquiry into the Church's future needs. The bishop is not the person that most people think of as the Bishop of Durham but rather his successor Bishop Turnbull. The report of that inquiry is eagerly awaited, and I have no doubt that it will contain important provisions for the future. I should like to make a plea on behalf of the rural parish which is an important part of the Church of England. My father was a rural clergyman all his life. Nowadays one village is being added to another, until up to six villages may be joined. That happens because of financial difficulties.
As the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth said, one of the glories of the Church of England has been the resident clergyman. But in far too many places the clergy are no longer resident: they frequently live 10 or more miles from their parishes. That is not healthy, and I hope to see it reversed, not least because so much of the strength of the Church was in the rural areas. I do not exclude the importance of urban areas, but the Church's strength in the countryside has been of the upmost importance in terms of the loyalty and affection of the people of England.
Not only are there many parishes with no resident clergymen but I have found, as may have other hon. Members, that the vicarage, in so far as it is used, is sometimes merely an office. Married female clergy tend to live with their husbands somewhere else. More than one parish in my constituency have active vicarages, but
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they are merely offices, because the woman priests may live 16 to 20 miles away and come over for the day if that is appropriate. I am talking about weekday work and not about conducting divine worship on Sundays. The clergy are no longer the residents that they used to be.Some savings can and must be made in Church finances. I shall start at the top. The Church of England has far too many bishops. Suffragan bishops were instigated to carry out confirmations, of which there were many in those days. Of course the diocesan bishop had other functions. I find the world of Parson Woodford and Trollope much more agreeable than many aspects of today's Church. It was the function of the diocesan bishop to attend the House of Lords and support the Government there. He had to make improving sermons before Parliament on occasions of national importance, such as our deliverance from the gunpowder plot. They conducted large confirmations. Archbishop Wake used to sit the whole day and confirm perhaps 10,000 people one after another.
In more modern times suffragan bishops did that and frequently combined that office with the office of archdeacon. The income came from the archdeaconry and not as a special income to the suffragan. Every diocesan bishop seems to think that he needs a suffragan. In the dear old diocese of Peterborough, of which I am obviously so fond, our last diocesan bishop had an assistant bishop. Our present bishop, splendid man that he is as we both know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, felt that he needed to be the last diocesan to get a suffragan. But he did not need one.
When I tell suffragans that they are unnecessary, they are very offended and say that their jobs now are to chair committees and visit clergymen in distress and so on. I have no doubt that there are more clergymen in distress than there used to be, but archdeacons and rural deans could visit them. Perhaps there are now more archdeacons and rural deans in distress. There is a plethora, an ever-expanding number, of committees, as we see in the Synod, which is producing more and more legislation.
A miscellaneous provisions measure came to the House a few days ago. It contained some tidying-up provisions to which nobody took any great exception and there seemed to be no great urgency about them. However, one provision was unnecessary and undesirable. It was that the regius professor of ecclesiastical history at Oxford university should no longer be a clergyman. But the clergy need to have ecclesiastical historians among them, and there must be an incentive for Church historians to become ordained. If there is a regius professorship at Oxford, so much the better. It would be a great misfortune if the Bench of Bishops contained people who knew nothing about Church history or the history of the Church of England. We expect bishops to have many admirable qualities. We expect them to be godly and saintly men, to say their prayers and mean them, to understand something of pastoral life, and be able to teach the scriptures. Those are important matters. I do not regard the management of money and the Church's finances as among the most important qualities that are needed by bishops. That is why the Church Commissioners must be reformed. This vast body of people all trying to get in on the act and all of them spawning committees here, there and everywhere
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has become inappropriate to our age. Let us leave the management of money not to bishops and archdeacons, but to people who have experience in those areas and are able to carry out their functions, which must be tightly drawn in law, in a proper and appropriate way. There are also too many dioceses in this country. Some of them are enormous and the strain upon the diocesan bishop may be sufficient to require him to have one suffragan. The bishopric of London has an enormous number of parishes and, alas, a great many problems. The diocese of Chelmsford is a huge burden on its diocesan bishop. My father was a canon of Chelmsford and at least two of the four bishops of Chelmsford I knew suffered broken health as a consequence of having a diocese which runs from Dagenham and East Ham all the way to the Suffolk border and contains a huge variety of circumstances. Some dioceses have three counties, but the diocese of Portsmouth seems to be just the Isle of Wight and the city of Portsmouth and not much else. That is far too small in this age. We need to look hard to see whether the structure of the dioceses that we have inherited is appropriate for the age in which we live and whether substantial savings could be made from reorganisation. Some hon. Members have said that every reorganisation leads to increased costs. That factor will have to be considered.The upkeep of our cathedrals, many of which are among the finest buildings in the world, is of considerable national interest, but I suspect that one or two of them need not be cathedrals at all. That is certainly the case with the cathedral church of Chelmsford. I am sorry to identify it as such- -I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) is present --but it was the parish church of Chelmsford before the decision was taken to upgrade it into a cathedral, and it does look more like a distinguished parish church than one of the glories of European architecture and heritage. The consequences of the scandal will be felt throughout the Church for decades to come; there is no escaping from that fact. The people in the pews--the people who matter--are of course appalled by what they have discovered. Serious errors have been made. I have been delighted to learn from my right hon. Friend the Member for Selby about what has been and is being done to put matters right, but I urge him not only to reflect on what he has said tonight, but to do what he can, at his persuasive best, to convince his colleagues in the Church Commissioners and in the Synod to pay serious attention to this evening's discussions.
The only way to proceed which will command the confidence of the public generally and the Church of England public in particular is to introduce an Act of Parliament, however inconvenient that may be to people who would like to put the matter away in a little corner and not let too much light be thrown on what is going on.
7.21 pm
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey): During the speech of the hon. Member for Corby (Mr. Powell), I was beginning to think that I was a student attending a lecture about the management of the modern Church and its historical perspectives. As those of us who have been in the House and served on the Ecclesiastical Committee with the hon. Gentleman know, he speaks from great experience, knowledge and commitment.
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It think that this is a unique occasion. I do not remember an occasion in the House when a whole day was set aside, from the end of questions and statements until the Adjournment debate, to discuss Church matters. Suddenly, we have been able to focus our attention on that. Even when we debated the ordination of women, we started later in the day and did not have so much time allocated.Mr. Frank Field: We had one and a half hours.
Normally, we discuss the matter only when a bit of Church or Ecclesiastical Committee business comes to this place for approval or disapproval and, conventionally, one and a half hours is allocated. For no other reason, therefore, we should pay tribute to the fact that the Select Committee on Social Security, chaired by the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), decided, I suspect at his suggestion originally, to consider this matter of wide general concern. That consideration happens to be within the context of the management of the Church of England, and principles that the House has been concerned about in relation to a range of issues have been applied.
The fact that the Committee has considered an aspect of the management of an important institution's finances, that the matter is considered here, and that we have time to debate it, is important. The debate is specifically about the management of the finances of the national Church, the Church of England, but it relates to many other parallel concerns and debates that we are having. It is timely because a debate is taking place in Committee on the management and provision of pensions in the context of Government pensions legislation. That Bill, which has been through the other place, deals with some of the same issues: whether providers of pensions provide adequately for their employees and how pension fund assets are managed.
Two recent examples have brought those matters into the open and into public debate. They are not parallel, but they have similarities. The first was in the private sector and relates to the way in which Maxwell employees, to put it directly, were ripped off by their employer and placed in huge difficulty. All hon. Members have received representations from their constituents who have found themselves in difficulty. As someone who represents many print workers, I had many such representations.
The second example involves pensioners of the Church of England, that is, the retired clergy. They found, not that their employers--members of the Church--had directly ripped them off, but that those to whom they entrusted the management of finances ripped them off. They did not do so directly; they did so through incompetent, poorly advised, mistaken, foolish investments. The debate centres on that.
Mr. Field: Does the hon. Gentleman recall that the same Select Committee recommended to the Government that the Goode committee should be established to recommend a Pensions Bill, and that, when the Government came to it, it was such a complicated matter that we now have one of the biggest Bills to be introduced in this Parliament? The Government are trying to debate the Bill openly, and are not getting it through in one and a half hours.
Mr. Hughes: I remember that. That is another tribute to the hon. Gentleman's Committee. That matter slightly
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predates the present debate. I have considered the Pensions Bill. I had a briefing with my noble Friend Baroness Seear, who dealt with the matter in the other place the other day. That Bill is hugely important; such matters are complex but important.One of the things that most affects people's sense of security throughout their lives is what the state of their pension will be and how secure that is. People have a great interest in knowing how their pension managers are doing. They are big players in the national corporate financial scene. Many of us have experience of the fact that many of the matters that concern our constituents are determined by the decisions of pension funds and trustees, who are now large players and investors.
I should like to make some brief, passing references to the speech of the hon. Member for Corby. He got into a fairly extended consideration of how the Church could reorganise its affairs. It caused me to think of two things. First, there is a danger in the Church, as in the rest of society, that we shall start thinking that administration is all, and that we shall require the people at the top of the professional tree in the Church to have the same skills as those required of the people at the top of the professional tree in other sectors of life, that is, managers, accountants and financiers. But those at the top in the Church may not have those skills. Secondly, one complaint that is made all the time is that the best- paid people in the health service are the administrators, financiers and accountants, not the health professionals. The same is true in the Church.
This is a much smaller matter but, as someone whose
sister-in-law--the hon. Member for Corby may not like this--is an ordained priest in the diocese of Chelmsford, may I say that my brother had to follow her to her house, which is in the parish. He had to live where she is living, as it were, on the job. She does not live away from the place. It does not necessarily follow that women clergy or women priests will, by necessity, live further away; it depends on the family's choice. My sister- in-law lives in the middle of her community, which very much welcomes that.
I welcome the report and all its recommendations. I welcome the recommendation that the Church Commissioners should be a smaller, businesslike body. It is nonsense that the Church Commissioners are a huge body of people who, in many respects, are only nominal members. In his earlier intervention, the hon. Member for Colchester, North (Mr. Jenkin) asked questions that related to the fact that more than one hon. Member serves on that body. The Prime Minister is one of its members. All the diocesan bishops are members. It is complete management nonsense that that huge body of people should be responsible, in any serious sense, for the management of these finances. As the Select Committee recommends, the Church Commissioners should be a small body of people who can get on with that, and who see it as their particular contribution to the management of the Church.
Clearly, it is proper--I hope that this will be picked up in Bishop Turnbull's commission--that a pension fund should be established and that it should take in money and pay out Church pensions. There is a management proposal that there should be a single board dealing with paying in and paying out; that is sensible. The people who know what the revenue is should decide what the outgoings are; that is logical. The important point has been made--this
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was touched on by the hon. Member for Corby- -that this whole business is not only about learning the lessons for the future, but about restoring the confidence of the contributors--the people in the pews. They need to be confident that when they pay their money in, it will not be thrown away. There is no incentive for people to give generously if they do not have confidence in those who are managing their money.There is also the question of how the matter should be addressed in terms of legislation. There is the debate about the procedures that take place in the Synod and here and about the interrelationship between the decision- making processes of the Church and the decision-making process of Parliament.
It is self-evident that the Church misuses, misspends or misinvests its inherited wealth at its peril. There are likely to be dire consequences in rural and in urban areas if the assets of the Church are wasted by bad investment. The Church has a lot of updating to do to get its investment policy right and to get the accountability of its investment policy and processes correct.
The Church Commission was set up so that there could be a pooling of resources by which the poor parts of the Church could be assisted by the affluent parts of the Church. In those days, the system was intended to benefit urban, inner-city missions because the wealth lay in the rural parishes or in the slightly less urban parishes. It will be a tragedy if the consequence of this lack of investment is that there are not only not enough funds with which to pay the pensions, but few funds to go to support the Church in other places. The Church needs to be very conscious of the calamitous results of such a significant waste of its money.
It is always difficult to know how best to invest. The hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Clifton-Brown) has made it clear that one needs people with appropriate skills to ensure that the best financial and investment decisions are made. The hon. Member for Corby made the similar point that one should appoint not only people from the list of the great and the good, but people who know exactly how to deal with the matters in question.
As everyone has admitted responsibility, it is not now appropriate to go over in large measure whose fault it was. The archbishop has accepted responsibility, technically quite properly, and has tried to ensure that the matter is dealt with fairly. I intervened in the speech of the right hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) to make the point about openness. I believe that, when the Turnbull commission reports and when we look at the structure again, we shall realise that there needs to be a more efficient, small, compact managerial organisation dealing with those matters and one that is much more open and accountable to the body of the Church. Although secret decision-making and a secret investment policy may be fine for private financial deals and in competing against other people, the subscribers and beneficiaries must, in their own interests, be allowed to see what is going on and must be convinced that the Church is making proper decisions.
An issue lies underneath all this. The Church must face up to the fact that it is running out of historical assets with which to support not just its present ministry, but its retired clergy. The position is changing from having the
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money available, with some to spare, to having insufficient money to meet all the pension bills. That is why the whole issue is being addressed. I welcome what the right hon. Member for Selby said about the fact that the Church has been working out the problem, and that it has just come to an initial formulation for the way in which it will raise the money for pensions in future. The state faces the same issue. The welfare state will not have enough available from historical, accumulated moneys to pay state pensions indefinitely. The move towards occupational pension schemes is entirely right because it is necessary and because that is the only way in which we shall raise the money. The Church must do the same.The Church of England needs to face up to the conclusion that most of the rest of the Churches have faced up to. In the free Churches and, to a large extent, in the Roman Catholic Church, congregations pay their ministers. I do not make my next point in the belief that I am any better than anyone else. The old tradition of the Church was that one tithed to pay for a variety of things in the Church, thus furthering the ministry of the Church. The money raised from congregations--I am talking not about the widow with her mite, but about people with considerably more money--is minuscule. My diocese of Southwark has the best level of giving of any according to the most recent records, but still it is minuscule.
If people really want the Church's ministry to work, they must covenant and give, and they must give in proportion to their salaries and incomes. Many people who go to church have large salaries and incomes, but the Church does not, in many cases, see much of that money. The churches have to make a contribution towards the diocese; they begrudge it and they think that it is too big. I am never sure whether they boost their Easter electoral roll or reduce it to affect their levy.
If the Church here is to face up to its responsibilities, as much as the Church in the rest of the world has, it must raise the resources to pay for its clergy parish by parish and community by community. There will, of course, have to be cross-subsidy, and the rich places should take responsibility for paying for the Church in poorer places. None the less, there must be much more
self-sufficiency in the Church, not least because the historical assets of the Church will not be sufficient to keep up with rising bills, including the rising pensions bill. The Church needs to face up to that fact soon; it is a real challenge, especially in times of financial difficulty.
There needs to be more democratic accountability of the management of the Church and of the Church financiers. We also need to address the question of parliamentary and state accountability. One can go one of two ways. One can say that it is entirely inappropriate for the state to have any responsibility and that the Church should be allowed to get on with its own affairs. At the moment, the Church puts things to us on a take-it-or-leave- it basis--the phrase used by the right hon. Member for Selby.
Alternatively--this was the burden of the case put forward by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael)--one can say that there is no reason why the Church should be any less open to scrutiny than any other organisation. I take that view, and I take the view that we should be as willing and ready to scrutinise the interests of our constituents who are pensioners of the Church, as opposed to pensioners of
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Robert Maxwell, as we are to scrutinise the interests of any other group in society. We must therefore have procedures for doing that. Outside, it may seem that we are discussing semantics when we debate whether the Church should propose Measures that we take or leave and negotiate beforehand. The hon. Member for Corby was right to say that, even, with the flexibility that the Ecclesiastical Committee has shown in the past, it is inappropriate for us to debate a draft Measure. The conclusion is, therefore, that, if we have the power to scrutinise the structure of the ChurchCommissioners--whatever structure the Church decides to adopt--as we should scrutinise all other charities, whether exempt or not, we should use that power by means of primary legislation.
I support those who, like the Select Committee, argued that we should have Bills. The Church could have its debates and then send legislation to us. It is a matter of ensuring not only that we listen to what the Church says, but that the Church pays heed to what is regarded as good practice for every pension fund and for every citizen. The Turnbull commission should take that into account. I guess that what will happen after the debate is that we shall await the outcome of the Turnbull commission. The two debates will coincide, as it were, in terms of looking at the structures of the Church. That is the right way forward.
Many of us hope that the Turnbull commission will be bold, not timid. In the commission's last weeks, as it nears drafting its final report, I hope that the new Bishop of Durham and his colleagues will address the need for the Church to be seen to be organised in a way that minimises bureaucracy, maximises democracy and accountability, but, above all, releases people to get on with the job of the Church. That is a mission not to the people in the pews--if they are in the pews, we are nine tenths of the way there--but to the people who are not in the pews at all and who ought to be much nearer to the Church than they are.
The history of the investments that prompted today's debate has not done the Church any good. I hope that the Church has learned the lesson of that mistake and put that sad saga behind it. Once it has done that, the Church needs to be much less defensive.
I was with two friends--one a Christian, one not--in Rochester cathedral on a Sunday afternoon. They pointed out to me a notice on a board in the cathedral that started by saying that Church of England attendance was not declining. That is hardly a bullish, confident start to a statement about the current state of the Church of England.
The Church must be much more confident about itself, much less defensive, and much more concerned to be the missionary Church that, in many parts of world, it still is, but that the good old Church of England often does not appear to be in Britain. That is why I favour the disestablishment of the Church; that would release us to be a more missionary Church and less careful about being defensive. Irrespective of whether hon. Members agree with that, I hope that the Church learns its lesson, puts its house in order, modernises its structures and gets on with its real job. That is not to defend the institutional old Church, but to manage itself so that it can deliver the unchangeable and eternal new message, which is about reaching
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individuals so that Christ can change their lives. That is the principal concern of the Church, and the sooner we can be sure that it is not spoiling that message by bad internal management and that it has its house in order, the better the Church will do.7.44 pm
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cirencester and Tewkesbury): I take part in this debate with a sense of sadness. At a time when the congregations of the Church of England are at their historic low point and when some of us, at any rate, who are members of the Church of England, feel that the Church is not giving a sufficient moral and spiritual lead, to heap this financial crisis--as, inevitably, it is--on to that dilemma is a cruel double blow.
I must pay a great tribute to the Social Security Committee; I pay one, too, to its Chairman for the measured way that he introduced his excellent report without which, undoubtedly, we would not be debating this extremely serious issue.
I should like to start where my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Mr. Powell), in a sense, left off. I hasten to add that I shall not speak at such great length. My remarks will be extremely brief. Let us think about the consequences of this financial crisis, as I should like to call it. A substantial sum--mention has already been made of over £700 million-- will have to be set aside for a properly funded pension scheme. That will leave the general fund in the Church Commissioners' hands severely depleted for all their other activities.
Those other activities, of course, include the day-to-day stipends of existing clergy. They also include the upkeep of a considerable number of churches. Their upkeep has to be met by smaller and smaller congregations, which are therefore contributing less and less, not only to the upkeep of the churches but to the Church's giving to other worthy causes, in this country and throughout the world. The inevitable consequence is that there will be less money to fund the stipends of individual clergymen. That means that congregations will be asked to pay more and, because they are declining, the number of clergy will decline. As that declines, so will the number of congregations. It is an ever-decreasing circle that, somehow, we must find a way of breaking.
The consequence of the declining number of clergy will be that the number of parishes administered by each clergyman will grow. In my group of parishes in Gloucestershire, we have an extremely dedicated parson who looks after five parishes with four parish churches and manages to hold a service in each every Sunday. I do not know how he manages to drive between them in the time that he has available. He is extremely ably assisted by his lay reader wife. The consequence of that crisis will be that his and other tasks will become ever-more fraught. If he is being threatened with at least another three parishes to add to his existing ones, he will certainly not be able to hold a service in every church in every parish, every week. That will be an extremely sad day for the parishes involved.
Almost every mistake in the book was made in the financial management that we are discussing. Unfortunately, one or two of the chief executives are still in place, notably the chief executive of the pension side in the Church. The Select Committee report makes it clear
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that it was he who did, to use the report's words, aback-of-an-envelope calculation of the change in pensions policy to give clergymen and the widows of clergymen a pension increase to two thirds of final salary. That gave rise, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) has said, to a threefold increase in the cost of pension contributions between 1981 and 1991. Over that same period, the benefits of that pension scheme increased 17 per cent. above the retail price index. The intent is laudable but it is somewhat foolish if it cannot be afforded.
Mr. Jenkin: It is important to emphasise that the gentleman in question was not responsible for taking that decision. We spent some time in Committee questioning the source of that decision. What is most disturbing about what we discovered is that decisions of that magnitude simply emerged from a consensus, perhaps driven a bit by the Synod, perhaps driven a bit by some of the commissioners. Those momentous decisions became policy without anybody formulating a paper to consider all the consequences and going through a proper process of decision making. It is wrong to cast blame on individuals in the way that my hon. Friend's comment might be interpreted.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I am grateful for that clarification. Nevertheless, the individual concerned has had professional financial training and is involved in a firm that gives pensions advice. He is therefore expected to know something about such matters.
The lesson that must be learnt from the whole debacle is that we need a proper accountable, open, democratic system. As I said to the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), part of what has gone wrong in the past is that too many of the sort of decisions that we are discussing have been made in secret by very few people. If the House is to remain the scrutiny body for Church affairs, we need a system whereby the House can obtain all the information necessary in order properly to scrutinise the decisions. That is what has gone wrong in the past.
I am not a Johnny-come-lately to the subject: I have been asking questions on Church affairs since I first entered the House in 1992. Up until then, I do not believe that the House had the necessary information to know what was going wrong. It was not until the 1991 report that we even knew about the disastrous investment in Kent. I hope that lessons will be learned. We must have a proper, democratically accountable system and proper accounts. After all, the National Audit Office had been asking for properly consolidated accounts for six years prior to 1991 before it eventually got hold of them. Had those accounts been available, it is conceivable that some of the mistakes would have been spotted earlier.
Mr. Jenkin: That is certainly true.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I thank my hon. Friend for that guidance, because he was a member of the Committee that produced the excellent 1991 report.
Undoubtedly, wrong decisions were made. We need a proper financial structure. I should like to see the results of the quarterly meetings at least summarised in the annual report. I should like to see proper accounts
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showing the performance of each section of the Church Commissioners' fund. We owe it to past clergymen to make a decision as soon as possible to set up a proper actuarially funded pension scheme. There can be nothing more important than the obligation to assure retired members of the clergy that their pensions will be honoured in full. We owe it to them to make sure that we get a decision as soon as possible.It is now two years since the Lambeth group identified the fact that pensions were not properly funded and pointed out that no fund was earmarked for pensions within the overall Church Commissioners' funds. I do not believe that the Church Commissioners even knew fully what the pension obligations were each year. We owe it to those clergy to set up an independent actuarially funded scheme for past pensions as well as to provide for the pension liabilities of present clergymen. That is where it may be prudent not to fund in full, because nobody knows what those liabilities will be. As the hon. Member for Birkenhead has already said, it may be prudent to set aside a fund with the obligation on Church Commissioners that if there is a shortfall in the fund, it can be made up at a later date. If that is not done, there may be overfunding now and the other obligations of the Church may suffer.
Lessons have to be learned. We need proper systems and proper professionals in place. My right hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) has never said whether proper pensions management advice has been sought. I shall be pursuing that in questions. I am not talking about property advisers, to whom I have talked and who I know do an excellent job, and I am not talking about actuarial advice on how much money needs to be set aside. I am talking about pension fund management, which I mentioned in my intervention to my right hon. Friend the Member for Selby. We need to know how well each section of the fund is doing.
When I was involved in property fund management as a chartered surveyor, the portfolios of all our clients were measured against an index. We could tell any of our pension fund managers how their fund was doing compared to a basket of other funds. We could probably find a fund similar to that of the Church, where some 50 per cent. or so of its investment was in property and we would be able to say how well the Church fund was doing compared to that similar fund. It is essential that, before long, we have a proper annual report with accounts from the Church Commissioners so that we can see how the fund is doing. As the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) has said, it is essential that trust in the people who will manage the Church finances in the future is built up. That is vital if we are to encourage people to give more. I have no doubt that Bishop Turnbull's commission will be urging all of us who are members of the Church Commission to give more. If we are to give more, as our ancestors have done throughout history, we must not be suspicious about the way the funds will be managed. That is one of the most important things for the Church Commissioners to achieve. They must convince all of us in the Church who might be thinking of giving money that it will be properly managed.
I am delighted to have been able to take part in the debate. This is a difficult moment for the Church but, historically, all institutions have their ups and downs and I have no doubt that, given proper leadership and participation from its members--it has had that in the
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past--the Church can again rebuild the moral and spiritual lead that the nation desperately needs. Our spiritual stock is going downhill. If we are to stem the increased rate of divorce and the break-up of families, we must have that proper spiritual and moral leadership. I look to our leaders in the Church to remedy all the things that I have mentioned.7.56 pm
Ms Kate Hoey (Vauxhall): I welcome the report and its recommendations. I was a member of the Select Committee but I joined only in the latter part of the inquiry. I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) for the way in which he chairs that Committee and for the way in which he handles it generally. In spite of the party political differences, the debates that take place in that Committee are conducted in a way that uses those differences in the best interests of all our constituents. My hon. Friend's speech was interesting and made clear the way forward following the report. Much of the excellent report is due to my hon. Friend's consistent and dedicated interest in this subject. I agree with what has been said by my hon. Friend and other hon. Members who have mentioned opening up the processes in the Church and making it more accountable. There is a great deal of mystique around the Church of England and the Church Commissioners and that must be got rid of. If the report does anything to open up the debate within the congregations across England, it will be extremely useful. The report refers to Parliament's somewhat laissez-faire attitude to the Church of England and to the way in which it deals with it in the House. If we are to have an established Church--there is a great deal of debate about that--it is important that Parliament takes its involvement more seriously. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) said, there is a public interest and it must take into account the relevance and importance of the Church in England, particularly in the inner-city areas. Just as the numbers who attend some of our debates in Parliament do not reflect the importance of the work of Parliament, so the size of the congregations on Sundays does not reflect the importance of the work of the Church. It is important that we do not measure what the Church is doing by the number of people who go to churches on a Sunday. It is necessary to have a Bill rather than a Measure, because we must have this important debate. I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth could not commit the next Labour Government to introducing a Bill and could not give a timetable. However, I am confident that we shall find a way to allow much greater debate than just one and a half hours on a Measure. I should like to pay tribute to one of my constituents--the Archbishop of Canterbury--who acted in a way that showed clear leadership once the results of the inquiries by John Plender in the Financial Times were published in July 1992. Once that "loss" of £800 million on property speculation was revealed, the Archbishop of Canterbury acted promptly. I very much welcome, as the right hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) did, the fact that independent auditors will be looking at the Ashford development. The Committee found it most disturbing
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that the Church could even think of getting involved in such a development. It is crucial that independent auditing is introduced. The subject has not been mentioned tonight, but the Church must consider the whole question of morality and ethics; whether the Church should be involved, and to what extent it should be involved, in property development, speculative developments and in developments which may be perfectly acceptable in other areas of life, but which may not be the ways that the average churchgoing member of the public thinks that the Church should invest. I hope that the archbishop will identify his role in that matter and offer some leadership. We should consider not only that matter when the Church makes a bad investment, but whether the ends generally justify the means.When Sir Douglas Lovelock gave evidence to the Committee, he asked a question about the end justifying the means and whether the Church took anything to do with ethics into account. It was interesting that he said that the Commissioners were
"there to support the parochial ministry of the Church of England and they should strain every nerve to do it, and that is what we were doing . . . in pursuit of that, we did things which subsequently have seemed to be imprudent".
It is not good enough to question afterwards reasons for involvement in investments which may not be ethical. The Church should draw up criteria after a debate among its congregation. I also believe that there was complacency about the losses, as some hon. Members have said. Other--albeit slightly different--pension funds did much better and were much more capable of dealing with the recession than the Church.
I want to comment on the consequence of that debacle and on what has happened in inner-city areas. In my own inner-city area of Lambeth, there are many churches, but each church does a great deal more than providing a service on a Sunday. One cannot underestimate the work done in areas of high deprivation, poverty and very bad housing, where there are high numbers of young, single mums, few play spaces for children and all sorts of other problems that result from living in the inner city. The work done by the churches and the clergy in such areas is greatly appreciated. The appreciation may not always be shown by more people attending church, but, like many other things, if it were not there, it would be greatly missed. Some churches in particular have to deal with homelessness. St. John's at Waterloo spends a great deal of time helping people who sleep right next to the church in the bullring. Indeed, every night the church steps are covered with people sleeping rough. St. John's is also involved in youth projects and works in a multiracial community. All those activities are vital in a poorer area where people are not able to contribute as much as they might in other areas, although of course some people contribute greatly. I was interested to hear the right hon. Member for Selby talk about the transitional arrangements for poorer dioceses. It is absolutely crucial that areas such as the one that I represent are treated differently. Some hon. Members may have received a letter today from the Rev. Richard Thomas, the communications officer for the diocese of Oxford. It is interesting that the Church now has communications officers as well. Perhaps he is on e-mail. He pointed out that Oxford was one of the first
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dioceses to call for an independent inquiry following the report on the commissioners' losses in the Financial Times , which is very welcome. He went on, however, to criticise part of the Select Committee report. He said that, since the diocese of Oxford finds 92.4 per cent. of its costs from its own resources, it rejects the view expressed in the Select Committee report that the parochial system is under threat in his diocese.That sounds a little smug. The book "The Historic Resources of the Church of England" shows on a beautifully coloured map those areas of the country which pay more and have high income and high potential. It just happens that Oxford is in the area of highest income and highest potential, yet the inner-city areas to which I have referred are a very different colour; they have low income and low potential. It is not good enough for one diocese, which is especially well off, simply to ignore what happens in areas such as the inner city that I represent.
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