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11.28 am
Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead): It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) in these debates, and it is particularly so today. Once again, we are witnessing the ability of some Members of Parliament to maintain their friendships with different, if not disparate, groups, both in the House and outside, and to be able to tell the truth as they see it. In an age when roughing up politicians is more popular than the national lottery, it is a pleasure to draw attention to those hon. Members who add distinction to public life. In that context, I am happy to draw attention to the contribution that the right hon. Member for Selby always makes to our debates and to the welfare of the nation.
I would also make a second general comment by way of introduction, and that concerns the performance of the commissioners. I wish to emphasise what the right hon. Gentleman has said about the leadership of the commissioners and the stewardship that they are giving us. The Select Committee has given a clear vote of confidence to Sir Michael Colman, the First Church Estates Commissioner, to Patrick Locke, the secretary, and to the staff of the Commission for the way in which they have recovered from the shocking event of losing so much of the historic resources only a few years ago. The Select Committee was critical at that time, and obviously that remains in our memory, but as we move into a new area where confidence is required, it is important that the Select Committee can, without any equivocation, make that recommendation to the House about its feelings for those who currently work for the Church Commissioners.
Technically, today we are debating what is happening about pensions, particularly pensions for the clergy of the Church of England, but we cannot do that in a way which divorces our debate from the English nation. We cannot understand the history of England without considering how it is interwoven with the history of the Church.
One of the many great distinguishing marks of the Anglican Church in Britain is the fact that, because of its closeness to the English nation, it has understood how much religion the English are prepared to take, which is not very much. It has designed its ministry according to that fact rather than in ignorance of that fact; hence the importance of the Peel reforms of the late 1830s and 1840s which gave us, first, the ecclesiastical commissioners and then, as the right hon. Member for Selby said, the Church Commissioners in the 1940s. In regrouping the historic assets, Peel and the Church Commissioners sought to ensure that clergy would be paid for in those areas which could not pay for their clergy.
Owen Chadwick's biography of Hensley Hanson showed how, at the start of his career, he was a deep opponent of establishment, subsequently became a fan of establishment, and then, when he saw that there was a possibility of a Labour Government appointing bishops, became an opponent of establishment again. At the start of his career, after graduating from Oxford, he was appointed to act as a tutor to one of the great shipping families in Merseyside. It was as a result of his observations of life in Birkenhead and the way in which the Church tried to perform its role of administering to the nation that Hensley Hanson became a convert to establishment. He did not believe that the poorest areas of Britain could support their clergy.
In a sense, that is the backdrop to today's debate and the concern expressed in the Select Committee's report that, while it is crucial that past pension commitments are honoured, we want to do so in a flexible way so that the commissioners can fulfil their other great historic role, which has been to maintain a national presence in Britain while having a real understanding of the English and their religion. If that is broken, it should be broken by the populace itself, not because we have not got right the financial affairs of the Church Commissioners and their relationship with Synod.
Having made those introductory remarks, I want to address my comments to two aspects of the report. The first concerns the pension proposals themselves. The second concerns the Select Committee's recommendation--which the right hon. Member for Selby, for good reason, sidestepped today--on whether the moving of the historic assets away from their current stewardship should be by Bill or Measure.
The question which most concerned the Select Committee, and which we now have a chance to debate on the Floor of the House of Commons, which I hope the Revision Committee will be able to consider, concerns the form of the pension proposals that are implicit in the Measure. Because people, perhaps rightly, are sensitive about the comments that we make, I preface my comments by saying that I am not trying to criticise those people who drew up the draft Measure. They clearly had instructions from Synod to establish pension schemes, and the Measure does that. However, I am anxious that they should think further than the mere form of the legislation that they at some stage will ask the House to approve.
It is implicit in the Measure as currently drafted that the form of the pension provision will be a company pension scheme. I want to suggest three reasons why, when the Church, both as Synod and as diocesan boards of finance, and even more importantly as local parishes, begins the debate in earnest on the form of pension provision, it will find that the company pension model is unsatisfactory because of the financial liabilities that it will place on diocesan boards of finance and parochial church councils. Unless other reforms are adopted, those two bodies will be asked to accept unqualified, open-ended financial liabilities.
Diocesan boards of finance and parochial church councils are charitable bodies, the first by registration and the second by declaration. If one considers how the Charities Act 1992 impinges on their duties, it is clear that they must act prudently and should not commit themselves to debts which amount to more than their assets; yet that is what we shall be asking them to do if we go down the route of an ordinary company pension scheme type model for the second pension scheme that will be enacted by the measure.
The first scheme relates to past entitlements which have already been earned, for which the commissioners take responsibility, and the diocesan boards of finance and parochial church councils would take responsibility for the second scheme. We cannot ask them to undertake that responsibility because, with the best will in the world, they cannot meet it. They cannot know that they will have the resources to meet that responsibility. That is not to say that they should not meet them, but that they should design a pension arrangement so that they can meet them.
Mr. Bernard Jenkin:
I wish to emphasise what the hon. Gentleman is saying. The bodies that he has described do not decide the terms and nature of the liabilities that they will enter into. The benefits of being in the pension scheme are decided by the trustees of the pension scheme, so they would be taking on liabilities that they simply could not control.
Mr. Field:
Not for the first time the hon. Gentleman puts the point better than I. With that emphasis, I leave my first objection or worry about the current provisions that we are considering.
Mr. Peter Hardy (Wentworth):
Some people have begun to understand what the obligations will be under the charity regulations. Many hon. Members will have become separated from charities with which they have been involved because their attendance here does not allow them to attend the charitable boards regularly. Is it not possible that people who have played an enormous part in the life of their parish church councils, and who would probably have been prepared to commit themselves in future, would hesitate to do so if we were to go down that route?
Mr. Field:
That is part of my worry. Again, my hon. Friend makes that point in friendship to those drafting the Measure, not in a hostile manner. We are anxious that when the Measure comes to Parliament, it should be in the best form that we could propose--not best in that it is the most popular in today's terms but in that it is a contract sustainable over the generations and not merely in the first year of its existence.
My second concern is that the parochial church councils, and especially the parishioners, will be anxious when they realise that the clergy will be dealt with in different ways under the proposals. I understand why the commissioners want to meet the future pension liabilities of bishops, deans and what are extraordinarily called the higher clergy, but most of us would think that there is no higher calling than that of parish priest. The higher clergy may have additional responsibilities, but the cardinal role of parish priest should not be undermined.
If I were an ordinary parish priest in Birkenhead, I would be slightly anxious that my future pension liability was to be met from the second fund, which will be dependent on what the laity contribute each year, while those of senior clerics would be met from the historic assets. That is not acceptable. It will cause problems in this House and even greater problems with the laity in our parishes. They will feel that that is not fair treatment of the clergy who bear the burden of the day, especially those who have the toughest parishes, whose children are often beaten up at school because they speak with slightly different accents and whose houses are regularly ransacked by yobboes. We should treat that group as the most privileged, and not subject it to risks to which we are not willing to put bishops, deans and other clergy.
Thirdly, it is a fantasy to think that even if the House voted half the assets over to a new pension scheme, it would close the commissioners' responsibilities. They would not be able to defend the rest of their assets from a company pension scheme that cannot maintain its flow of income. There would be enormous moral pressure on them to hand over yet more assets to meet any deficit that the dioceses or parishes did not meet.
I therefore propose a form of pension provision that I believe is sustainable in the long run and that can safeguard the remaining assets of the commissioners once they have met their current liabilities to past pension commitments. I hope that the Church will consider seriously a personal pension scheme, whether group or individual. That would be a simple form of pension provision that would be easily understood. The assets that would be built up would be in the name of the priests. The assets would not be collectively owned, lost or damaged if anything untoward happened to the scheme.
Clearly, the House would have to take into account the circumstances that the Church will have to meet under a personal pension scheme, which, I believe, would unlock the door to a much wider pension reform for people who are not in funded pension schemes and who have no cover other than the state retirement pension. That would give the House the opportunity to consider personal pensions to which contributions may be irregular. We should accept that people should not be fined or lose assets because of irregular contributions.
People should be allowed to pay small inheritances into their pension schemes. While I do not think that any of our clergy do the lottery, the pension scheme should allow winnings to be paid in rather than dissipated. People should clearly understand that the scheme is theirs. A unit trust-backed, individually owned personal pension scheme would give maximum security to our clergy and allow parish church councils and diocesan boards of finance to enter into a legal agreement honestly, knowing that their commitments can be fulfilled. The Church, by seeking such a Measure, would unlock the debate that we need about how to universalise second-funded pension provision.
I have taken a long time, so I shall speak only briefly on the historic assets. I shall try to choose my words carefully and I hope that my brevity will not be misunderstood. When we considered the difference between a Measure and a Bill, in no way was the Committee trying to overturn the 1919 settlement, whether by frontal attack or in a subtle manner. We were trying to register only that while the Church rightly has all the self-government given it by the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919, the historic resources of the church and nation are a different matter from all the other Measures considered in the House, such as the ordination of women or the alternative service book, which largely put aside the Book of Common Prayer.
My second point is addressed to the Archbishop's advisers. He has an enormously difficult job to manage the Church in an age in which it is not an easy task. There are many centres of power to which he is responsible--the Synod, the commissioners and Parliament. When his advisers help him to respond to reports from this House, I hope that they will not do so in a partial spirit. If they do, they will guide him into even greater troubles than he currently has to manage. Above all, they should help him to take a global view rather than the partial or campaigning view of any of the different sects that are trying to gain dominance in the Church.
Thirdly, the theology of the matter has come into play. We are told that it is an offence to think that the Church cannot do precisely what it wants because it is the
physical representation of Christ in this country. That sounds fine as theology, but we should remember that the Anglican Church was established by the Crown. Even if it were formally disestablished, everyone in Britain is subject to the rules and regulations made by Parliament. It would not give the Church special privileges, although they may claim that its theology was only as old as the Tractarians. The Tractarians have done much mischief to the English Church and this is clearly part of their legacy.
The Turnbull report is a deeply un-Anglican document because it believes that one can concentrate power. It says that it is establishing an archbishops council, but it is a model of the Roman curia. The Church is free, if it wishes, to opt for that reform, but it will not be sustainable because it is trying to graft something on to a body that will reject it.
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