Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
29 JANUARY 2004
MR DAVID
WATTS, MR
NICK WHEELER
AND THE
REV JOHN
LEE
Q60 Peter Bottomley: I cannot remember
whether the Church Times or the Church of England Newspaper
have a list of vacancies. Do you know if they do?
Mr Wheeler: Both of them have
advertisements. I do not know about a list of vacancies as such.
I do not think so. They certainly both have advertisements. Is
that what you are referring to?
Q61 Peter Bottomley: I was thinking
that there is a lot to be said for people being able to know when
there is a process going on, even if the parish has not been put
to the expense of actually taking out a display advertisement.
Rev John Lee: It is multifarious;
it is all over the place really. People do very different things
because they want different things to happen and feel that different
processes will result in a good outcome for them. You get all
sorts of extraordinary things. Some will advertise in the back
of the Church Times and The Church of England Newspaper,
but others would just make themselves available within a diocesan
newspaper so there will be a larger number applying from within
the diocese perhaps than from outside. Others do not want to do
anything at all but would go to my list, for example, or the vacancy
list that we publish in our office. There are quite a number of
options for people and it does depend on what the feeling is around.
As you heard earlier, there are different feelings amongst the
same sort of clientele, if you like, about whether it is the right
way to go about things or whatever.
Q62 Peter Bottomley: There does seem
to be an argument for having a central place where, when the patron
is going to consider nominations or is putting forward proposals
or considering people for a vacancy, that that should be open
to all.
Mr Wheeler: In one sense it is
almost happening inadvertently courtesy of the website. Parishes
are often putting themselves on the website without us necessarily
knowing. I do not object to that; it is a kind of informal way
of advertising.
Q63 Chairman: Do you have a website?
Mr Wheeler: Yes, Number 10 does
have a website but we have not actually gone down the road of
putting those on the website.
Q64 Chairman: If I were a clergyman
with the Church of England—which I hasten to add I am not—and
I was sitting in some parish where I just did not feel I was able
to exercise my talents satisfactorily or whatever, how would I
know that this very caring and well managed system that has been
described to us was available to me?
Mr Wheeler: Through a number of
indirect sources, either through the Clergy Appointments Adviser,
alternatively through clergy contact. We have livings in every
diocese between the Crown and the Lord Chancellor. They can contact
their hierarchy, the archdeacons, the rural deans, the bishops
to tell them they are looking for a move and can they suggest
where to go. There are number of informal ways of going about
it.
Peter Bottomley: I think we have established
there is a gap which could quite easily be filled and if anyone
here would like to report to the Archbishop's Council it might
be something to put on their agenda.
Q65 Ross Cranston: We have heard
a lot about the appointment of judges recently and I think some
of that might be helpful as well.
Rev John Lee: The problem is that
the 9,200 parochial clergy have come to their decision about their
vocation in very different ways and they come with different experiences.
We are getting older ordinands and they are coming with a lot
of experience from industry, from government, from all sorts of
places. Their understanding of how appointments will go in this
institution called the Church of England is very different from
when I was ordained—which is some time ago, mid-70's—where
it was very passive. We were at the disposal of the Church, mostly
by the bishop, and I have never actively sought out a job in the
Church. I have been a parish priest most of my life and have just
done this for five years. The different expectation is then also
reflected amongst the workforce. Some would object quite strongly
to this right across the board equal opportunity for everyone.
I want to know that one person or a group of people are looking
quite specifically at me and discerning my vocation. Where I am
grateful to Nick is that he offers a service which is quite quiet
and it deals with some of these people extremely well, who do
not want a beauty parade and are not up-front with their talents
and their gifts, but they actually do a very fine job. I am very
grateful—and by far I think it is the best patronage that
we deal with—that Nick is here and he deals with it extremely
well. Obviously it is a good reflection on him, but I made quite
a strong plea from my hospital bed that actually this practice
should continue in some form—probably with the Crown—because
in a sense I want that multitude, the sense that even if there
were bad patrons—and there are bad patrons around—in
the pot you will get some reasonable decisions because some voices
will then pipe up and say there is a monochrome situation.
Q66 Ross Cranston: I see great virtues
in the current method of judicial appointments, but I am afraid
the evidence to us has been that there is this steamroller in
favour of what you have described as equal opportunities, transparency
and all the rest of it. The system could be subject to criticism
on the basis that it does not meet those criteria.
Rev John Lee: Absolutely.
Q67 Mrs Cryer: Are non-stipendiary
ministers just viewed from the diocese or do they go onto one
of your lists?
Mr Wheeler: We are only dealing
with stipendiary clergy and not with non-stipendiary. It is not
a choice; it is just the kind of appointments we are dealing with.
Q68 Mrs Cryer: So they are completely
separate.
Mr Wheeler: They are separate
from our point of view, yes.
Q69 Chairman: There have been references
to re-organisations and resultant shared patronage and so forth.
What role do you play as to re-structuring of parishes in one
of the areas where you have a living?
Mr Wheeler: In the first instance
I will get some contact from the diocese, either the bishop or
the diocesan secretary or archdeacon saying that they have some
prospect of re-organisation and would the Lord Chancellor or the
Crown agree to a suspension of presentation. In earlier days I
would have then spent a lot of time writing out to the individual
parishes asking for their views before coming to my considered
view. That was very time-consuming although it was good to do
it. Nowadays I write a letter back to the bishop or the diocesan
secretary saying that I am satisfied with the reasons given in
the letter from the bishop and on behalf of the Lord Chancellor
I am agreeable to the suspension of presentation with a view to
pastoral re-organisation, subject to due weight and consideration
being given to the views expressed by the interested parties.
That is my caveat to make sure that they are doing the proper
thing as per the Pastoral Measure 1983 which sets down the criteria
for suspension of pastoral re-organisation. When that has taken
place and they have suspended the living, they will then later
come to me with the diocesan proposals to link parish A and parish
B. Again, from my knowledge of visits over the years and knowing
the parishes, I will be able to determine whether or not it is
a reasonable thing to happen and I will then write back a letter
again saying that on behalf of the Lord Chancellor I am agreeable
to this. If, in the meantime, I get letters from the parish saying
that they are being steamrollered into this then I will go back
to the bishop and say that there is clearly some discontent within
the parishes about the proposals and I will ask him if he has
considered other alternatives or whatever. Most of them go through
fairly straightforwardly.
Q70 Chairman: Are you confident,
given that you do not now write to the parishes, that you would
find out if a parish objected very strongly to the re-organisation?
Mr Wheeler: I am reasonably confident,
yes. Obviously not as confident as when you are doing it systematically
with every single plan for re-organisation and writing out to
the parishes, but that is very time-consuming as benefices are
getting bigger and bigger. I can cite an example of an Exeter
diocese where there eleven parishes, and one in a Hereford diocese
with twenty-two parishes. It becomes quite a large administrative
task.
Q71 Chairman: Could the bishop be
expected to do that in the course of his task and return to you
a set of boxes as whether they agree or disagree?
Mr Wheeler: The relationship with
the bishops between the Crown and Lord Chancellor is a good one.
I will not say it is necessarily a cosy one in a sense that we
are in each other's pockets, but it is a good one and I would
expect them to pay close attention to that letter and I would
get a letter perhaps from the parish priest if there is any unhappiness
with that. If there is any disquiet it does happen and on occasions
I get that.
Q72 Ross Cranston: I want to get
a sense of the practical effect of a transfer from Lord Chancellor's
patronage to Crown patronage. Is it simply that we have to move
a couple of filing cabinets and Mr Watts and Mr Wheeler from one
department to another department? Or are we looking at something
more fundamental?
Mr Wheeler: We are looking at
something really quite simple because although I am a DCA employee
and essentially work for the Secretary of State for Constitutional
Affairs I also look after the Crown livings as well. I do the
same process in terms of the appointment and if it is a Lord Chancellor
appointment then I send a submission and the legal document to
the Lord Chancellor; if it is the Crown I do a submission for
the Prime Minister to sign and then it is sent to the Queen with
his recommendation. It really is very simple.
Q73 Ross Cranston: Would you have
to change offices?
Mr Wheeler: No. Since 1964 the
Assistant Ecclesiastical Secretary to the Lord Chancellor has
worked out of the same office as the Ecclesiastical Secretary
to the Lord Chancellor, who is also the Secretary of Appointments
for the Prime Minister.
Q74 Ross Cranston: Mr Watts, do you
have any comments to make on the practical side?
Mr Watts: To be honest, I do not
think I can add much to what Nick Wheeler has said because he
has far more experience in this. My role in these matters is to
give effect to the Government's decision to end the Office of
Lord Chancellor, so the finer points of how the Ecclesiastical
Patronage is carried out are much better answered by Nick.
Q75 Ross Cranston: Could I go back
to the fact that we only have the three options in the paper and
there was this additional option which has come out—which
I expressed badly earlier in my questions to the bishops—as
to whether there should be a choice by local parishes of who their
patron ought to be. Why was the decision made to simply limit
it to those three options?
Mr Watts: Our essential approach
was, to a certain extent, tempered by history. The Lord Chancellor
has carried out this function for 600-plus years in effect as
a minister acting on behalf of the Crown. It seemed to us, in
principle, that this function would best be placed either with
a minister acting on behalf of the Crown—be that the Prime
Minister or some other minister—or with the established
Church where, as we know, there is already a substantial body
of patronage. Both those groups or routes—which are broken
down to three options, as you say—have expertise in dealing
with patronage on a broad basis and would avoid the risk of what
has happened, I believe, in some areas where people who are involved
in the process are not very experienced patrons and have to relearn
the process every time they become involved in it.
Q76 Ross Cranston: If you did allow
parish choice, what are the practical implications of that?
Mr Watts: One of the things I
am very mindful of is that ministers want to keep the transitional
period where the Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor are held
jointly to a minimum and one of the bishops said earlier on that
he thought that any arrangement had to be workable and acceptable.
We would need to consult each of the parishes, obviously. We would
need to find someone who could speak with authority for each of
the parishes. We would, presumably, need to make sure that we
had the bishop's views, the consent of the proposed destination
patron. We would then presumably need to go through some 442 legal
instruments of transfer in some way. I have not actually analysed
this process but that is the sort of complexity I can see unrolling.
As you know, we consulted all the Lord Chancellor's parishes as
part of the consultation process and less than a quarter of them
replied. The simple process of getting an answer from each of
the parishes I think could be quite difficult and that would simply
be the first step.
Q77 Chairman: Is it not clear that
the transitional period required to transfer the patronage to
the church would be quite long, whereas that required—as
Mr Bottomley put it—to move a couple of filing cabinets
in Mr Wheeler's office could be as short as you like? Have you
made an estimate of the time scale required for the transfer to
the Church and whether any statutory instrument or legislation
is required for that process?
Mr Watts: We have given thought
to that and ultimately that would be bound up in the decision
which ministers will be announcing in due course. Clearly there
are different timescales and I agree with what I think you were
trying to suggest that it ought to be simpler to provide for a
wholesale reversion to the Crown.
Q78 Chairman: There is no estimate
yet to the timescale that would be required to ensure that there
was agreement about where in the Church you were transferring
to and to carry through whatever processes that requires. Do you
have any estimate of that yet?
Mr Watts: If the patronage transfer
were done on a wholesale basis?
Q79 Chairman: Wholesale to the Church.
Mr Watts: I envisage that would
be encompassed within the timetable that we are looking for for
ending the rest of the Lord Chancellor's functions, which is about
18 months or so.
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