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House of Commons
Session 2009 - 10
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General Committee Debates
Delegated Legislation Committee Debates



The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairman: Robert Key
Ainger, Nick (Carmarthen, West and South Pembrokeshire) (Lab)
Bell, Sir Stuart (Second Church Estates Commissioner)
Borrow, Mr. David S. (South Ribble) (Lab)
Boswell, Mr. Tim (Daventry) (Con)
Burstow, Mr. Paul (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
Clelland, Mr. David (Tyne Bridge) (Lab)
Cormack, Sir Patrick (South Staffordshire) (Con)
Crabb, Mr. Stephen (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Gray, Mr. James (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Hodgson, Mrs. Sharon (Gateshead, East and Washington, West) (Lab)
Milburn, Mr. Alan (Darlington) (Lab)
Sanders, Mr. Adrian (Torbay) (LD)
Stanley, Sir John (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Twigg, Derek (Halton) (Lab)
Williams, Mrs. Betty (Conwy) (Lab)
Wood, Mike (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
Alan Sandall, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee

Seventh Delegated Legislation Committee

Tuesday 2 March 2010

[Robert Key in the Chair]

Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure
4.31 pm
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Sir Stuart Bell): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure (HC 207).
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to consider the Crown Benefices (Parish Representatives) Measure (HC 209) and the Vacancies in Suffragan Sees and Other Ecclesiastical Offices Measure (HC 208).
Sir Stuart Bell: It is not my wish nor, I presume, the wish of the Committee that I detain Members at length on the first Measure save to say that it is the 10th such Measure and the first to be approved by the Synod in the 2005-10 quinquennium. It deals with various uncontroversial matters, which, individually, would not merit free-standing legislation. As the Committee will see, the Measure contains significant, but technical, changes that have no political considerations, either within the Church or without. I am aware, Mr. Key, that you have a long and distinguished career on the Synod and are aware of the Measures from another place.
When the Measure was given final approval in the Synod, 16 bishops voted in favour and none against. One hundred laity voted in favour and none against. Of the clergy, 69 voted in favour and one against. The Ecclesiastical Committee was greatly intrigued by that one; apparently the person who voted against had no objection to the Measure but had simply raised her hand. Those of us who have a long political career— behind and before us—will know the significance of a Member who sits at the back and raises his or her hand. I should add that the Measure went expeditiously through the Ecclesiastical Committee with no votes against. It has been brought before this Committee for consideration.
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con): I speak as someone who attended Christ Church, Oxford, for a couple of very happy years. I presume that the substantial section dealing with the status of the canons of Christ Church has been wholly approved by the dean and chapter.
Sir Stuart Bell: The short answer is yes. I have now lost my place.
Mr. Gray: I am so sorry.
The third Measure, which, in a sense, we take in tandem with the second, is the Vacancies in Suffragan Sees and Other Ecclesiastical Offices Measure, and modifies the Suffragan Bishops Act 1534. The mills of God grind slowly and sometimes they grind exceedingly small, but after the many years that have passed since 1534, it is probably appropriate for Parliament to come to terms with modifying the Act. The Measure modifies the 1534 Act so that only one name, rather than the present two names, needs to be presented to Her Majesty for an appointment to a suffragan see.
The Measure modifies the law with regard to the exercise by Her Majesty of patronage belonging to a vacant diocesan see, such that the patronage in question may be exercised on behalf of Her Majesty by a suffragan or acting bishop during a vacancy in the see. It also abolishes certain rights of the Crown to present to vacant ecclesiastical offices where the patronage in question is not normally in the Crown’s gift.
Both the second and third Measures were introduced to the Synod for first consideration in July 2008. At the final approval stage, both Measures received overwhelming majorities in all three houses. I will now outline the voting on each of the measures. On the vacancies in suffragan sees Measure, 19 of the bishops were in favour with none against, 115 of the clergy were in favour with none against, and 125 of the laity were in favour with two against. On the Crown benefices Measure, 20 bishops were in favour with none against, 119 clergy were in favour with none against, and 125 of the laity were in favour with none against. Since two rather than one of the laity voted against the vacancies in suffragan sees Measure, I can only assume that the same person raised both hands—we have all seen a person at the back of political meetings do that. I am, of course, adding levity to our proceedings. The vote at Synod is properly recorded.
When the Measures reached the Ecclesiastical Committee, we had an interesting, erudite and even titillating debate, taking us back to 1534 and all that, and there was not one vote against any of the Measures. On that basis, I commend all three Measures to the Committee.
4.38 pm
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire) (Con): It is a very great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Key, not least because you became the only Member of Parliament on the Synod at the most recent synodical elections, which were the very elections when I ceased to be a member, having done 10 years hard labour.
I do not want to detain the Committee for long and hon. Members will be delighted to know that I do not wish to divide it. One or two things, however, need to be said.
I shall resist the temptation to take the Committee down memory lane, but I have been on the Ecclesiastical Committee since 1970 and the Second Church Estates Commissioner, whom I am very pleased to count as a good friend, was being ever so slightly disingenuous—inadvertently, I am sure—when he talked about the Ecclesiastical Committee having no votes against. The fact of the matter is that the Ecclesiastical Committee can only do one thing. You will know this too, Mr. Key, because you are a member of it. The Committee can deem whether a Measure is expedient or not, but it cannot amend it or record votes against it. A Measure is either expedient or not. I do not quibble with the Ecclesiastical Committee for deeming that the three Measures are expedient, but I think it is important to put that point on the record.
It is also important for people, particularly Members of Parliament, to know that in the Church’s parliament, which I consider a rather unsatisfactory institution, votes are taken by a show of hands unless there is a demand for them to be taken otherwise and to vote by houses, in which case the laity, the bishops and the clergy will indeed vote—the bishops in the quaint way of going up or down the steps, according to whether they are voting aye or no. The business of voting by show of hands and having them counted can lead to the odd amusing occurrence.
The Synod is an unsatisfactory institution because it is not really representative of the man and woman in the pew. I have long argued that the Synod should be elected by everyone who is on the electoral roll, as we are all entitled to be, of the parishes where we reside, but that is not the case. In my parish, for instance, only two people have a vote for General Synod. They are the people who sit on the deanery synod.
That is enough of arcane Church politics. However, it is important to have a few things like that on the record.
I start with the miscellaneous provisions Measure. One should always look at these things very carefully. As the former Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Margaret Beckett) once said—I think when she was Leader of the House—in complicated measures, the devil is often in the detail. It often is, and particularly in Church of England Measures, we have to look for the devil. Well, I do not think he is here, so we can approve the Measure without too many misgivings.
I welcome the Crown benefices Measure because it is reasonable that there should be proper lay consultation before an incumbent is appointed. I am a little less enthusiastic about the suffragan bishops Measure. The Second Church Estates Commissioner said there was a long and lively discussion in the Ecclesiastical Committee, led by the Rev. Lord Pilkington, who is an ordained Church of England clergyman of some considerable distinction and a theologian to boot. He was concerned, and there is just a little bit of room for concern, that the submission of one name rather than two means there is absolutely no choice. Speaking on behalf of the official Opposition, I can go along with that Measure because I do not think it will cause great problems. What we will have to look at, and Synod will certainly have to look at in the coming years, is the number of suffragan bishops in this country, but that is another issue and you would rightly call me to task, Mr. Key, if I dilated on that theme.
I end with this point. Sometimes people ask me why Parliament bothers with these things. It always used to be the case that Church of England Measures, having gone through Synod, were taken on the Floor of the House. Now they are mostly dealt with upstairs, as we are doing today. However, while we have an established Church, it is right that we consider them. I personally welcome the fact that we have an established Church, but whatever one’s views on that issue, while we have one it is right that Parliament should have the final say on Measures. After all, everyone who lives in England lives in a parish of the Church of England and is therefore fully entitled to all the services of the incumbent and of the Church within that parish. We no longer pay taxes to our Church as people do in a number of continental countries, but we have a Church that is there to minister to each and every one of us. As long as that is the case and it is the established Church of our land, it is right that Parliament, the supreme authority in our land, should look at the Measures the Synod passes.
These Measures are unobjectionable and I commend them to Members on both sides of the Committee. I thank the Second Church Estates Commissioner. It would be right at this stage to congratulate him on his long tenure as Church Commissioner. I think I am right in saying that he is the longest serving member of the present Government. Since 1997, he has held a unique position for which he is not paid. He answers questions with great aplomb on the Floor of the House. We are all in his debt and are all, I hope, delighted to congratulate him on what he has done and wish him well for the future. Perhaps he will become the longest-serving Church Commissioner ever; perhaps the electorate will decide otherwise. We shall see in a few weeks’ time. With those few words, Mr. Key, I commend the Measures to colleagues on the Committee.
4.46 pm
Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): I welcome your chairmanship, Mr. Key. I do not presume to hold a candle to the two distinguished colleagues who have already made a contribution. My commitment to the Church of England, although profound and of long standing, is more on the pastoral than the legal side, which is not always the case with the things in which I have interested myself in this place.
I do not approach the debate with great knowledge of how the system works. I simply have a couple of questions for the Church Commissioner, both of which relate to the vacancies in suffragan sees Measure. I have to admit a slight prejudice against attacking long-standing legislation. There was an occasion when the Law Commission had reported on a number of pieces of legislation and a colleague of mine—no longer in the House—and I felt an almost irresistible urge to resist the abolition of the Innkeepers Act 1424, on the grounds that it had stood the test of time. Last night, only a few Committee rooms away from here, the bell captain of St. Margaret’s, Westminster—where I have a certain parliamentary involvement, as did my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire before me—reminded us that the bells there had been rung continuously, not all the time but every year, since 1475. One should celebrate that degree of antiquity but we should move on.
Mr. Gray: Has my hon. Friend noticed the interesting date of the Suffragan Bishops Act—the 26th year of King Henry VIII’s reign? He must forgive me for not remembering, but was that before or after the Reformation and the establishment of the Church of England?
Mr. Boswell: In so far as the Reformation was a particular event and not a process, it would be after. I will not indulge myself at length, but when I was a child I lived in Bull’s Lodge—formerly Bullen’s Lodge, after Anne Boleyn, whose father had it as a hunting lodge. I think she married Henry in 1532, so one can date it however one wishes. It was about that time.
My hon. Friend, like me, has an interest in archives. I am sure that if one went to Lambeth Palace library one would find a seamless process between what one might call the pre-Reformation and post-Reformation bishops. We have a lot of history
4.49 pm
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
5.3 pm
On resuming—
Mr. Boswell: After that interruption, and to pursue the ecclesiastical theme—although I preface my remarks by saying that I do not think persecution has been characteristic of the Church of England in recent times—I am minded of the Spanish lecturer at the university of Salamanca who attracted the attention of the inquisition in the middle ages. He was put in “chokey” for five years and resumed his lecture with the words, “As we were saying yesterday”.
I do not want to detain the Committee, but I should like to ask the Church Commissioner about three points arising from the measure on vacancies in suffragan sees. First, what is the motivation for the measure? Is it the difficulty in getting suitable nominations? Is it the wish, which I am sure will be profoundly echoed by the Committee, to speed up the nomination process and get things moving? What else is behind the Measure?
Secondly, I want to pick up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire on the disquiet expressed in church newspapers and elsewhere about the possible reduction in the number of suffragans. Certainly, in a widely extended diocese such as mine in Peterborough, we desperately need to keep a suffragan, and for a long time we did not have one. Others may have a sufficiency, but although in these times every institution has to be mindful of economy, it would be useful to have the Commissioner’s take on how that is likely to go.
My final point relates to the comment in the Ecclesiastical Committee’s report, which is also in one of the more technical but not very informative bits of this legislation, that the Measure
“abolishes certain rights the Crown has to present to vacant ecclesiastical offices where the patronage in question is not normally in the Crown’s gift.”
I read that as meaning that it would not be very fair or sensible to take rights away from somebody who would normally have the rights to nomination on the grounds of the purely contingent fact that there was a vacancy at the time. I would like two assurances from the Commissioner: first, that we are not somehow creating a situation in which nobody is empowered to make an appointment and, secondly, that anything that does happen is not likely to give rise to undue delay.
We all want such tidying-up Measures to work effectively and to improve the process of selection, which is not an easy one. I should say before I conclude that I am entirely happy with what I have seen of the outcome of the appointment of my new diocesan bishop in Peterborough, and I look forward to his installation in our diocese. We need to pay reasonable attention to the detail, however, and make sure that we get it right.
5.6 pm
Sir Stuart Bell: Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. I did not say at the beginning how pleased I am to be on this Committee with you, Mr. Key. I had hoped to leave that little bit of peroration until the end, but I am very happy to associate myself with the comments of my colleague the hon. Member for South Staffordshire.
I am pleased to be on this Committee with you, Mr. Key, and I am sad that you will be leaving us, which is a great pity from both the Church and Parliament’s point of view. It is also a pity that the hon. Member for South Staffordshire will be leaving, as will the hon. Member for Daventry and my hon. Friends the Members for Conwy and for Tyne Bridge—I must be careful to mention all the members of the Committee who will be leaving us. All of them have rendered great service to Parliament, but it has not necessarily been notched up, because as we can see from the serried ranks of the press following our every word, our work means that we are the unsung heroes of Parliament. I wanted to put that on the record before we move on.
The hon. Member for North Wiltshire asked about Christ Church. When Mark Twain was sailing down the Mississippi, the captain asked him how far it was to New Orleans, and he answered with great certainty and speed, “I don’t know, sir.” I was spared such a response by an intervention, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that in a more local context, clause 10(2) brings the provisions governing Christ Church, Oxford, more into line with those applicable to other cathedrals under the Cathedrals Measure 1999, which did not apply to Christ Church, by increasing the number of non-residential canons, allowing the appointment of lay and ecumenical canons, and creating a college of canons with specified functions. There was consultation with Christ Church to introduce those changes in the same spirit as those affecting all other cathedrals, which took effect following the coming into force of the 1999 Measure.
The hon. Member for Daventry made three points, which I will seek to remember and answer. Nothing in the Measure relates to motivation. There is no difficulty, in my view, with people wishing to seek nominations. The essence of the Measure is to remove the syndrome that two names go to the Prime Minister’s office. In 100 years, the second person has never been named over the first. We are entering an era of transparency so many No. 2s know full well that they are No. 2 and that they have no way of progressing. That is one of the reasons for the Measure.
Sir Patrick Cormack: There was a recent case in the past 12 years when the Prime Minister rejected both names.
Sir Stuart Bell: Yes, and there is nothing to prevent a Prime Minister in the future from rejecting the first name suggested to him. The first decision that Tony Blair made was to reject two names for the bishopric of Liverpool. As he said, he went from Bambi to Stalin overnight as a result of that decision. There is nothing to prevent a Prime Minister from not endorsing a name but, as I have said, over the past 100 years, the Prime Minister of the day has always accepted the first name.
The second question put by the hon. Member for Daventry was about the exercise by the Crown of patronage not normally in its gift. There are two types of situation covered by recommendation (b) of the archbishops’ report. The first relates to the position during the vacancy of a diocesan see:
“Where a diocesan see is vacant, the patronage that belongs to the see—and which would normally be exercisable by the diocesan bishop—is exercisable by the Crown instead. The patronage exercisable by the Crown in these circumstances is known as the Crown’s sede vacante patronage. The Crown’s right arises because during a vacancy in a diocesan see the Crown is the Guardian of the Temporalities of the see, the rights of patronage belonging to the see being among those temporalities.”
There is a reason why that particular essence is in the Measure.
The third point the hon. Gentleman raised was about the scarcity or lack of suffragan bishops, and whether the Measure was a move to reduce them. To put the point in context, there are 8,000 Church of England parish priests in our country, 110 bishops and 110 archdeacons. We have a very strong Church, notwithstanding what is said; as the hon. Member for South Staffordshire made clear, there is a parish church in every part of our land. The Measure will not deter people from coming forward, or be a bar to someone becoming a suffragan bishop.
The hon. Gentleman raised a number of important, valuable points with regard to Lord Pilkington, a friend of mine in many aspects of his life and someone I admire. I will not go down the road we took in the Ecclesiastical Committee, as the Measure deals not with diocesan bishops but with suffragan bishops.
I am grateful to the Committee for the pertinent points made by Members. I think I have answered all of them, but if I have overlooked any, I am happy to respond to further interventions.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure (HC207).

CROWN BENEFICES (PARISH REPRESENTATIVES) MEASURE

Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the Crown Benefices (Parish Representatives) Measure (HC 209).—(Sir Stuart Bell.)

VACANCIES IN SUFFRAGAN SEES AND OTHER ECCLESIASTICAL OFFICES MEASURE

Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the Vacancies in Suffragan Sees and Other Ecclesiastical Offices Measure (HC 208).—(Sir Stuart Bell.)
5.14 pm
Committee rose.
 
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