Cathedrals Measure
Diocesan Boards of Education Measure
(3 years, 7 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Andrew Selous)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the Cathedrals Measure (HC 1260).
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider the Diocesan Boards of Education Measure (HC 1259).
Andrew Selous
As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I shall be as speedy as I can so as not to detain colleagues for too long. Before I start my remarks on the measure itself, I have a few facts to give a little context to what we are talking about. There are 41 English Anglican cathedrals—not including Christ Church, Oxford, which is governed in a different manner—and the most recent survey—pre-covid—showed that each year, more than 10 million adults visit a cathedral, 330,000 schoolchildren go on cathedral visits, and cathedrals contribute around £220 million to the UK economy and employ more than 3,000 people. All cathedrals are involved in social action work, whether that be food banks or specialist training academies to help the long-term unemployed.
The cathedrals measure provides a new statutory framework for the governance and regulation of cathedrals and will replace the framework in the Cathedrals Measure 1999. Best practice in charity governance and safeguarding in the heritage sector have moved on considerably since 1999, and it was recognised that change was needed. The Archbishops’ Council set up the cathedrals working group to consider how the current legislation governing cathedrals was operating and what improvements could be made. That group’s report recommends significant changes to the governance structure of cathedrals, including changes to the composition of a cathedral’s chapter and the regulation of cathedrals by the Charity Commission. The General Synod endorsed the cathedrals working group’s report and recommendations in July 2018. The measure gives effect to those recommendations and involves legislative change.
The reforms in the new measure are designed to provide cathedrals with appropriate governance structures designed to support robust safeguarding, healthy finances and increased accountability. The measure is vital to provide cathedrals with the level framework that they need to support and facilitate them to function in a way that is fit for purpose in the 21st century.
The Archbishops’ Council set up the cathedrals working group in response to a request from the Bishop of Peterborough in his January 2017 visitation charge on Peterborough Cathedral, which was asked to look carefully at how the current legislation governing cathedrals was operating and whether any improvements could be made. The cathedrals working group was tasked with reviewing the sufficiency of the 1999 measure in relation to governance structure in cathedrals, with particular reference to financial management, major building projects, safeguarding, accountability, oversight and scrutiny.
In its final report, the working group set out its recommendations for the future regulation of cathedrals. The most significant of those recommendations related to the governance structure of cathedrals, including: first, that cathedrals should be brought within the regulatory jurisdiction of the Charity Commission; secondly, that changes to the composition of a cathedral’s chapter should be made; and thirdly, that cathedrals should no longer be required by law to have a council. The General Synod endorsed the recommendations in July 2018, and a draft measure was brought to the General Synod for first consideration a year later. The measure implements the recommendations in the cathedrals working group report that require legislative change, subject to amendments made by the General Synod.
In the June 2018 final report on the future of cathedrals, one recommendation was that the cathedrals should be regulated by the Charity Commission in the same way as other bodies in the Church of England. Historically, certain classes of charitable institution were exempt from Charity Commission regulation and did not have any principal regulator. Over the last 20 to 30 years, those classes of institutions have been brought within the Charity Commission’s jurisdiction, but cathedrals have not. Therefore, cathedrals were an anomaly, as a significant class of institution regarded as charitable by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs but not regulated by an independent third party regulator.
The General Synod endorsed the working party’s recommendation that, as a matter of policy, cathedrals should no longer be exempt from the Charity Commission’s jurisdiction. The legal office of the Church of England has worked closely with senior staff at the Charity Commission throughout the drafting process; the Charity Commission was consulted on proposed amendments to the measure, and issues raised with it were addressed. Where the Charity Commission raised issues in relation to the specific provisions of the measure, they were considered by the Revision Committee and an agreement was reached as to how the measure would be amended to address them.
The new measure provides for the Church Commissioners to co-regulate cathedrals with the Charity Commission. This is because the cathedrals working group recommends more, rather than less, oversight of cathedral finances and financial transactions.
As many of the Church Commissioners’ regulatory powers in the 1999 measure relate to areas of cathedral activity but are not regulated by the Charity Commissioner or charity law, the new measure provides that the Church Commissioners will continue to regulate these activities.
A memorandum of understanding between the Charity Commission and the Church Commissioners is in the process of being agreed, to support the co-regulation of cathedrals. The heads of terms for this memorandum of understanding were approved by both the Charity Commission’s board and the Church Commissioners board of governors in September last year, and the detailed memorandum of understanding is now in the process of being drawn up.
In addition, the Charity Commission and the Church Commissioners are expected to approve a registration protocol later this month to set out how the Charity Commission and the Church Commissioners will work in tandem to support and facilitate the cathedrals, adopting new constitutions and statutes, and applying to the Charity Commission for registration over the next three years.
On safeguarding, the new measure contains specific changes to improve safeguarding in cathedrals, including that chapters will become subject to the same statutory requirements in relation to safeguarding as parochial church councils and other Church bodies. The new measure includes similar provisions to the disqualification provisions for parochial church council members in the Church representation rules for chapter members. Chapters will also be included in the list of relevant persons, which must have due regard to, or comply with, the House of Bishops safeguarding guidance. Lastly, leadership on matters relating to safeguarding will become a formal responsibility of the dean. These changes will support the wider changes and improvements to safeguarding policy and practice currently being made with Church of England, which will apply to cathedrals.
In relation to councils and chapters of cathedrals, the current 1999 measure confirms the number of statutory functions on the Cathedral council, but without any power to take action if it considers that there are problems with the way the cathedral is being governed. The split in trustee functions between the chapter and the council has not been conducive to good governance in cathedrals.
The new measure therefore addresses this and provides that all trustee functions will sit with an expanded chapter, which has a majority of non-executive members. The members of the expanded chapter—with charity trustees, the dean and the residentiary canons—will continue to be ex officio members of the chapter.
While the new measure does not include a statutory requirement for each cathedral to have a council, a chapter will have the option of setting up advisory bodies, which may take the form of an advisory council of stakeholders, should it wish to do so. Such a council would have the functions conferred on it by the chapter, which could include the non-statutory functions currently undertaken by many councils. The details as to the composition, functions and proceedings of any advisory bodies, such as the council, will be set out in the cathedral’s statutes.
I now turn to the Diocesan Boards of Education Measure 1991. If I may again provide a little context, Mr Gray, there are 4,644 Church of England schools up and down the country; that means that approximately 1 million children currently attend Church of England schools. About 15 million people who are alive today went to a Church of England school, and a quarter of the primary schools in England and over 200 secondary schools are Church of England schools.
The Diocesan Boards of Education Measure updates and replaces the Diocesan Boards of Education Measure 1991, which provides a legal framework within which the Church of England’s dioceses engage and work with Church schools. This measure is necessary to reflect a number of significant changes to the education landscape over the past 30 years. The key changes made by the new measure to reflect the current and anticipated future education environment in which diocesan boards of education are and will be operating are as follows: first, the new measure makes suitable provision in relation to academies and multi-academy trusts to reflect the development of the school system since 2010. Secondly, diocesan boards of education will still be able to be an independent charity and, like other such charities, to be either incorporated or unincorporated. However, the new measure will also enable diocesan boards of education to be a statutory committee of the diocesan board of finance, rather than an independent charity. The option to be a statutory committee of the diocesan board of finance regularises the decision for a number of dioceses who, as a matter of practice, already have similar arrangements in place which they found to be a useful governance arrangement.
Thirdly, under the new measure, each diocesan synod must make a scheme designating a body as the diocesan board of education for the diocese, and must send the scheme to the Secretary of State. That simplifies the current system which requires the Secretary of State’s approval, and the Department for Education has been consulted and supports this change. The measure reflects and provides for the current and anticipated future environment in which diocesan boards of education are operating by making suitable provision for academies and multi-academy trusts. The Department for Education and the Charity Commission were consulted on the measure and on the amendments to it, and any points raised have been addressed. With that, I close my remarks, Mr Gray.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
What a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I will be very brief, which I am sure everyone will be absolutely delighted to hear, although I must say this room is considerably warmer than the last time I remember being here. I do not have any questions on the education measure. I very much welcome the Cathedrals Measure overall and particularly the importance of safeguarding. I think that is very important, particularly the reference to actually reporting the outcome of such cases should they arise.
Just a couple of points on clause 23 on the disposal of land. What happens where, for instance, somebody is actually still living on that land? Is this an improvement on what exists at the moment or is there not a formal structure?
Clause 23 refers to property that has been endowed. Is that from the Church to the cathedral or does that include third parties as well? If it does include third parties and if there was an argument over that, are the Church Commissioners the appropriate body to look at that? If it is only referring to the Church providing the cathedral with that, that would not really arise. I do not have any further questions.
Andrew Selous
Thank you very much, Mr Gray. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks and particularly his welcome for the measures to improve safeguarding. The Archbishop of Canterbury is on record as being deeply apologetic about the Church of England’s abject failure in this area in the past, so it is absolutely incumbent on us to have the very best safeguarding procedures. I welcome what the hon. Gentleman has said, and we will endeavour to be as excellent as we possibly can in this area.
Turning to the disposal of land, if there were tenants or people living on that land, the Church of England would always seek to act in a sympathetic and appropriate way. The Commissioners have extensive land holdings up and down the country—commercial, to a lesser extent residential, and agricultural—and we pride ourselves on wanting to look after our tenants well. Obviously, this would be considered on a case-by-case basis, but having served on the board of the Commissioners for a year, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we take our responsibilities seriously when it comes to looking after our tenants.
Andrew Selous
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s probing of this question. Although, as he said, it is slightly outside the scope of this measure, I know that where someone—like your very distinguished father, Mr Gray—has been a clergyman all their life and has moved from vicarage to vicarage, and then does not have their own property, the Church of England will provide property for that retired vicar and their family to live out their retirement in. Obviously, the ownership remains with the Church and will revert to the Church on their death, but I know of many examples where that has happened. Again, we take our responsibility to our clergy very seriously, and want to be a good employer.
Turning to the disposal of land gifted to a cathedral, again, it is probably a little bit difficult for me to comment without particular examples in front of us, but the Church would always seek to follow property law properly. We would always look at the intentions of the settlor in leaving the land to the Church. The Church does dispose of land from time to time—in my own diocese of St Albans, I know that Church land has been sold to provide the funding for our local multi-academy trust—so the Church very much does put its money where its mouth is to support mission and its current objectives.
Andrew Selous
The hon. Gentleman is right that the Church, like any institution run by human beings, has clearly not got everything right in the past. However, from all my dealings with the property department at Church House, I know that they try very hard to do the right thing, as I also know from my correspondence with hon. Members about Church land in their constituencies—I have an ongoing correspondence with a number of Members in this area. The property department is accountable to the Board of Governors of the Church Commissioners. I sit there as a representative of Parliament, taking up the concerns of Members of Parliament, so I say to the hon. Gentleman, members of this Committee and Members of the House that if they have any concerns of this nature—that the Church might not be acting in the most appropriate or sensitive way—please get in touch with me, and I will take those concerns up. I hope the hon. Gentleman is satisfied with that.
Question put and agreed to.
DIOCESAN BOARDS OF EDUCATION MEASURE
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the Diocesan Boards of Education Measure (HC 1259).—(Andrew Selous.)
Draft NuclEar Safeguards (Fissionable Material and Relevant International Agreements) (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2021
(3 years, 7 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
Before we begin, I remind Members to observe social distancing and to sit only in places that are clearly marked. I also remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn in Committee, though obviously not when people are speaking. Our colleagues from Hansard would be most grateful if Members sent their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk.
The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Nuclear Safeguards (Fissionable Material and Relevant International Agreements) (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2021.
The draft regulations were laid before the House on 25 February 2021. This is an uncontroversial statutory instrument that is required to implement a protocol signed by the Governments of the United Kingdom and Japan on 16 December 2020 to amend the 1998 nuclear co-operation agreement between the UK and Japan. The draft statutory instrument will amend regulations to ensure that the United Kingdom may comply with the provisions of that protocol.
To understand the importance of the draft statutory instrument, one needs first to understand the purpose of the protocol. Nuclear co-operation agreements are commonly used international agreements that give legal underpinnings to civil nuclear co-operation. They provide key non-proliferation assurances, including respective nuclear safeguards and a framework for nuclear trade. Japan is an important partner of the United Kingdom in nuclear co-operation and non-proliferation. Both countries collaborate in the areas of nuclear regulation, research and development, decommissioning and advanced nuclear technology development.
The primary aim of the protocol is to maintain that mutually beneficial relationship between the UK and Japan on civil nuclear trade and co-operation. It achieves that by ensuring that the United Kingdom-Japan nuclear co-operation agreement, which it amends, is fully operable now that the United Kingdom operates its own domestic safeguards regimes and is no longer part of Euratom.
The protocol goes further, by including provisions that strengthen the mutually beneficial relationship between the UK and Japan. The additional provisions cover issues such as co-operation on R&D, intellectual property, safety and the expansion of the scope of the nuclear co-operation agreement to include technology.
I will now seek to explain what changes the draft statutory instrument will effect. First, it will amend the Nuclear Safeguards (Fissionable Material and Relevant International Agreements) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, so that the protocol is included under the definition of “relevant international agreement” for the purposes of the Energy Act 2013.
That primarily concerns the role and responsibility of the UK’s nuclear regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation. One of the office’s statutory purposes is to ensure that the UK complies with relevant international agreements. The draft regulations will ensure that the protocol is captured as such an agreement. Failure to pass the statutory instrument would therefore mean that the Office for Nuclear Regulation’s role would not include any reference to what has been agreed in the protocol, leaving the UK at risk of breaching the agreement. That, clearly, would not be an acceptable outcome.
The second change effected by this draft secondary legislation is the inclusion of the protocol under the definition of “specified international agreement” for the purposes of the Nuclear Safeguards (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. The change will extend the requirement in those regulations for operators to provide information to the Secretary of State relating to qualifying nuclear material or other relevant items in respect of the protocol. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
The Committee will be pleased to hear that we do not intend to oppose the draft statutory instrument. As the Minister has said, it relates to an international protocol that amends our relationship with the Government of Japan as far as co-operation on and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy are concerned. It has been properly arrived at with the Government of Japan, and it appears before us today for ratification. As the Minister can observe, if we did decide to oppose it, I think we would lose 3-2, so it is perhaps not worth going down that route.
Dr Whitehead
Tighter than sometimes.
I will ask the Minister a couple of questions, which will take a moment to unfold. I hope that she will be able to respond to me this afternoon. If not, perhaps she would be willing to write to me. When looking at this particular protocol, we need to nest it in what happened before it came about, its purpose and what it either adds to or replaces. In this particular instance, and in the instance of a number of other protocols that have been agreed bilaterally between the UK Government and foreign countries, it stems from the Nuclear Safeguards Act 2018, which clarified that the Government should sign a “relevant safeguards agreement”, in this instance
“relating to nuclear safeguards to which the United Kingdom and the International Atomic Energy Agency are parties.”
At that time, the relationship between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UK was effectively through the medium of Euratom. The UK was a member of Euratom, which had international protocols with various other states. It was therefore necessary, on the UK leaving Euratom, for us to not only replace a voluntary agreement with the IAEA but, as is set out further in the Act, ensure that principal international agreements had been signed prior to the UK leaving Euratom. The Act states that, if
“one or more of the principal international agreements have not been signed”,
a “relevant request” has to be made for a continuation of effective membership of Euratom until such signatories had been achieved.
That was given effect by the Nuclear Safeguards (Fissionable Material and Relevant International Agreements) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, from which this protocol effectively derives. Among other things, that secondary legislation required a Minister to specify the relevant international agreements. In other words, they had to carry out the part of the legislation that required those agreements to have been signed or, if they had not been signed, make a relevant request to Euratom for continuation. The UK formally left Euratom on 31 January 2020, which was not the same day as exit day from the EU. Euratom is a treaty organisation that precedes the EU, so the process of leaving was different.
The statutory instrument setting out those agreements was passed in 2019. During the course of the Nuclear Safeguards Bill Committee, the then Minister indicated that all the international agreements that should have been signed were well under way and there was not going to be much of a problem. Indeed, he was confident that they would all be signed and
“presented to Parliament before ratification, ahead of the UK’s withdrawal from Euratom”.––[Official Report, Nuclear Safeguards Public Bill Committee, 2 November 2017; c. 57.]
What then appeared in the secondary legislation of 2019 was a little curious. On 7 June 2018, a protocol was agreed to distinguish the UK’s relationship with the IAEA from its relationship with Euratom. On 4 May 2018, a similar agreement was made with the USA, which is one of the countries with which it is necessary to sign. Similar agreements were made with Canada on 2 November 2018, and with Australia on 21 August 2018. Curiously, the 2019 regulations mentioned an agreement with Japan, but dated it February 1998. That agreement did actually exist but it was essentially superfluous because of the UK’s relationship with Euratom. That agreement with Japan specifically stated that the UK was a member of Euratom and that the agreement should therefore be in addition to those arrangements.
The 2019 regulations state:
“The Secretary of State specifies each of the following agreements as a ‘relevant international agreement’ for the purposes of section 112(1A) of the Energy Act 2013,”
which was, of course, amended by the Nuclear Safeguards Act 2018 and relates to the agreements that needed to be signed. My first question is: why did the 2019 regulations state that the agreement with Japan, which was signed on 25 February 1998 and which specifically said that we were a member of Euratom, was a relevant international agreement for the purpose of stating that we were not a member of Euratom?
The protocol that was signed in December 2020 is fairly hard to find, but happily I have a copy in front of me. It states specifically that the protocol deletes the words:
“and Recognising that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a member of the European Atomic Energy Community (hereinafter referred to as ‘EURATOM’).”
I agree that the protocol does a few other things in terms of nuclear co-operation, but its main purpose is to state that we are not a member of Euratom anymore. Indeed, that is why this draft SI is before us today—to amend our relationship with Japan on the basis that we are not a member of Euratom and are, therefore, acting independently of it with the IAEA.
My second question is: does the Minister recognise that what was passed in the secondary legislation of 2019 was simply a mistake and that it has been rectified by the protocol under discussion, on which I hope we all agree? Alternatively, does she think that that secondary legislation was all right, in which case what we are discussing this evening is superfluous? If that is the case, she should reflect on the possibility that what we have been doing since we left Euratom is not legal according to the legislation passed in 2018.
If we have been operating in a non-legal or semi-legal way for the past year or so, I hope it will not have any real consequences, but I would be grateful if the Minister would write to me about this matter. I do not expect her to give me all the answers today, but I hope that she can at least give me an assurance that everything has been done properly. If that is not the case, were steps taken to ensure that we did not cause any problems, given that we appear to have not done the relevant international agreements properly until the appearance of this agreement today?
Those are my couple of easy questions for the Minister. I hope she will consider them carefully and either tell me that I am completely wrong or reassure me on what has happened between 2018 and today.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support, his forensic analysis and his challenge to the Government on process. Once I and officials have looked at his points in detail, I will absolutely write to him.
As the hon. Gentleman has highlighted, the UK and Japan have previously had relevant nuclear co-operation agreements in force—the 1998 UK-Japan bilateral nuclear co-operation agreement and the 2007 Euratom-Japan nuclear co-operation agreement—which was not the case with the US, Canada and Australia. Of course, the 2007 agreement ceased to apply when we stepped away from the EU, but the 1998 nuclear co-operation agreement remains in force.
Given that the policy changes made to the 1998 UK-Japan nuclear co-operation agreement were minor, it was not deemed necessary to agree a whole new nuclear co-operation agreement. Instead, a protocol to the agreement was deemed to be the most appropriate measure. There was an exchange of notes, which was considered a temporary solution that would come into force in any scenario where Euratom arrangements ceased to apply, which indeed they did, and the protocol had not then come into force. This protocol obviously represents a robust solution for our UK-Japan civil nuclear trade and co-operation, following our departure from Euratom, and it ensures continuity with an important partner.
Dr Whitehead
I thank the Minister for that partial elucidation. However, does she appreciate that, in terms of our leaving Euratom, at the very least this did not appear to have been made in time for the arrangements set out under the 2018 Act? I think she has partly confirmed that in her consideration of the status of the original protocol and what needed to be added to it in order to get us to a proper position—which is, indeed, the position we are now in today.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
I hope that I have provided the necessary assurances for now and I absolutely commit to writing to him with the finer points of detail that I hope will give him the reassurance he needs that the UK-Japanese relationship is absolutely watertight and continues to be of great importance to both countries.
As I said at the start, these draft regulations will ensure that the United Kingdom can comply with the provisions of the protocol agreed between the Governments of the United Kingdom and Japan, and by extension will help to maintain mutually beneficial civil nuclear trade and co-operation between ourselves and Japan. Therefore, I commend these regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.