Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Lords Chamber

As I say, it is an issue of pensions, in which I am interested. Is this just being rolled over because it is there, or has there been any reassessment as to whether this is the right way to handle this obligation of the Church to pay pre-1998 pensions? So I just urge the right reverend Prelate, when he replies, to provide a bit of explanation, because it is simply not there in the papers that have been provided to us. There is a total lack of information in the papers that have been submitted to the House, yet we are still being asked to make a decision. I have questions in my mind as to exactly what we are doing here as part of this process. Is it, in fact, just a form of ritual, or is there some substantive decision being made? I think it is reasonable to ask the representatives of the Church here today to provide us with a bit more background.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, as chairman of the Ecclesiastical Committee, perhaps I could answer some of the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, but not, I have to say, the last question, save to say that I have no doubt that it was discussed at length in Synod. Synod is where the decisions are made and then they are passed by Parliament.

The position of the Ecclesiastical Committee is that we are a statutory committee of Members of the House of Commons and Members of the House of Lords, usually chaired by a former lawyer. We have very careful explanations from the Church, nearly always from a bishop and the lawyers from Church House. We debate it among ourselves and then we declare whether it is or is not expedient. That is the wording of the 1919 statute. We went through that process. We had the bishop, the lawyers and in my recollection an archdeacon. We certainly had five or six members of the Church. We had a full explanation and we declared, on behalf of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords statutory committee, that we found it expedient. I therefore support the Motion in the name of the right reverend Prelate.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I wonder if I might help here. I declare an interest: I am a member of the Church of England pensions scheme. I expect to draw my pension from it, including some service from pre-1998, which will be funded by the Church Commissioners. I was, for a time, the vice-chair of the Church of England pensions board, and more recently the vice-chair of the Church Commissioners. I have therefore had a foot in all the various camps.

It is important that we come to Parliament every seven years for a refreshing of that power to spend down capital. The Church Commissioners’ fund is, in effect, a permanent endowment, so capital should be spent only with clear authority as to why it is necessary. Clearly it is necessary in order to pay pensions, so we come back to both Houses of Parliament via the Ecclesiastical Committee on a regular basis to check that they are still happy for that power to continue for the next seven years.

Of course, it is entirely up to the committee to declare it non-expedient or for this House or the other place to determine that it does not want that power to continue. For me, seven years is enough time to allow the Church Commissioners and the pensions board to plan ahead with what they are doing, but it is not giving a blank cheque. It is not saying that permanent endowment can be spent down willy-nilly for the whole of the 60 years.

The good news is that when I last looked at the figures the amount of the Church Commissioners’ total endowment that will be necessary to pay out those remaining pensions over that period—and I hope my retirement will be long and healthy when it comes—is now down to something more like 20% than 50%. It is reducing with time, so more and more of the resources of the Church Commissioners are free to support the mission and ministry of the Church of England on a wider basis. It is important that we have this power renewed and that Parliament, which scrutinises the work of the Church Commissioners, gets a chance to tell us whether it is expedient to continue to spend that money from capital on pensions on a regular basis. That is part of our accountability to your Lordships’ House and to the other place.