Diocesan Stipends Funds (Amendment) Measure

Baroness Harris of Richmond Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield for his elegant introduction to this Measure, much of which I regret I will be repeating for the record. I thank the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who is unable to be in her place this evening. She guides us with great wisdom and knowledge as chair of the Ecclesiastical Committee. She has asked me to represent her this evening, which I gladly do.

This is a short Measure but nevertheless an important one. In a nutshell, it is about generosity of spirit, as well as money, from a well-off benefice to one less fortunate. Before I begin, I must declare my interests. I am High Steward of Ripon Cathedral in North Yorkshire and I have a nephew who is a priest on the Isle of Man. Neither of these interests is financial.

Historically, as we have heard, the incumbents of a parish were supported in their ministry by moneys garnered from glebe property—assets of land, property et cetera—which helped pay for the clergy in support of their ministry. During and after the Industrial Revolution, most people who lived in rural areas moved into the new towns and cities, and these of course flourished. Many became very wealthy and so did not need any help from rural areas. Some areas with lots of glebe were well able to support their clergy, but others without such benefits were not so fortunate. Their clergy were not, therefore, well supported. In order to iron out these discrepancies, the Endowments and Glebe Measure 1976 transferred the glebe from the benefices to diocesan boards of finance in exchange for them providing a standard stipend to all members of the clergy who ministered in the parishes of the diocese. The diocesan stipend fund—DSF—holds that glebe land, with any accrued income from it going into the fund. The money is then distributed into its capital account.

The problem then arose that the Church found that some dioceses were having to make financial savings because of their loss of glebe moneys, whereas others were much wealthier because of significant income from historic wealth. As an example of this discrepancy, we were told that Oxford holds the most valuable historic assets at £171 million, and Liverpool the lowest at £1.5 million. So to try to come to a more equitable state, the Mutuality in Finances Group was formed to explore options such as moving money between dioceses from sufficiently wealthy parishes to those in greatest need.

At present, dioceses can use their diocesan stipend fund only for certain specified purposes and only within their own diocese. In 2021, the House of Bishops, the Archbishops’ Council and the synod recommended that legislation be brought forward to get rid of these anomalies and give dioceses more freedom to distribute their historic wealth more generously and help their struggling colleagues. As noble Lords would expect, there are a number of provisions in the Measure that stipulate how the money may be transferred from one diocese to another. New Section 5B is permissive rather than mandatory, for moneys to be used in various circumstances. New Section 5B(2) sets out the options a diocesan board of finance has if it decides to transfer money. It can do so to the income account of the diocesan stipend fund of another diocese; or to an account, held for the purposes of new Section 5B, of the Archbishops’ Council; or to another charity. If it goes to another charity, that charity then has to decide to which diocese or dioceses it intends to transfer the funds. Then it transfers the money to the relevant diocesan stipend fund.