Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, I, too, have appended my name to the amendment. I commend my noble friend Lord Inglewood for the erudition and articulacy of the case that he has put, particularly in relation to the legal arguments, which I am not competent to follow, and on the need for accountability of the Church Commissioners. I do not need to rehearse the arguments at length, but the debate so far has revealed a lacuna in our accountability. I say to the right reverend Prelates who are in their places that, in my experience of dealing with the Church of England and as a loyal Anglican who has dealt with legislation in another place, there is a need to articulate the interests of what might be termed the Bishops’ Bench for shorthand and of the Church Commissioners, because it is not always clear that there is a united voice in these matters. So it has been right to expose the issue of accountability.

The second issue, about which many of us in the House feel strongly, is the need to preserve the heritage. I would not make this specific to the affairs of the Anglican Church but there are a number of people sitting on a number of trusts in different capacities who have heritage assets that may or may not have strayed into their ownership as a result of past arrangements. I am thinking, for example, of a certain involvement that I had with the Coram Foundation and the Foundling Hospital at one stage and the legally intense issues, some time ago, in terms of the disposition of their paintings; or, indeed, Royal Holloway College, at which one of my daughters was a student, and the Turners that it had to sell. There is a real tension and we should reflect on ways in which—rather along the lines of the work that my noble friend Lord Inglewood does in relation to the reviewing of the export of works of art—we can run some of these heritage issues past accountability before it is too late to do so.

I make those two points in the full knowledge—and, indeed, having discussed them with Mr Baldry, the Second Church Estates Commissioner, who used to be my constituency neighbour when I was in another place—that there are real issues for the resourcing of the Church of England. We fully understand that it must make the best use of its assets—it has an important pastoral task, to which I warm—but it must not do so at the expense of these other considerations. That it has a need for the money may be a necessary and appropriate argument, but it is not quite sufficient to justify everything that may have taken place, as described by my noble friends and others. This is an area in which we need to sharpen up and make sure that it is meeting its wider obligations as well as its specific and precise ones to resource the church.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and his noble co-signatories for tabling the amendment. We have heard something of the present plight of Rose Castle and Hartlebury Castle and the great Hurd Library that it contains.

I was fortunate to be educated at the Winchester Cathedral choir school. As a little boy, I played cricket in the lee of the ruins of Wolvesey Castle, the old palace of the Bishops of Winchester. It sits close to the late 17th-century baroque palace, which I believe is still the residence of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester, yet one wonders for how much longer, as the Church Commissioners seem determined to dispose of their patrimony.

The patrimony of the Church of England, our established church, is also the patrimony of the nation. Of course we recognise that the Church Commissioners have a responsibility to keep the Church of England afloat financially, to pay pensions and so forth. No one underestimates the difficult challenge in that, but the church’s responsibility is not just to the material bottom line or to itself. It is far larger. The church’s patrimony of buildings and art is essential to the physical and metaphorical fabric of the nation. The Church of England and our society remain inextricably members one of another. Many right reverend Prelates understand this entirely and are deeply committed to the preservation of the heritage that they have the privilege of presiding over.

In Norwich, the cathedral city in which I now live, there was recently an exhibition entitled “The Art of Faith: 3,500 Years of Art and Belief in Norfolk”. Stephen Fry wrote, in a foreword to the catalogue, that the history of Christianity is,

“part of a larger continuum”.

As he put it, artefacts created as an expression of faith,

“speak for all of us across time”.

Gail Turner, reviewing the exhibition in the Times, wrote about the,

“relationships between faith, creativity, commerce and geography”.

People making buildings and other artefacts as expressions of Christian faith have for millennia made sense for all of us of our place in the world.

The patrimony that the Church of England claims as its own has been paid for by the tithes, donations, rents, taxes and lottery tickets of the community. Whatever may be the formal legal position—the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, explained to us that that is in significant respects doubtful—morally this patrimony belongs to us all. Some 45 per cent of grade 1 listed buildings are Church of England parish churches. The Church of England has been happy to benefit from the listed places of worship grants scheme that was negotiated by my right honourable friend Gordon Brown, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. It has been happy to benefit from the funding that English Heritage has been able to provide for cathedrals and for the repair grants for the places of worship programme jointly funded by English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

When I was Minister for the Arts, deans of two of our great cathedrals came to see me to ask whether public money could be found to support cathedral choir schools. While, to my regret, the Arts Council was unable to accede to that request at the time, it was an entirely reasonable request, because cathedral music is the fountainhead of so much of the musical life of our nation. Hundreds and thousands of lay volunteers help to care for church buildings. There is a two-way obligation of mutual support between the church and society in respect of the heritage. The nation has a stake and a right in the music of the church and its cathedrals, its bishops’ palaces and the works of art that are contained within them. This is all part of our national heritage and it is not simply for the Church Commissioners to sell off as they will.

It is not a question here of the bishop in his castle and the curate at his gate and of the church having some duty of radical equalisation in the accommodation arrangements for both. As the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, suggested, as a society we want to be able to look up to bishops, just as we do in your Lordships’ House. The people of this country do not want bishops to live in semi-detached houses. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, that they want them to live in palaces. I am aware that the beauty of holiness, Laudianism, has been from time to time controversial in the history of the church, but I am also aware that the church’s commitment to art as an expression of spirituality has always returned. I hope and believe that modernism, plainness and aesthetic banality will prove to be passing fashions in the life of the church.

In this fourth centenary year of the King James Bible, when church leaders are asking us to rediscover the literary genius of the Anglican heritage, which has been an inspiration not only to our nation but to the world, how can they sell out their other heritage? It might be gratifying to the hair-shirt tendency and the puritans, but it would be a betrayal of centuries of spirituality and social leadership. How can the Church Commissioners be so philistine as to contemplate this? Are they proud of their record of selling Georgian rectories? After the bishops’ palaces, will they sell the grade 1 listed churches, send them to follow the old London Bridge to Arizona, where I fear that there would be plenty of eager buyers?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

I hope that the noble Lord will not think that what I am about to say is in any way discourteous, but he plainly has a bee in his bonnet. He has spoken about it now for over 10 minutes and we have got the point. I wonder whether it is really necessary to read out quotations, as he has been doing, when we understand his point that the Church Commissioners should be within the Bill.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I feel deeply advised by the noble Lord, Lord Lester. I was at the point of concluding and I appreciate that I have detained the Committee longer than I should at this stage of the evening, but a number of noble Lords feel that we are talking about important issues. There are other, better ways for the church to raise £500,000 a year. That the Church Commissioners are contemplating doing it in this way is disgraceful. To protect the wider national interest from these depredations, I support the amendment.

[The Lord Bishop of Leicester]

My Lords, I must present to the Committee the apologies of the right reverend prelate the Bishop of London, who is the chair of the commissioners. He cannot be in the Committee this evening because of his ecclesiastical responsibilities. I declare an interest as a diocesan bishop of the Church of England in receipt of a stipend from the Church Commissioners and in expectation, or at least hope, of the receipt of a pension in due course.

I fear that I will deeply disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, by explaining that I live neither in a palace nor a castle, nor have I any desire to live in them. I live in a house in a street in Leicester where I can offer hospitality and from which I can discharge my ecclesiastical responsibilities with a whole range of connections and networks, which seem to be widely appreciated in the city, the county and the region. Leaders of civil society there have never given me or my predecessors any reason to suppose that by not living in a more exalted dwelling I am somehow deficient in discharging my responsibilities.

I offer the Committee four reasons for urging that this amendment be resisted: first, the established acceptance that Parliament does not take the initiative in legislating on church affairs; secondly, the existence of already robust governance arrangements; thirdly, the Church Commissioners’ clear charitable obligations; and, fourthly, their record of public consultation in detail and consistently on contentious transactions, contrary to what has been alleged in the Committee this evening.

Since 1919, Parliament has rightly left matters concerning the church’s internal governance entirely to the church. Parliament has the power to find ecclesiastical legislation inexpedient and apply pressure to the church in various ways, but direct ministerial oversight seems neither necessary nor proper. This is not to argue that the commissioners should be free from scrutiny, but the amendment seeks to increase the level of governance upon the commissioners at the very time that they have become subject to regulation by the Charity Commission, given that they lost exempt status on 1 June 2010.

In no sense is there an accountability deficit here. The commissioners were not unaccountable before the Charity Commission registration. Their report and accounts are laid before Parliament and the General Synod. As has been pointed out, the Second Church Estates Commissioner is answerable in the other place and regularly gives an account of the commissioners’ proceedings. I need hardly remind your Lordships that the occupants of this Bench are Members of your Lordships’ House. There are six state commissioners: the Prime Minister, the Lord President of the Council, the Secretaries of State for the Home Department and for Culture, Media and Sport and the Speakers of both Houses of Parliament, to whom whistleblowers have recourse.

The amendment, as we have heard, is motivated primarily by concerns about the commissioners’ responsibility for the national heritage. Your Lordships may be interested to know, in passing, that the Church of England, quite apart from its many other activities and the support of its clergy costs, raises between £400 million and £500 million a year from voluntary donations to support the built heritage of England, 60 per cent of which is the responsibility of the church. Let us not suppose that the church is somehow engaged in money-grabbing activities to save small pockets of money here and there; much larger sums are raised thorough the encouragement of the dioceses, of the bishops and of the churches in every locality to support our church buildings.

The Church Commissioners are not themselves a heritage body. They have fiduciary responsibility for the management of the assets with which they have been entrusted. Parliament gave them the responsibility to provide the maximum sustainable support, within their strong ethical investment framework, for their beneficiaries. They must not support today’s church at the expense of tomorrow’s church, and this means being strong enough to resist pressure, which the current governance structures enable.

Of course the commissioners must also act responsibly and transparently, which leads to the second point in this thread—that the commissioners are already actively involved with a wide range of local communities, seeking ways of satisfying their trustee duties while giving weight to local and national views about heritage and other issues. Your Lordships may be interested to know that, when an incumbent diocesan bishop becomes 62 and retirement age is in view, a full consultation takes place in the diocese about the suitability of the see house, possible alternatives and developments. There is consultation across a wide cross-section of civil society in every diocese.

For example, the commissioners have had discussions with local stakeholders about the future of Rose Castle—I shall say more about that in a moment—and they have given a local trust the opportunity to raise funds to purchase Hartlebury Castle. They are also currently engaging with a group chaired by the Lord Lieutenant of Durham that is exploring the retention of the Zurbaráns at Auckland Castle.

Let me say a little more about that. It is important for noble Lords not to believe everything that they read in the press on this matter. The sale of the paintings could raise at least £15 million for the church’s work across the country, especially in areas of the greatest need. The return on £15 million when invested, plus saved insurance and security costs, is equivalent to the cost of about 10 priests in perpetuity, in addition to the support we already provide. I remind your Lordships that the church is constantly being encouraged to play its part in the big society; to exercise its role in every local community; to ensure there is local leadership, which must be trained, housed, stipended and engaged with local people; to provide chaplains to schools, hospitals, prisons, universities and other organisations; and to play its part in engagement with other faith communities. All of this requires proper funding.