Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure (HC 341) Church of England Pensions (Application of Capital Funds) Measure (HC 342)

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 General Committees

[Andrew Selous]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I hope that these two measures will not detain the Committee for long.

The Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure is the latest in a series of such Measures. It makes provision for a range of matters concerning the Church of England that do not merit separate free-standing legislation. It includes provisions relating to the General Synod, ecclesiastical offices, ecclesiastical jurisdiction, Church property, elections to representative bodies, the functions of the Church Commissioners, appointments to the Church of England Pensions Board and the conduct of various types of meeting. I do not propose to take the Committee through all its 22 clauses in detail, but I will elaborate on its most significant provisions.

Clause 1 will put on a permanent basis the ability of the General Synod of the Church of England to hold remote or hybrid meetings. Temporary provision was made during the covid pandemic for the General Synod to meet and conduct its business on a remote or hybrid basis. Experience has shown that the ability to hold remote meetings, particularly hybrid meetings, is of continuing value, particularly given the inability of some members to attend meetings of the Synod for reasons of health or disability. We envisage that the Synod is most likely to continue to hold hybrid meetings with most members physically present.

Clause 2 amends the Legislative Reform Measure 2018 by removing a sunset provision. The Legislative Reform Measure enables the Archbishops’ Council—with the approval of the General Synod, and subject to the negative procedure in Parliament for statutory instruments—to make legislative reform orders that can amend ecclesiastical legislation contained in Acts of Parliament and Church Measures, within certain limits. The power to make legislative reform orders would expire in March of this year without the amendment made by clause 2 to repeal the sunset provision. The Church has found the power to make legislative reform orders a useful one; three significant orders have been made since the power came into being. This amendment will ensure that the power to make further orders remains available. The orders made so far have related to the exercise of patronage, the constitution of the Church of England Pensions Board and certain procedures of the Church Commissioners.

Clause 7 and schedule 1 make it possible for those cathedrals that wish to do so to appoint lay residentiary canons. The residentiary canons of a cathedral, all of whom must currently be ordained as priests or deacons, constitute the principal group of individuals who exercise ministry and form the praying heart of a cathedral. For some time now, the Church has sought to recognise and encourage the ministry of lay people, both in parishes and in cathedrals. The ministry of readers, who are now often called licensed lay ministers, and of lay workers is recognised and regulated by the canons of the Church of England. Some cathedrals wish to include experienced lay ministers among their residentiary canons; this Measure will enable them to do so. I should point out that no cathedral will be obliged to have lay residentiary canons.

Clauses 9 to 12 update the practice and procedure of the Church’s courts and statutory tribunals in various ways. These include provisions designed to increase diversity among those appointed as ecclesiastical judges and impose mandatory training requirements for ecclesiastical judges; to expedite decisions on permission to appeal from the decisions of tribunals; and to put the live broadcast of proceedings in Church courts on a statutory footing. Members of the Committee may be interested to know that these courts principally cover matters relating to planning permission-type issues in relation to the use and development of church buildings and churchyards, as well as clergy discipline matters.

Clause 20 and schedule 2 make provision for a range of Church of England bodies at the local as well as national level to hold their meetings remotely or to hold hybrid meetings. These include parochial church councils, diocesan synods, deanery boards, parochial church meetings, parishioners meetings to choose churchwardens, cathedral chapters, diocesan boards of education, the church buildings council, and boards of patronage under pastoral schemes.

The Church of England Pensions (Application of Capital Funds) Measure is a much shorter, technical measure. If passed, it will extend the Church Commissioners’ currently time-limited power to spend capital to meet their pensions obligations—mainly to clergy—for service carried out before 1998. Under the current legislation, the power to do so will expire at the end of 2025. This measure will extend the period for a further seven years, until the end of 2032. The ability to apply capital as well as income to meet pensions obligations gives the commissioners much greater flexibility in their asset allocation policy.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I am enjoying my hon. Friend’s excellent and entertaining speech. Why 2032? Normally, these things are extended by five, 10 or 15 years. Why seven?

[Andrew Selous]

My hon. Friend, who is well versed in biblical history, will know the significance of seven in the Old Testament, and indeed in the new. It has just been the case that this measure has been rolled on for seven consecutive years, so my hunch is that it has theological origins.

The pensions measure will enable the Church Commissioners to invest in a broad range of asset classes, including those where most, and in some cases all, of the investment returns come from capital appreciation—an increase in the value of the holdings, rather than from income distributions, for example dividends and interest. The ability to apply capital in this way has been a crucial enabling factor in the strong returns the commissioners have generated for the Church of England’s endowment fund. Those returns have fed through to increased support for the Church’s mission and ministry.

From 2020 to 2022, the commissioners were able to make £150 million of additional funding above the level that might have been expected. As reported to the General Synod last July, in the current spending period, 2023 to 2025, the commissioners plan to distribute 30% more than was distributed in the period 2020 to 2022. Looking over a longer period, planned distributions by the commissioners in 2023 to 2025 are more than double the equivalent in 2017 to 2019. The power provided by this measure to apply capital towards the cost of the commissioners’ historical pensions liabilities will enable them to continue to manage the endowment in the way that best serves the Church, both now and sustainably into the future. The Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament has reported on both measures and found them both to be expedient.