SIR WALTER FOSTER (Derbyshire, Ilkeston)I beg to ask the hon. Member for the Tunbridge Division, as representing the Charity Commissioners, whether in the new scheme for St. Cross there is a provision giving to the town council of Winchester the nomination of one of the trustees; whether there is a restriction in the choice of the person nominated that he must be a member of the Church of England; whether in recent years there is any precedent for making the election of a representative trustee appointed by a town council on another public body subject to such restriction; and whether he will lay upon the Table of the House the correspondence on the subject, and any protests made against the new scheme.
§ MR. GRIFFITH BOSCAWENThere is in the recently established scheme for St. Cross a provision giving to the town council of Winchester the nomination of one of the trustees. But the scheme in question is not a new scheme in the sense that it reorganises the charity. It is in the main a scheme consolidating the provisions of previous orders of the Court of Chancery and of the Charity Commissioners. There is such a restriction in the scheme as that mentioned in the second part of the hon. Member's question. The restriction is in accordance with the provision made by the Court of Chancery in 1857, that the mayor of Winchester should be a trustee if a member of the Church of England. In answer to the third part of the question, there are many recent precedents for requiring in schemes that representative 61 trustees of Church of England trusts shall be members of that Church. I shall be glad to lay the correspondence on the Table if the hon. Member desires it.