CLAUSE 2.—(Establishment of an Ecclesiastical Committee.) (Hansard, 5 December 1919)

§ Viscount WOLMER
I beg to move, in Sub-section (2), to leave out the words "Lord Chief Justice" and to insert instead thereof the words "Lord Chancellor."
There is some substance in this Amendment. The HOUSE; will have seen that, since the Bill went to Committee, Clause 2—one of the most important Clauses in the Bill—has been quite revolutionised. The Bill originally proposed that a Committee of the Privy Council should examine all measures submitted to Parliament by the Church Assembly, and report to His Majesty upon those measures, and that the Report should then be laid before Parliament. On the Motion of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Middleton (Sir R. Adkins), the Committee upstairs agreed to change that, and to substitute what now appears in the Bill, that is to say, a Joint Parliamentary Committee. But the promoters of the Bill were extremely anxious that this Joint Parliamentary Committee should not be exactly upon the model of the ordinary Joint Parliamentary Committee with which we are so familiar. The functions of this Committee will not be the same as an ordinary Joint Parliamentary Committee, and it is extremely desirable that its appointment should be made in the most impartial and most judicial manner. My hon. Friend the Member for Middleton originally proposed that this Committee should be appointed, as regards Members of the House of Commons, by you, Sir, and in respect to Members of the House of Lords, by the Lord Chancellor. I must take upon myself full responsibility for having made the suggestion that the Lord Chief Justice would be a more suitable person to appoint the Members of the other House.
I would like to say that conducting a private Bill through the House of Commons is not an easy matter. The ordinary Member has none of those resources which are open to members of the Govern- 840 ment, and I now see, on further reflection, that the suggestion which I made in Committee, and which my hon. Friend the Member for Middleton was good enough to accept, was not a good suggestion. I was led, I think, by the fact that the office of Lord Chancellor is the office of a Cabinet Minister, and I did not properly reflect that the Lord. Chancellor, besides being Lord Chancellor, is also Speaker of the House of Lords, and, therefore, if the Members of the House of Commons on the Ecclesiastical Committee were to be appointed by you, Sir—and I am sure we all hope they will be—it is only fitting and right that the Members of the House of Lords should be appointed by the Lord Chancellor. Therefore, I would like to take this, the earliest opportunity of retrieving what I now believe has been a mistake. I would like to say one word more. It has been pointed out to me that the attitude which I took up in Grand Committee might be held in some quarters to cast some aspersion on the present holder of the office of Lord Chancellor. I think it is hardly necessary for me to say that, in a matter of this sort, neither was I thinking of personalities nor ought any one of us to be thinking of personalities. It was purely a question of what was the proper office, and I should like to take this opportunity of saying how confident I am that the present Lord Chancellor, if these powers were entrusted to him, would fulfil them in the most admirable manner possible. Not only as a personal friend of his, but as one who has watched his wonderful career with great admiration, I should be exceedingly sorry if anybody thought I ever considered he was not a proper person to fulfil the functions that are proposed in this Clause.

§ Sir R. ADKINS
I beg to second the Amendment, and I should like to take the opportunity of expressing here to the House itself appreciation of the way in which the view taken by a number of us on this very important part of the Bill on Second Reacting has been substantially met by my Noble Friend and those responsible with him for the conduct of this measure. There are one or two matters outstanding on which we do not agree. It is, therefore, all the more important to recognise quite frankly the important agreement come to. I believe a good deal of the future of this Bill, both in what it does and what it abstains 841 from doing, will turn upon the composition and work of this Joint Committee into whose membership both Houses of Parliament will come.

§ Viscount WOLMER
I beg to move, in Sub-section (2), after the word "appointed" ["to be appointed at the commencement"] to insert the words on the passing of this Act, to serve for the duration of the present Parliament, and thereafter to be appointed. If these words be not inserted, as the Clause now reads, the Ecclesiastical Committee, perhaps, would not be appointed until the next Parliament. Therefore this is a purely drafted Amendment.

§ Viscount WOLMER
I beg to move, at the end of Sub-section (2), to insert the words Any casual vacancy occurring by the reason of the death, resignation, or incapacity of a member of the Ecclesiastical Committee shall he filled by the nomination of a member by the Lord Chancellor or the Speaker of the House of Commons, as the case may he. This Amendment provides for an obvious necessity.

§ Viscount WOLMER
I beg to move, at the end of Sub-section (3), to insert the words and notwithstanding a vacancy in the membership of the Committee. Subject to the provisions of this Act the Ecclesiastical Committee may regulate its own procedure. This is merely an Amendment to give the Committee power to arrange their own procedure.