SUPERANNUATION (ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSIONERS AND QUEEN ANNE'S BOUNTY) BILL. (Hansard, 18 July 1933)

§ Mr. DENMAN

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Superannuation (Ecclesiastical Commissioners and Queen Anne's Bounty) Act, 1914. I should not occupy even five minutes in explaining this Bill, which when printed will be found to present no difficulties to the understanding, but for the fact that this is the only opportunity of making an appeal to the House to deal with this Bill with the rapidity that it has sometimes shown towards Bills which redress minor grievances and put right admitted wrongs. The object of the Bill is mainly to bring the superannuation provisions of Queen Anne's Bounty and the Ecclesiastical Commission into line with those of the Civil Service. So far as the Ecclesiastical Commission is concerned, for staff purposes we are almost a branch of the Civil Service. Our staff is recruited by the same examinations; its salaries are those of the Civil Service; and the pension provisions, both of Queen A one's Bounty and the Ecclesiastical Commission, have always marched side by side with those of the Civil Service.

In September, 1914, however, the State got slightly ahead of the Church. In that year an Amendment was made in the Civil Service scheme whereby, in the case of gratuities granted in respect of a man who had died during service, an improvement was made. The old rule had been that a year's salary should be the amount of the gratuity. The new rule was that the amount of the gratuity should be either that figure, or another figure, if larger, equal to the sum he would have been entitled to draw had he retired on the grounds of ill health at the moment of his death. The practical difference between these two figures is that in certain cases the amount payable to a widow or dependant might be up to 50 per cent. larger on the Civil Service scale. When Mr. Middleton went to the Ecclesiastical Commission and discovered that his staff was suffering from this grievance, he forthwith negotiated with the Treasury, and he asked the hon. Member for Rye (Sir G. Courthope) and myself to introduce this Bill in order to remedy that hardship.

The Bill proposes to do two other small things. First, on transference of a mem- 1690 ber of the staff from Queen Anne's Bounty to the Ecclesiastical Commission, or vice versa, a man will not lose his pension rights, but carry them with him. Secondly, the Third Clause abolishes for future entrants an obsolete provision of 1865, by which men taken on in middle life could have years added to their service in the computation of their pensions. That is a provision no longer required under modern conditions of recruitment, and to bring our scheme into perfect harmony with that of the Civil Service the Treasury have asked us to abolish it. That is the whole intention and effect of the Bill. It has the approval of the Treasury, and from such conversations as I have had I believe it has the approval of the Labour party and of the Liberal Members also. I do not see Clydeside Members present, but I believe that even distant Clydeside would lend its disinterested aid to the widows and dependants of the workers on Mill-bank. In those circumstances I honestly think it is a Bill that no one in the House can find to contain a fragment of contention, and I ask the House not only to allow it to be introduced, but to allow it to pass through all its stages before we adjourn for the Recess.