TITHE AMENDMENT (Hansard, 26 July 1933)

§ Mr. SPENS

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the provisions for the recovery of tithe rentcharge in England and Wales. The object of this Bill is to render more workable and to extend the existing machinery and the existing legislation for 2602 dealing with really hard cases. As hon. Members know, there is in many parts of the country a growing movement against the payment of tithe, in the form of passive resistance, and many regrettable incidents have occurred. We have seen auction sales made completely abortive; we have seen agents of tithe owners making forays under cover of dawn—reminiscent of border forays in the Middle Ages—rounding up valuable stock, putting them into motor cars, and carrying them long distances away for the purpose of sale; and, what is even more serious, we have had in many parishes a growing feeling between the church and those people who do not belong to the church but have to pay tithe.

Of course, the general depression in the agricultural industry has, no doubt, created conditions under which many people feel it very hard to have to pay a fixed sum for tithe, irrespective of good season or bad season. With those general conditions, this Bill does not propose to deal, nor would it be proper for such a Bill to deal in any shape or form with them, but there are still, and always have been, particularly hard cases, and there has been, and is, under existing legislation, machinery for dealing with those hard cases, but machinery which is not very operative owing to various inconveniences. Under the Tithe Act, 1891, there is at the present moment machinery for dealing with hard cases where a man is subject to an excessively high tithe, but the machinery requires an application to the county court. It requires the tithe-payer to prove that there is due from him tithe in excess of two-thirds of the annual value of his holding as assessed under Income Tax Schedule B, and in many cases that machinery is not made any use of, because payers object to making an application to the court. When they get there, the remission is so slight that it is not worth having, and in many cases owner-occupiers are not assessed at all under Schedule B, but under Schedule D, and there is no existing machinery for dealing with hard cases which arise under Schedule D.

The Bill simply proposes that, as regards the payers who are assessed under Schedule B, it should not be necessary to make any application to a court at all, that there should be an automatic remission, and that the amount of the remis- 2603 sion should be the excess of the amount due for tithe of one-half instead of two-thirds of the annual value of the holding under Schedule B. Then, as regards those assessed under Schedule D, new machinery has got to be devised, and it is proposed that the new machinery should be, that wherever the amount due for tithe exceeds one-half of the net amount of profits and gains at which a farmer or smallholder is assessed under Schedule D, there should be an automatic remission of the excess of the amount due for tithe over the one-half of the net amount of profits and gains. Where there is no profit to a man, but losses—and those are particularly hard cases, of which there are many hundreds throughout the country to-day—the payment should be reduced to one-tenth of the amount due. In order to preserve the rights of tithe owners, it is proposed to maintain their rights as at present of being represented at proceedings dealing with assessments of tithe payers under Schedules B and D which will 'affect their rights. In addition the machinery under existing Acts require some minor alterations. It is impossible to estimate in pounds, shillings and pence what the proposals would amount to, but it is hoped the result would be that not only would these hard cases, instead of refusing to pay altogether, now pay the lesser amount which alone would be due in their hard circumstances, but also that persons who can pay, but who are unwilling to pay because they want to lend support to the hard cases, would have less reason for adopting that type of attitude. We believe that if these small amendments were made, and this existing machinery was made workable, the result would be that more tithe would be paid, and paid more willingly. In those circumstances, I beg to ask leave to introduce this Bill.