Stipends (Hansard, 19 October 1992)

§ 21. Mr. Harry Greenway
To ask the right hon. Member for Selby, representing the Church Commissioners, how much income the Church Commissioners expect from parish and diocesan contributions for stipends during the current financial year; and if he will make a statement.

§ Mr. Michael Alison (Second Church Estates Commissioner, representing the Church Commissioners)
We expect that parishes will raise about £65 million towards stipends this year. This represents just over 40 per cent. of their total cost.

§ Mr. Greenway
Will my right hon. Friend accept that we must not become involved in the law of diminishing returns on the number of clergy to do the job and that the Church will die in that sense if we do? Will he ensure that sufficient money is raised by one means or another to pay enough clergy to do the job? Has he read yesterday's sermon by one of his constituents, the Archbishop of York? What view does he take of that?

§ Mr. Alison
That was a somewhat double-barrelled supplementary question—perhaps I should address the second barrel of it. The Archbishop of York is a constituent and friend of mine, but that does not mean that I have to agree with everything that he says. The doctrine of the infallibility of bishops and archbishops is not a doctrine of the Church of England. Perhaps I should put the corollary more positively: the doctrine of the fallibility of bishops and archbishops is a doctrine of the Church of England.

§ Mr. Frank Field
To what extent has the problem been exacerbated by the commissioners' borrowing and buying into the property market just before it collapsed?

§ Mr. Alison
The hon. Gentleman will know that, apart from dividends and rents, the commissioners have no source of income other than borrowing. The collapse of the property market has hit the Church Commissioners extremely hard, like many other investors, but the hon. Gentleman will recall that when the stock exchange market collapsed in 1987 the Church beneficiaries were entirely unaffected because there was much investment in property.