HC Deb 28 February 2000 vol 345 c16
29. Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle)

What arrangements are in place for insurance of churches in remote locations against theft of their fabric. [110626]

Mr. Stuart Bell (Second Church Estates Commissioner, representing the Church Commissioners)

It is the responsibility of the individual church, that is to say its parochial church council, to arrange and finance its own insurance of the church building and its contents.

Guidance is available to parochial church councils and others from the Council for the Care of Churches of the Church of England and from individual insurers.

Mr. Prentice

That is a very disappointing reply. We could equalise premiums across the country so that parishes would not pay more if their churches were vulnerable to theft and vandalism. People in my constituency are absolutely fed up to the back teeth of historic artefacts being stripped from churches. Not long ago, the entire stone tiling from the mediaeval parish church at Gill was stripped; it disappeared down the M1 and is probably in a garden in Islington as I speak. I want my hon. Friend to speak to the Home Secretary about that and perhaps to designate police officers responsible for stolen stones, as Skipton does.

Mr. Bell

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) has the next question, and he may be better able to answer questions about the whereabouts of artefacts. I am saddened to tell the House that the Ecclesiastical Insurance Group confirmed that in 1998 it paid more than 4,000 claims as a result of attacks against churches, including theft, vandalism and arson. Ten churches are attacked every day, and one in four can expect to be the victim of crime every year. As insurers, the group views that high level of crime as completely unacceptable—and on that point, I agree entirely with my hon. Friend—and it works with the Church, wherever possible, to help to combat the rising number of attacks on its people and property.

There are seminars on church security and there is a new system of marking church property, which is a sponsored system of alpha dots which marks kits and artefacts in the hope that they may be recovered.