BURIAL GROUNDS BILL. (Hansard, 26 June 1900)

§ LORD BELPER
The subject of the Bill which I have to ask your Lordships to read a second time this evening is one that has constantly attracted the attention of Parliament. The laws which govern the use of burial grounds are of a very complex nature; they are contained in a series of Acts of Parliament called the Burial Acts, which are administered under the supervision of the Home Office. The matter is rendered still more complicated by the fact that there is another Act, called the Public Health (Interments) Act, 1879, which is administered by the Local Government Board. The difficulties with regard to the present law relating to burial grounds do not by any means end hero. It is a notorious fact that the present state of the law has given rise to constant disputes and difficulties. How great those difficulties are has been shown by the fact that many parties have attempted to come to a compromise outside the provisions of the Acts in order to make an arrangement which would be more satisfactory. It is not surprising, therefore, that the attention of Parliament has been constantly called to the present state of affairs, and three years ago a suggestion was made in the House of Commons that a Select Committee should be appointed to inquire into the whole state of the law under the Burial 1045 Acts. That suggestion was accepted by the Government, and a Select Committee was appointed to inquire whether any alteration in the existing law was necessary, especially in regard to the consecration of ground, the provision of chapels, and the allocation of fees. The Committee was composed of gentlemen fairly representative, I think I may say, of the different sides of this very difficult question. It had the great advantage of being presided over by the Member for the University of Cambridge, Sir Richard Jebb, and I think it will be at once admitted that both the chairman and the other members of the Committee approached the matter in a very conciliatory spirit, and with an earnest desire to arrive at some fair and satisfactory compromise, for they came to what was practically a unanimous conclusion on the question. Their Report was made at the end of the session of 1898, after the Committee had taken a great deal of evidence with respect to the state of the law and the difficulties which had arisen under it. Last session a deputation waited upon the Home Secretary, consisting of representatives of both sides of the question, and requested him to bring in a Bill to carry out the recommendations of that Report. That Bill has been brought in this year by the Home Secretary. It is practically founded on all the suggestions made by the Select Committee, with two exceptions, which I will presently notice. The subsequent course of that Bill through the other House justified the arrangement that had been come to by the Committee, because it may be said to have met with the general assent of that House, and to have been passed through without any substantial amendment. That is the history of the Bill so far as it has got. With regard to the necessity for some amendment of the law, I think it is unnecessary for me to give any opinion of my own. I cannot put the case in favour of legislation more strongly than it is put by the Committee in almost the first paragraph of their Report. I will therefore venture to quote those few words to the House, because I think they express very clearly what is the feeling in the country generally upon the subject. The Committee say— Your Committee are of opinion that these laws are unduly complex, that some of their provisions are unjust, the machinery by which 1046 they are administered cumbrous and defective, and their operation has been, and still is, a frequent cause of controversy fraught with deplorable consequences to the peace of the localities concerned. I do not think it would be possible to put-more strongly and concisely the defects in the provisions of these Acts, and those views are clearly shared by a number of people who have had experience in the working of the Acts. I should like to make it clear that this Bill deals only with burial grounds under the Burial Acts and the Public Health (Interments) Act. It does not affect churchyards in any way, nor does it refer in the slightest degree to cemeteries owned by companies and established under private Acts. The three most important questions with which it deals are those which were specially referred to the Committee, and which have no doubt caused the most friction in the administration of the law—namely, the consecration of burial grounds, the provision of chapels, and the fees which are payable to the different authorities. I will state as briefly as I can the effect of the provisions of this Bill, which carries out the recommendations of the Committee. With regard to consecration, the proposal which the Committee made, and which is carried out in this Bill, is that every local authority should have discretionary power to apply for the consecration of part of the cemetery, but if the local authority for any reason decline to, or do not, apply for the consecration of part of the cemetery, and a demand for consecrated ground is proved to be made by a reason able number of parishioners, then the Secretary of State has power to intervene and himself apply for consecration. As to the second point to which I alluded— the provision of chapels—the Committee recommended that in every cemetery the chapel or chapels which may be erected at the cost of the ratepayers should be unconsecrated and open to all, and, in addition to that, that a religious body, if they obtained the consent of the local authority, should have power to erect at their own cost a chapel for services according to the rites of their own body. If the local authority refuses its consent, then the Bill proposes that the Secretary of State might, if he thought fit, require the burial authority to erect or furnish or maintain such a chapel, or give the necessary facilities.
1047 The third point deals with the fees which should be paid, and under this head there is a clause of considerable length. I will not trouble your Lordships by stating all the details of the clause; but, generally speaking, the proposal is that in the future all ecclesiastical fees other than fees for services actually rendered should be abolished in cemeteries which are here-after to be provided by the local authority. The fees that are paid to incumbents already receiving them are continued for either fifteen years or the life of the incumbent, whichever period is the shorter. In addition to that there are regulations which lay down that the fees should be submitted to the Secretary of State for approval, and that in all cases the same amount should be demanded in respect of burial in consecrated as in unconsecrated ground. I do not presume to enter into an elaborate argument in favour of those particular proposals. I prefer to rely upon the fact that these are compromises which have been arranged, after very careful consideration, by representatives of both sides who have had full opportunity of knowing what the difficulties of the case are, and that they have been accepted, generally speaking, by both sides as a fair and reasonable arrangement. There are two other points I should like briefly to refer to. There was one recommendation in the Report of the Committee to the effect that the confusion which was caused by the two central authorities—the Local Government Board and the Homo Office—should be done away with, and that in future all these matters should be submitted to the Local Government Board. The Bill does not propose to carry out that recommendation precisely. What it proposes is that all those matters which concern finance, sanitary regulations, and questions of that sort, should be transferred from the Home Office to the Local Government Board, but that the Home Office should retain the management of what may be called ecclesiastical matters, such as the consecration of ground and the fees which are paid for ecclesiastical purposes. The Committee strongly recommend that in addition to an amendment of the law the Burial Acts should be consolidated, and anyone who has had the misfortune to have to study those Acts will agree that it would be very desirable that consolidation should take place. The Home Secretary, however, felt that if he 1048 introduced consolidation into a Bill which was proposing to make an important amendment in the law, it might place difficulties in the way of the passing of the Bill; but that if the Bill passed in its present form, it would pave the way for another Bill to consolidate the Burial Acts. The Home Secretary hopes, as we all do, that consolidation may take place, but it will be better done after this amendment of the law has been carried out. I hope I have said enough to induce your Lordships to give a favourable consideration to the Bill, and to allow it to be read a second time. I know that this is a subject in which a great many of your Lordships take a deep interest, and it is quite possible that there may be some individual Members of your Lordships' House who may not think that the particular proposals in the Bill are ideally the best. I will only ask them to recognise that this Bill is a compromise which has been arranged, as I have said, by a Committee representing both sides of the question, that the settlement arrived at has been accepted by the Government and endorsed by the other House of Parliament, and that if the Bill can pass into law in substantially the same form as it now assumes, there is every hope that those unhappy disputes and differences which have too frequently occurred, and which are especially painful when they take place at the side of the open grave, may in the future cease and harmony reign in their stead.

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
My Lords, I think the Government are very much to be congratulated on having succeeded in producing a Bill which certainly satisfies the great majority of those who are interested in the matter. I think this is a very fair and reasonable attempt to settle what is a very difficult matter; and though, of course, there will be difference of opinion here and there, I doubt very much indeed whether it would be possible to make a better arrangement than that which is put before us in this Bill. I shall probably place an Amendment on the Paper when the Bill gets into Committee, but my Amendment will not touch the principle of the Bill in the slightest degree. With the Bill, as a whole, I am entirely in agreement.

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK
I should like to add my congratulations to those of my brother Archbishop, and to especially compliment the Committee upon the successful issue to which they have brought their deliberations. No one who is familiar with the Burial Acts can doubt that there is an immediate necessity for some amendment. It used to be said that there was only one man in England who could understand the Burial Acts, and that he did not, owing to their being so extremely complicated. I think the Committee have arrived at a compromise which will satisfy all the persons concerned, and I can say, on behalf of those who sit on this Bench, that no hindrance will be offered to the passing of the Bill.

*THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER
My Lords, it seems to me desirable that we should, especially, perhaps, from this Bench, boar testimony to our sense of the spirit in which this matter has been approached by those who do not ordinarily approve of our ecclesiastical system, and who might, perhaps, be regarded as our opponents in a matter of this kind. To all of us who have followed this controversy, it will be at once apparent that there has been a genuine desire to arrive at a peaceful and harmonious settlement of the question. There are always some people who endeavour to keep a grievance open for the sake of its usefulness to the cause to which they belong, but there has, so far as I can see, been no such endeavour in this case. The difficulties were acute rather than widespread; but they were certainly real, and this Bill is a genuine and satisfactory endeavour to grapple with them.