PARSONAGES BILL. [H.L.] (Hansard, 22 June 1910)

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

My Lords, I shall not detain your Lordships many moments in saying a word or two about a Bill which is extremely technical—so technical that if any one of your Lordships by reading it is able to know exactly what the changes are that it will effect I shall congratulate him on his knowledge of ecclesiastical procedure and ecclesiastical law. I think I can explain the Bill in a few sentences, and then trust your Lordships to find that the words which set out the meaning of it in necessarily extremely technical language correspond with my explanation. It is a small change that is desired to be effected, and a change which can by no possibility, as it seems to me, do harm to anybody.

The facts are simply these. At this moment, when property belonging to an ecclesiastical benefice is sold, through the medium of the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty, whether it be the house, or land, or anything else belonging to the benefice, the money so received is placed in the hands of the Governors, who hold it as trustees. That, of course, is to prevent the incumbent for the time being from making use of the money so received instead of allowing it to be used for the benefit of the benefice. The Acts which allow the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty to hold money in that way belong to different dates and deal with different kinds of property, and in consequence a certain irregularity or confusion has arisen. By the existing law or laws as they stand, if an incumbent sells a farm belonging to his benefice for, say, £100, that money is placed in the hands of the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty, who hold it for the benefit of the living and pay the incumbent a proper interest on that money as part of their general property. If, however, he happens to sell the house of the benefice, by a curious accident in the Acts which provide for it that investment is not allowed to become part of the properties held in trust by the Governors as a whole, but must be separately invested, and by the present Order, dated many, many years ago, must be invested in Consols. 954 The result is that the incumbent takes the risk of a rise, or fall in Consols, and the Governors have the inconvenience of holding different investments. What we ask in the first part of this Bill is merely that the Governors may have power to add the money which is derived from the sale of a house to the money which is held for the benefit of that living and which is derived from any other source. That is the object of the first part of the Bill.

The second point is this. When a house is sold, as matters now stand even if for a time the incumbent be houseless, the interest on the capital sum received—which is sometimes very large, many of the houses disposed of being sold because they are too big—is not allowed to be used for housing him pending the provision of a new house, and the man is not only houseless but is unable to obtain the money to provide quarters elsewhere pending the provision of another house. I could give your Lordships many instances of the difficulties which have arisen in towns, and sometimes harm has come from a man's being unable to tide over that temporary time of inconvenience, and in many cases the sale of an inconvenient house has been prevented in consequence of this provision. Again we leave to the Governors discretion to allow the income of that money to be used, pending the provision of a new house, for the housing of the houseless man.

The third point in the Bill is a small technical one. If a vicarage house is sold upon which a loan exists—that is to say, upon which there is still money owing which has been borrowed for the improvement or for the repair of that house—the loan must, by the existing law, be allowed to run, and is not allowed to be paid off. Consequently there is great confusion of accounts, and great difficulty both to the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty and to the incumbent. The points raised in this Bill have been at least once previously before your Lordships' House, and have passed without question. The matter has been most carefully considered by a committee of Queen Anne's Bounty who went into all the technicalities, and there is, so far as I am aware, no difference of opinion on the subject among those best informed. I ask your Lordships in these circumstances to give the Bill a Second Reading.