HL Deb 15 December 1919 vol 38 cc15-21

Clause 1, page 2, lines 5 and 6, leave out ("by His Majesty's Command")

Clause 1, page 2, line 16, leave out ("of His Majesty's Privy Council")

Clause 2, page 2, lines 22 and 23, leave out ("His Majesty's Privy Council") and insert ("members of both Houses of Parliament")

Clause 2, page 2, lines 23 and 24, leave out ("of the Privy Council")

Clause 2, page 2, line 25, leave out from ("of") to the end of subsection (2) and insert ("fifteen members of the House of Lords nominated by the Lord Chancellor and fifteen members of the House of Commons nominated by the Speaker of the House of Commons to be appointed on the passing of this Act to serve for the duration of the present Parliament and thereafter to be appointed at the commencement of each Parliament to serve for the duration of that Parliament. Any casual vacancy occurring by the reason of the death, resignation or incapacity of a member of the Ecclesiastical Committee shall be filled by the nomination of a member by the Lord Chancellor or the Speaker of the House of Commons, as the case may be")

Clause 2, page 2, line 30, at end insert ("and the Committee shall be entitled to sit and to transact business whether Parliament be sitting or not, and notwithstanding a vacancy in the membership of the Committee. Subject to the provisions of this Act, the Ecclesiastical Committee may regulate its own procedure").

Clause 3, page 3, line 5, leave out ("His Majesty") and insert ("Parliament")

Clause 3, page 3, line 6, leave out ("their") and insert ("its")

Clause 3, page 3, line 7, leave out ("its") and insert ("the") and after ("expediency") insert ("thereof")

Clause 3, page 3, line 11, leave out ("His Majesty") and insert ("Parliament")

Clause 3, page 3, line 14, leave out ("His Majesty") and insert ("Parliament")

Clause 3, page 3, line 20, leave out ("passed in accordance with this Act")

Clause 3, page 3, line 23, at end insert ("Provided that a measure shall not make any alteration in the composition or powers or duties of the Ecclesiastical Committee, or in the procedure in Parliament prescribed by section four of this Act")

Clause 3, page 3, line 23, after subsection (6) insert as a new subsection: (7) No proceedings of the Church Assembly in relation to a. measure shall be invalidated by any vacancy in the membership of the Church Assembly or by any defect in the qualification or election of any member thereof.

Clause 4, page 3, line 25, leave out ("His Majesty") and insert ("Parliament")

Clause 4, page 3, lines 29 and 30, leave out ("an address from") and insert ("a resolution being passed by")

Clause 4, page 3, line 30, leave out ("asking") and insert ("directing"), and after ("measure") insert ("in the form laid before Parliament")

Clause 4, page 3, line 34, at end insert ("Provided that if upon a measure being laid before Parliament, the Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords and the Chairman of Ways and Means in the House of Commons acting in consultation, shall be of opinion that the measure deals with two or more different subjects whch might be more properly divided, they may, by joint agreement, divide the measure into two or more separate measures accordingly, and thereupon this section shall have effect as if each of the measures resulting from such division had been laid before Parliament as a separate measure")

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

My Lords, I rise to ask your Lordships to concur in the Amendments which have been introduced by the House of Commons to what we have called, popularly, the Enabling Bill. The Amendments tend in the direction of strengthening and giving effect to certain criticisms which found expression in this House. Three of the changes are of substantial importance. In place of the Privy Council Committee, which was criticised and to which exception was taken, the Commons substituted a Committee of both Houses of Parliament nominated by the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker. By another Amendment a further limitation is placed upon the powers which could be exercised under the Act in the direction of amending its procedure. In the third place, a clause is inserted to make impossible any action which might conceivably amount to what is called "tacking." All these are in the direction desired by critics in this House, and I invite your Lordships to concur in what is now proposed.

When I introduced the Bill last June I ventured to express the hope that we might see it pass through Parliament this session. That hope was courteously derided by some of my friends as fantastic. I had more confidence than they in the willingness of Parliament to look fairly upon a reasonable proposal which, while retaining such Parliamentary control as is required, would enable administrative changes, many of them imperatively needed and long overdue, to be carried into effect. I then clearly expressed the wish of the Church's Representative body. Parliament has accepted that view, and now if your Lordships agree to these Amendments we may hope for the Royal Assent within a few days. I am grateful to those both here and in the House of Commons who, though their attitude was one of criticism and in some cases one even of apprehension, yet realised the need of such a measure as this and couched their criticism and their Amendments in such a form that we were able for the most part to accept and even to welcome them. I hope, nay I am sure, that what we have done in accepting Amendments has gone a long way towards relieving the fears that were expressed.

If it be still supposed by any that the Bill when it stands on the Statute Book will tend to impair the national character of the Church of England, to narrow its comprehensiveness, or to harm its freedom, there are two things which I desire to say First, if I believed that any one of those consequences would arise I should never have made myself in any way responsible for this measure. I believe the very opposite to be the case. In the next place, my Lords, the effect of the Act must depend largely upon how its provisions are handled in early days in the Church Assembly and elsewhere. Speaking not for myself only but I am sure for others associated with me in promoting this measure and in accepting Amendments, I can say without reserve that we expect to be able to secure such reasonable handling of the new powers given to our Church Assembly—and remember, my Lords, that these powers are definitely and in set terms limited by the will of Parliament in each individual case of their exercise—as to render impossible the mischief which a few of our friends, I fancy, continue to fear. I ask of my friends on the other side a little patience and an avoidance of exaggerated and inflated hopes and fears.

Your Lordships may have noticed with satisfaction, as I have, that the most vigorous and persistent of the critics of this Bill, the Bishop of Hereford, has with characteristic public spirit declared his intention, when once the Bill is upon the Statute Book, to give us his powerful aid in making it work thoroughly satisfactorily. That position will, I am sure, be taken by others who may have doubted the wisdom of our acts. My Lords, it will necessarily take time to get the new plan into full and active operation, but my own belief is that within a very few years every one who cares about the matter will agree that this measure has provided a wise, reasonable and workable plan to the advantage both of Church and State, and to strengthen in its truest sense and in accordance with modern conditions the national character of the Church of England. I ask your Lordships to agree to the Commons Amendments.

Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.)

VISCOUNT HALDANE

My Lords, I do not rise to offer opposition to the Motion which the most rev. Primate has made, nor to delay your Lordships for more than two or three minutes. It is true that the Bill has been improved in form, and for the Ecclesiastical Committee of the Privy Council there has been substituted a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament. That is a relief to those who were concerned at the introduction of what threatened to be a new body of advisers of the Crown. So far, that has gone. For the rest the Bill stands very much where it did, and the effect of it is briefly this—that the Church will be able to set in motion much more easily than before, and with much less control by Parliament, the reform of its own affairs.

If that were all, I should be, as I said on speaking on the Second Reading in this House, very much in sympathy with the Church. I think it needed such a measure, and, as I said at the time, those of us who took that view were very to have concurred in a Bill limited to the provision of such machinery. But, my Lords, there is another aspect of the question on which the most rev. Primate touched only very slightly. What is the body, what is the Church that is to set these powers in motion? A Church which will be very different from the Church as it was before this Bill received the Royal Assent and the new machinery came into operation. The assembly which is set up will be, unlike the present Church of England, not an assembly of the nation at large, not the Church of the nation at large, but the Church of a fragment of that nation.

I use those words advisedly. I have been a student of these things for long. Some of your Lordships thought that I spoke as a Presbyterian. I am not a Presbyterian, any more than I am an Anglican. I am one of those who look upon these things with the deepest interest, and have given much thought to them in days gone by; and what I wish to say is this, that in setting up, in place of the Church of England as it was, a body which will be the controlling influence in the Church, which is subject to a test, and which will consist of a very small section of those who hitherto have been regarded by the Constitution as members of that Church of England, or at least as coming under its roof, you have made a very great change.

I am far from thinking that it is a bad thing to set up a body of this kind. On the contrary, I have had intimate friends in almost every denomination of religion in this country, and I have watched what earnest-minded men can do and how infinitely better they are at their own particular work and in their own particular sphere than any body extended by the State so as to include everybody at large. I have no doubt that the work of the earnest-minded men who have sought to bring about the passage of this Bill, and who have sought to bring about that passage for the accomplishment of great spiritual reforms, will bring to them those justifications among their own people which they have to offer, and I entirely sympathise with the view of those who look upon it as really a question of earnestness so far as this question is concerned.

What I am moved by is this. Hitherto the Church has had bulwarks; it has been a great body co-extensive with the nation, and it has had the defence of many people who were not committed to the details of its doctrines but who yet looked upon it as a valuable influence. These included, as I pointed out on the Second Reading, men of the very highest intellectual eminence, men who thought that it was a good thing that the State should at least recognise great spiritual ideas, and who saw in the Church a means of defending those ideas. Many of these men, a great number, will be shut out by this Bill, far more than you think or realise. The Church now stands by itself as the Church of those who hold certain definite doctrines, and, in making themselves effective members of that Church, have submitted to a test. You will find, if I am not wrong, that a very large number of people will move away from the Church and will not accept it. The Church of to-morrow will be a very different institution from the Church of to-day, and, if that is so, however much better it may be in the quality of the smaller body of which it will in future consist, what is the position to which this measure brings it? It brings it into a position in which no Established Church has ever been able to maintain itself as an Establishment. On the new basis the Church will tend, not to-day, not to-morrow, not perhaps for some time, but inevitably under these great intellectual forces which after all control the currents of opinion in the long run in a community like ours, to be the Church of those who hold these definite opinions, to the exclusion of those who cannot accept them.

The most rev. Primate, notwithstanding what he said at the end of his speech, has initiated a new movement. It is quite true that the Bishop of Hereford, in the letter which he wrote to The Times of this morning, has said that he will support the Bill and make it work. That is what one would expect from the right rev. Prelate; all those who know him would expect him to say that. But he also pointed out in his letter another thing, and that was that the real gravaman of the case against this Bill was that it did much more than give the Church control of its own affairs; it altered the nature of the Church. That has been done, and a current has been set moving which, in the long run I think, will lead to the Disestablishment of the Church. In the end that may not be a bad thing. It is not a matter which, so far as I am concerned, will take away anything from the vitality of what remains. But it is a great and far-reaching change, and I do not think it is a change which many of those who supported the Bill had in their minds when they gave their vote in support of it. That is all I wish to say.

LORD PARMOOR

My Lords, I should like to say a few words in answer to what has been said by the noble Viscount, and I will try to say it very shortly indeed. So far as the spiritual, and, indeed, any life of the Church is concerned, neither this nor any other Act of Parliament can affect it in any way. On the second point to which he referred, I think the noble Viscount did not bear in mind the fact of the very large support which the Non- conformist communities have given to this Bill. I look upon that as a very important factor as regards the growing friendship between the Anglican Church and the Nonconformist communities; and also I should like to express in public as a member of the Anglican Chinch how grateful we are for the genuine support Which was given us in the conduct of this Bill, recognising, in the words of his Grace the Archbishop, that it would enable us to have a larger spiritual life and do more for the spiritual progress of our country than is possible under present conditions.

There is one other matter on which I think the noble and learned Viscount hardly appreciates how the work of the Church of England is really carried out. If he did I am sure he would come to the conclusion that the effect of this Bill is not to narrow but immensely to broaden the basis on which the Church will practically operate, in the future, and for this reason. I yield to no one in my veneration for the four Houses of Convocation, but it has been felt for a long time that, so far as the laymen are concerned—who, after all, have a great interest and a Tight to express their opinion on Church questions—there was no adequate representation under existing conditions. We were merely members of a voluntary body which was in its nature and character too much like a debating society. The effect of this Bill is to give the layman a real, true, and substantial voice in the National Church Assembly. I feel certain that every one who has watched the development of the Church of England during recent years and who has realised the growing desire of the Church layman to become an effective power in the spiritual life of their Church will feel not only that this Bill has not narrowed the basis of our Church work but lots given an inducement to laymen which is of the greatest importance, and will lead them to give greater support and greater loyalty to Church work than at any time in the past.

On Question, Commons Amendments agreed to.