§ LORD PARMOOR rose to ask His Majesty's Government—(1) What is the ratio to parity of the tithe rentcharge as ascertained under the Act of 1925, and what would have been the ratio if that Act had not been passed? (2) To what extent has this change of ratio affected the amount of tithe rentcharge payable to the clerical tithe owners? and to move for Papers.
§ The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, I have to thank the noble Earl who represents the Ministry of Agriculture in this House for his courtesy in supplying me with the information which I was asking for in public in my Question, following the admirable example, if I may say so, set by Lord Bledisloe last year. Last year Lord Bledisloe told us that the effect of the 1925 Act was to reduce the amount payable to clerical tithe owners by the sum of £584,000 a year for the particular year, which was 1926. Of course that is a very large sum indeed out of a hard-working and very poor section of the community, who as incumbents are dependent upon the returns from tithes—not entirely, but almost entirely. It eventuated in this, and as I think the figures that I gave have not been questioned, I will merely state them again. Whereas under the old conditions an incumbent would have received £375 a year if those conditions had been left alone, he is now receiving £300, which, of course, is an enormous difference, and in the same way an incumbent who might have expected to receive £500 if his interests had been left unaltered now only receives a sum of £400 a year. For a very poor class in the community it is impossible to exaggerate the loss when we compare figures of that kind.
§ The figure supplied by the noble Earl, for which I gratefully thank him, is this: 767 He says that in 1927 the loss was larger—namely, £610,902. That, of course, exaggerates the misfortune to this poor section of the community to which I have referred. I am only bringing this matter again before your Lordships because I have had a very large number of letters from poor incumbents who are quite unable to voice their own views, and not in a position, of course, to bring this matter before either House of Parliament. There were only two suggestions made last year in any way justifying this great loss to the poor incumbents. One was that at the same time as the 1925 Act was passed, dealing with tithe, certain remissions in the form of rates were given to the Incumbents. I am not quite sure whether Lord Bledisloe, in the statistics which he gave, included both town and country, but I do not think that is material, because Lord Bledisloe himself assented in the further discussion last year that it is no reason for depriving a man of income to which otherwise he would be entitled, that you put his rating on a just foundation by some proper rating reform.
§ No one knows better than the noble Earl or his predecessor that this question of the rating of incumbents has always been a matter of considerable dispute. On the one hand no one wanted them to pay more than was right, and there were various suggestions made before the Royal Commission that only a fair charge should be made. It would certainly be a curious argument, when we come to the question of rating reform, that the reform of rating should be any reason for confiscating proprietory rights which otherwise would be regarded as wholly secure. Of course there can be no greater right, secured by immemorial custom and by legislation, than the rights of incumbents to stipends derived from tithe rentcharge. It is impossible to imagine a more highly secured property than that in the settled expectation that they would be entitled to the statutory rights which had been granted to them in confirmation of an immemorial custom, first dealt with in 1782, which at any rate is a respectable and historical distance from the present time. The other suggestion was as regards some division between the incumbent and the landowner, so that the landowner would not be called upon to pay what appears prima 768 jacie to be a very high ratio. The ratio given to me by the noble Earl is £135, if the Act of 1925 had not been passed. I do not think that that really is such a high ratio as is sometimes suggested. I think, as Lord Bledisloe told us last year, that if you took all the years from 1836 up to the year before the War the ratio would be about £98 to £100. I am not sure whether the noble Earl gave me that information, but I think it is the fact.
§ LORD PARMOORWhether it is £92 or £98 to £100 does not very much matter. When we talk about a high ratio like £135, if you take the index conditions, as regards the commodities concerned, between pre-War and post-War times, I do not think that £135 means in truth and in substance any increase of the advantages which the tithe owner derived at one time as against the other. I do not think, in other words, that £135 after the War gave better conditions for a poor man as regards his living, the education of his children, and matters of that kind, than £100 or so would have done in pre-War times. But whether that is so or not again appears to me to be immaterial. No one, I think, spoke more often on this subject that the late Lord Salisbury, a man of ripe judgment and knowledge if there ever was a statesman of ripe judgment and knowledge in this country, and he stated on several occasions—of course with perfect accuracy—that the tithe was not a question between the tithe payer and the tithe owner, that the tithe was in its nature public property, no doubt invested from long periods in the past and by immemorial custom and legislation with a trust to use for religious purposes, but if you altered tithe and took it away from those religious purposes it did not enure to the benefit of the owner, it enured entirely for the public benefit.
That has been the course pursued whenever tithe has been touched on all recent occasions. In the case of the disestablishment in Ireland the tithe was not transferred from the tithe owner to the landowner as tithe payer, it became part of the public funds to be used for public purposes. Exactly the same thing 769 was done in the case of the disestablishment of the Church in Wales. There were eight public purposes, I think, to which the tithe was devoted. But if you take away the tithe altogether from its religious use in favour of the incumbent the advantage of that ought not to enure to the landowner at all, but it ought to become a common public benefit.
Just let me apply to that the special hardship of existing conditions. I am sure I do not know how they can be modified at the present time, or what can be done, but I will state the case of an existing incumbent in 1925. That existing incumbent then had the security of tithe under the conditions of existing legislation. If it had been a question of disestablishment, which is the greatest possible interference with tithe, the principle universally followed has been either that he shall retain the advantage of the emolument to which he is entitled at the time of change until his death, or, in the result, he shall have compensation calculated on an ordinary actuarial basis. I should not like to press the noble Earl on this point, or to cross-examine him too much on it, but I have searched for any case where a settled Parliamentary title has been interfered with after it has been acquired either without the ordinary settled form of actuarial calculation or preserving the benefits of the Parliamentary guarantee during the life of the person then entitled to it.
I do not want, in reference to the question of compensation, to make a complaint about that. I have been charged with being in favour of confiscation, in spite of every protest to the contrary. But it has always appeared to me that this Act, passed by a Conservative Government in 1925, was a notorious case of unfair treatment of an existing property in the hands of an exceedingly poor class, who are not in a position to protect their rights and interests. Some day or other I am afraid that a precedent of this kind may be extended in an unworthy way. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Bledisloe, felt this point, because he expressed it once or twice. The answer was: "We are dealing with the matter at large and therefore we must take things on a new basis." But that is no answer to the point I am making, because if that is so you might take land for any 770 public purpose and say: "We are going to deal with it for public purposes and therefore the question of individual compensation does not arise." It always arises, and the reason why I am pressing the point is this, that these men are men who are only able to live at all with great difficulty and are really deprived of the ordinary advantages to which men in their position would be entitled, particularly as regards the education of their children.
When this matter was last discussed I made some complaints of the new method of collection by Queen Anne's Bounty. I make no complaint of that kind now. I want to make that quite clear. I notice that the most rev. Primate is not present, but he told us on that occasion in answer to my complaint that he, as the head of Queen Anne's Bounty, would do all he could to see that the collection of tithe by Queen Anne's Bounty was properly and fairly carried out, so as not to harm the various incumbents concerned. Since that date I have had no complaint whatever on that head, and if the most rev. Primate had been here I should have thanked him for having carried out, as far as I know very successfully, the promise he made that there should be no delay in the collection of tithe, which, in the case of people like poor incumbents, imposes very harsh difficulties upon them.
I do not know whether the noble Earl has considered this at all. Of course, tithe rentcharge affects different lands in very different ways. Where I know it best it is a field tithe rentcharge, and approximately at par if we were taking the gold stabilisation doctrine, it would be about 3s. or 4s. an acre. But there are other lands of which I am perfectly cognisant where the tithe is quite nominal—quite nominal for this reason, that there have been recent enclosures, and, instead of the tithe being normally fixed, as the old tithes were in this part of the country, on fields, when the enclosures were granted certain lands were appropriated in lieu of tithe for the benefit of the incumbents of the particular parishes. Of course, in other cases we know tithe has been redeemed. But that is really not the question which I want to bring forward; it is the question of hardship. I have had very heart-rending illustrations brought to my notice. A 771 man who was hoping for 25 per cent. increase in his income, who suddenly found that he was deprived of it, is in a position to have the sympathy of everybody. I certainly do not want to reopen the whole question of the Act of 1925, which was very ably discussed by the noble Lord, Lord Clinton, at the time, as well as by the noble Lord, Lord Bledisloe, but if there is any error in what I have stated or in the information which I have quoted I hope the noble Earl will point it out. I beg to move.
THE EARL OF STRADBROKEMy Lords, the noble and learned Lord has asked for certain figures. He has referred to the fact that he raised a somewhat similar question in July, 1927, when the ground was gone over. The only thing I can do, I think, is to make these answers to the noble and learned Lord's Questions: In reply to the first, the ratio to parity of tithe rentcharge under the Act of 1925 is £105. If the Act had not been passed, the value for 1928 would have been £135 3s. 0¾d.; that is to say, the annual value of tithe rentcharge would, under the Act of 1918, have been based on the average price of British corn for the preceding fifteen years. The par value of tithe rentcharge previously attached to benefices was £2,026,000. The stabilised value under the Tithe Act of 1925 was £2,127,300, and the value for 1928, if the Act of 1925 had not been passed, was £2,738,202. The answer to the second Question of the noble Lord is £610,902 gross. The noble Lord contended that the clergy have been deprived of a large sum of money as the result of the Act of 1925; but the noble Lord did not, I think, quite bring out the benefit that the clergy had received by the large amount of permanent rate relief. The noble Lord referred to it, but your Lordships may not realise how great that relief has been. The Ecclesiastical Rates Acts of 1920 and 1922 would have expired at the end of 1925 and incumbents would then have reverted to the position which obtained from 1899 to 1920; that is to say, they would have had to pay on their tithe rentcharge half rates in respect of the general rates and a quarter of any special expenses rates. Under the Act of 1899 the payment was reduced to half rates, and the Act of 1920 relieved of all rates all those whose incomes were under £300; while those incumbents whose 772 tithes amounted to between £300 and £500 paid only quarter rates, and those who received over £500 a year paid half rates. I have ascertained that the average general rate in 1927–8 is 11s. 7d. in the £, and the average special expenses rate is 10d. in the £, making a total of 12s. 5d. in the £ It may be estimated, therefore, that the rates payable on tithe rentcharge of a varied annual value of £2,738,202 would have been approximately £465,000.
§ LORD PARMOORIs that town and country?
THE EARL OF STRADBROKEThat is taking them all, I think—whereas the amount payable for all rates under the Act of 1925 on the basis of 5 per cent. of the par value is approximately £101,000. Therefore, I would point out that the clerical tithe owners are relieved of something like £364,000 a year in rates. Then, again, there is the great advantage an incumbent has of having a stabilised value of £105 per cent. free of rates for his rentcharge, and this is to continue for 84 years no matter to what figure corn prices may fall. I think it is a very great advantage to the clergy generally that they have that assured income to rely upon.
I need hardly remind your Lordships that the stabilisation of tithe rentcharge was fixed by the Act of 1925 after very long and careful debates in both Houses, and all the considerations advanced by the noble and learned Lord to-day were then considered. Parliament, however, was satisfied that the arrangement made was a fair one. I am sure the clergy would not like to be regarded as benefiting by the abnormal prices that obtained during the War years, which were entirely a consequence of the War. It would be a very difficult thing indeed to collect the large rate of £135 in these days when the price of corn is falling. It is very much lower than it was. It may be that for a few years after 1925 the clergy will suffer some loss on their tithe rentcharge because they have lost the benefit of the abnormal prices prevailing in the years 1915–1921. On the other hand, they have the great relief of feeling that they will be unaffected by further fluctuations and that they are assured of a fixed income.
It would be better, perhaps, that I should not go into the noble and learned 773 Lord's arguments because they have all been dealt with by the Act of 1925. But we all realise, I think, that that Act was a compromise between the two parties. The matters were all gone into and this compromise was arrived at, and, like nearly all compromises, I suppose it is not altogether popular with either party. Each thinks that he has given up too much. If, however, the clergy feel that they have any grievance, it must be remembered that some of the landowners feel that they have been asked to pay too much. The noble and learned Lord considered that £135 gave a clergyman no better position now than the £100 he received some years ago gave him. That may be true; but I would also point out that it would be far more difficult for a landowner to find £135 now than it was thirty years ago. These, briefly, are the answers which I caused to be prepared to the noble and learned Lord's Questions, and I hope he will be satisfied with the figures I have put before him.
§ LORD PARMOORMy Lords, I am very much obliged to the noble Earl for his very clear answer. So far as the figures are concerned, those I quoted, which he gave me, are the same as those he has quoted. That, obviously, would be so. There are only two points I should like to mention. First of all, the 1899 rating scheme as applied to incumbents was only provisional, as the noble Earl will recollect. It was brought out by the Royal commission which was then sitting as a provisional scheme until a 774 scheme of more general application could be settled. The fact that in 1920—I am sorry it went on so long—a more permanent, and in my opinion a more just and undoubtedly a more fair scheme was adjusted and accepted, is really no reason why the income of the persons affected should be reduced in the manner in which it has been reduced. It is only right that people should pay rates on a fair basis, but I do not think that ought to be set off as against the loss to which I have referred. The noble Earl said quite frankly that as far as he knew the actual figure was based on rates in town and country. The town rates really do not affect the question, though the country rates no doubt may be said to do so, with the limitation that the noble Earl suggested. I certainly would not ask the noble Earl to argue further. As regards the last point, that existing interests were not safeguarded, I do not think it is possible to give an answer to that. No answer has ever been given. At the same time I thank the noble Earl for his great kindness in sending me the figures and for the clearness of the answer he has given. I beg to withdraw my Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.