§ THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. EDMUNDSBURY AND IPSWICH moved to resolve, That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919, this House do direct that the Parsonages Measure, 1938, be presented to His Majesty for the Royal Assent. The right reverend Prelate said: My Lords, I have to move in place of the noble Earl, Lord Grey, who is unable to be present, the Resolution of which he has given Notice, in reference to the two Measures on the Order Paper, that they be presented to His Majesty for the Royal Assent. The first is the Parsonages Measure, and on that I need not detain your Lordships more than a minute or two. It is in the main a Measure to consolidate the law with respect to the sale and purchase of and alteration of parsonage houses, the land adjacent to them, their drainage and other matters relating to them, but it contains also a few amendments of the law which are entirely of a domestic character, designed, as the result of experience, to make more definite in a few cases the provision of the law and in other cases to make the procedure run more smoothly. The Measure is to a certain extent a consolidated Measure. It consolidates the old Parsonages Measure, and the few amendments which have been made have been thoroughly discussed in the Church Assembly for a considerable 133 period, and I think were agreed to unanimously. It has the support of the Ecclesiastical Committee, which says, in the same words as the most reverend Primate used just now, that it is expedient that the Measure should pass, as no constitutional rights of any of His Majesty's subjects are affected.
§ Moved to resolve, That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919, this House do direct that the Parsonages Measure, 1938, be presented to His Majesty for the Royal Assent.—(The Lord Bishop of St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich.)
§ On Question, Motion agreed to.