§ 5.15 p.m.
§ THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY moved to resolve, That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919, this House do direct that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (Curate Grants) Measure, 1946, be presented to His Majesty for the Royal Assent. The most reverend Primate said: My Lords, the three Motions which are down to my name will, I hope, detain your Lordships for only a very brief while, but it is showing the proper respect to the House for me to acquaint you, as briefly as I can, with the contents of these Measures which are recommended to this House by the Ecclesiastical Committee.
§ The first Measure is entitled the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (Curate Grants) Measure. The facts are these. Under the original Act of 1840, the Commissioners have constantly made grants of money to assistant curates and lay workers and others charged with the cure of souls. Those grants have been made hitherto to named benefices and for specified curacies and have been in the nature of permanent grants. The object of this Measure is to enable the Commissioners to establish a revised system of making these grants under which they will assign to each diocese a block grant and leave that diocese itself to determine to what parishes the grant shall be made. The principle of diocesan administration is now firmly established. If you go back into the early days of the Commissioners, a diocese had no machinery for administering financial matters of this kind. Now, in every diocese, there are Diocesan Boards of Finance fully qualified, and it is generally accepted that it is a move in the right direction to decentralize in this manner 141 and give to the diocese the chance to decide where the money is most needed. In order to carry that through there has to be statutory authority for the Commissioners, first, to make these block grants to dioceses, and secondly, to determine those semi-permanent grants which they have made in the long past. Those grants were made in conditions which had very often long ceased to exist and in any case they are oral-directed, and the time has fully come when they ought to be revised on any ground. By this Measure those permanent grants are, after seven months' notice, cancelled and the new system is authorized by which, as I say, the Commissioners make block grants to dioceses to administer the money under conditions laid down by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. The Measure passed in Assembly without a division and without amendment and comes to you recommended by the Ecclesiastical Committee. I beg to move.
§ Moved to resolve, That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919, this House do direct that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (Curate Grants) Measure, 1946, be presented to His Majesty for the Royal Assent.—(The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.)
§ On Question, Motion agreed to.