HL Deb 06 July 1959 vol 217 cc730-6

3.6 p.m.

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS (THE EARL OF HOME)

My Lords, this must be one of the most agreeable Bills that it has ever fallen to the Leader of the House to move. I am privileged to invite your Lordships to-day to give a Second Reading to the Chevening Estate Bill which enshrines a most splendid gift to the nation from one of the nation's most distinguished sons. It is a gift splendid in itself and in the spirit in which it has been made.

Your Lordships will observe from reading the Bill that my noble friend Lord Stanhope seeks nothing at all, no smallest privilege, for himself by the terms of his generous offer. He endows after his own death Chevening House, with its beautiful pictures and furnishings and historic manuscripts, its gardens and parkland, for the use of the nation; and he endows with it the princely sum of £250,000. When he dies—your Lordships will trust that that may not happen for many a year—this Estate and its endowment will be free of death duties. So long as he lives my noble friend Lord Stanhope will remain, as he does now, in enjoyment of the property and will continue to pay full taxes on the estate and its endowment. It is only when the State inherits Chevening under the administration of the Trust provided in this Bill that the burden of taxation will be lifted. Therefore, I know your Lordships will all agree that no gift could be more generous or imaginative.

We are not concerned to-day with the Trust Deed which has already been executed and is reproduced in the annexe to the Bill, but it may be convenient if I mention its main features. The Trust provides that the house and estate and the Trust Fund shall be held first for the benefit of the Settlor during his lifetime; thereafter for the benefit of the Prime Minister, to be occupied by him as a country residence; or, if he so desires, the Prime Minister may nominate one of his Cabinet colleagues to occupy Chevening; or he may nominate certain members of the Royal Family, defined as the widow or any lineal descendant of His late Majesty King George VI or any spouse, widow or widower of such a descendant. At the present time this description would include Her Majesty The Queen, the Queen Mother, The Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Margaret, the Prince of Wales and Princess Anne.

My noble friend Lord Stanhope has been far-seeing and made provision if this Trust should fail—and this could happen if Chevening was not used by the Prime Minister, or by a person nominated by him, over a continuous period of six years, or if the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition together informed the Trustees that Chevening was no longer desired for this purpose. In that event, Chevening would be made available for the Canadian High Commissioner in the United Kingdom; or, failing him, for the United States Ambassador; and failing him, the property and Trust Fund would pass absolutely to the National Trust. While the Trust is operative for the benefit of the Prime Minister or the person he nominates, it will be administered by a body of Administrative Trustees. This will consist of the Lord Privy Seal, as chairman; two persons nominated by the Prime Minister; one person nominated by the Minister of Works, and also the Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, with power to co-opt.

My Lords, I do not think that the House would wish me to say any more about this Bill, or that I need say any more, except most cordially to recommend its acceptance to your Lordships. I would ask your Lordships to allow me, in the name of the House and of the country, to thank our most generous benefactor. It is a real pleasure to us to recall that, among Lord Stanhope's most distinguished achievements, by no means the least which is remembered by us, and I hope is remembered often by him, is the period when he led your Lordships' House from March, 1938, to May, 1940. Therefore, my Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.

Moved, That the Bill he now read 2a.—(The Earl of Home.)

3.12 p.m.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH

My Lords, I have been asked by my colleagues of the Opposition to support very cordially the Motion which the noble Earl has just moved from the other side of the House. It is a very pleasing duty. In all Parties in the State we have a high appreciation of the voluntary public service that men give to their country for the sole reason of so serving their country: and whatever criticisms may be made from time to time of policies on one side or the other, when it comes to the reckoning, long public service always endears an individual to Parliament and to the State. There are few records of such public service so varied and so prolonged as that of the noble Earl, Lord Stanhope. This gracious and generous gift which he is making, as explained in the Bill that we are debating, is perhaps—what shall I say?—a crowning act of public service to the nation; because it is not in any sense, as perhaps in the past some gifts may have been partially, for the obtaining of any special relief to himself or his family.

The other place has already dealt with this Bill in all its stages, and it has been notable, and has been pleasing to read, how all Parties accepted the Bill in that place, where fiscal questions are often matters which are raised upon private bequests of this sort, to make sure everything is all right. I was very struck by the fact that one of the most distinguished lawyers on the Opposition side, who said he had been into every little bit of this Bill, said that he had found it, if I may put it in summary form, really a model for any Bill of its kind in the future. It therefore seems to me to have received very hearty approval from all sides in the other place.

I should like to say, if I may, that I spent a considerable time myself in the Admiralty—nearly nine years—and that the noble Earl, Lord Stanhope, as Civil Lord, Parliamentary Secretary, and First Lord of the Admiralty, spent, altogether, nearly six years there; and I have from the days when I was there the most pleasant memories, personal memories, of the manner in which he served in that very great Department: not the least the kindness with which there was the memory of his late wife, Lady Eileen. On behalf of the Opposition, I should like to convey to the noble Earl, Lord Stanhope, our very great appreciation of this generous gift; and to hope that, in spite of the gift now having already been made and covered by Trustees to operate when the time comes, he will live to enjoy for a long time to come not only the life he has but the appreciation of the nation.

3.15 p.m.

LORD REA

My Lords, it is perhaps suitable and desirable that, in accordance with our political tradition (though this is in no sense a Party matter), I should officially join the third—and, at the moment of speaking, the smallest—Party in your Lordships' House in completing the unanimity which we all feel towards a great public benefactor and towards his gesture of deep generosity and of imaginative altruism which we have before us in this Bill.

Some years ago, but within the memory of many of your Lordships, one of the popular slogans of the Liberal Party, as the champions of democracy, was, "The land for the people". This was not, of course, popular with the Conservative Party: but it is indeed a full circle which brings us to-day to consider a most practical and most acceptable implementation of that Radical effusion by such an eminent, respected and admired Member of your Lordships' House, who has himself been so many jewels in the crown of the Tory Party, whenever that Party has worn a crown, From these Benches we support the Bill with cordiality, but also with a very serious sensibility of the gratitude which this country owes to the noble Earl.

With those words, may I couple something which I hope the noble Earl will forgive: that is, that although we on this side of the House are supposed to be of Radical tendencies, anybody with a sense of political history and tradition will be extremely sad that the great Earldoms of Chesterfield and Stanhope, which are now united, exist for the last time in the person of our most respected colleague whose generosity we now praise.

THE EARL OF SWINTON

May I, as an old colleague and a much older friend—a childhood friend—of the noble Earl, Lord Stanhope, join in the tributes which have been paid in gratitude for this unique gift? I say "unique", an adjective which is often misused, because I think Chevening is indeed unique. It is not only its extraordinary beauty—and any of your Lordships who know it will, I think, agree that probably neither in this country nor in any other is there a park that, if it can equal, can surpass, the beauty of Chevening. Lord Rosebery rightly called it "Paradise".

Long before Chevening became a haven of refuge for successive Prime Ministers of all Party colours it had been, in a peculiar sense, a part of England. The Pilgrims' Way meanders along the top of Chevening Park. I much regret, in reminiscence, to inform the noble Lord the Leader of the Liberal Party that it was the most Radical Earl, "Citizen Stanhope," who diverted the Pilgrims' Way in order to enlarge his park—a diversion which has since been altered and made good by the present wicked Tory Earl.

My Lords, I have known Chevening for many years. I have never met a ghost at Chevening, but I think that probably the happy ghosts of Prime Ministers come back to Chevening to revisit their earthly paradise. It may be that, in the future, the ghost of Lord Chesterfield will look over the shoulder of the young son of some Prime Minister of the future as he reads Lord Chesterfield's letters in the original (they are all there) and learns from those letters knowledge of the world, courtesy, and, not least, a caligraphy which schoolboys had better learn in modern times, and which equals that of the Lord Great Chamberlain himself. We are all grateful. Lord Stanhope has no heir; but he will live very long in the memory of posterity for he has made all England his heir.

3.21 p.m.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, as an old Leader of the House, may I add a few words to the tributes that have already been paid to my noble friend Lord Stanhope? As has already been said by the noble Earl, Lord Home, we meet to-day to confirm and give effect to one of the noblest gifts chat has ever, I suppose, been made to this nation. It is no doubt a platitude to say that we live in an age of change, but though in many ways it is an age of change—and we are all glad of it—we must sadly record that it is also in some ways an age of decay; and in particular is this true of the great houses of this country, those houses which, as your Lordships know, grew up over the course of centuries as memorials of a particularly intimate kind, of a certain facet of the British way of life, over some of the most important periods of our history.

They depend for their charm not only on their architectural beauty, though this is often remarkable, but even more on their contents, the collections that have been accumulated over centuries by the families that own them. It is this which has given them their especial life and charm. Unhappily, under the influence of heavy taxation, as your Lordships know, in many of these houses the contents are being rapidly dissipated, and with them the lifeblood of the houses is slowly but surely being drained away. I am not saying that this is avoidable. It may be that they are out of the spirit of the time and they could not hope to survive—that they are what I might call casualties of progress. But it is something which is sad in itself and I believe a loss to the country. But, at any rate, here we have a glowing exception.

Chevening is one of the most renowned of our great houses, renowned for its architectural beauty, renowned for its historic associations and renowned for the glory of its contents. Now, by the supreme generosity of the noble Earl, Lord Stanhope, it is preserved complete and intact, both as a living memorial to the glories of the past and as a place where, we may hope, plans can be worked out for an equally glorious future. In that sense I feel that it is a particularly appropriate and imaginative gift.

England is an evolutionary country and, as an evolutionary country, as I see it, is like a tree with its roots in the past and its branches stretching up into the future. Chevening, I hope and think, will be the epitome of that spirit, transmitting to the future the spirit that has always actuated is past. I should like, therefore, if I may, to join with those who have already spoken in thanking my old friend Lord Stanhope for this most splendid and imaginative gift. It adds one more to the many debts which are owed to him both by your Lordships' House and by the country as a whole.

On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

3.25 p.m.