SAINT PETER'S CHURCH, NOTTINGHAM, CHURCHYARD BILL [H.L.] (Hansard, 14 February 1962)

THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD MERTHYR)
My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Your Lordships will remember that when I moved the Second Reading of the Independent Chapel Mawdsley Street Bolton Bill last week, I made a statement under Standing Order 91 in which I mentioned this Bill as containing provisions dealing with the disposal and development of graveyards. Several of your Lord ships, I know, are interested in Bills containing these provisions, but I suggest that it would be for the convenience of the House if any comments on these Bills could be postponed until the resumed Second Reading debate on the Bolton Bill, when the question can be thoroughly gone into. At the moment, no date has been fixed for the debate, but I will put it down on the Order Paper as soon as conveniently possible.

LORD FARINGDON
My Lords, I should like to thank the Lord Chairman for his statement, and for his offer of a debate. As he has said, I am one of those Peers who have been somewhat alarmed by a number of these Bills which have come forward for the con version or decentralisation, or the de-sanctification, whatever you like to call it, of graveyards. Some of us are very anxious about this process. These grave yards, of course, since they are disused, are attached for the most part to old churches and are in the very centres and parts of towns where they form extremely valuable lungs.
This Bill to-day seems to me to have a disadvantage which most of the others do not have. That is that, owing to the fact that the Promoters have a right to build (and I may say at once that the purposes for which they build are not 469 such that I should dream of objecting to them: they desire to build, I under stand, a new church hall, a new vestry and other premises required for clerical ecclesiastical purposes), their position vis-à-vis the planning authority is con siderably changed. Instead of the churchyard being zoned as an open space, so that it may not be built on without the agreement of the planning authority, the right to build which will be given by this Bill, when it becomes an Act, puts this particular case in Class 12, under which all the local planning authority can do is to say that they do not like the place, the position or, I imagine, the kind of building, and can indicate some other place where they think it had better be put. But they cannot prevent its erection, and your Lordships will therefore appreciate that the position here is somewhat different from that under other Bills. It is not my intention to contest the Second Reading, but I am most grateful to the Lord Chair man for his promise that we shall he able to discuss this matter.

LORD MERTHYR
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for allowing a Second Reading of this Bill. In return, I will undertake to provide an occasion for a debate on the Second Reading, as adjourned, of the Bolton Bill, which is somewhat, though not wholly, similar; and I hope the noble Lord will be con tent if he has the opportunity of raising the whole subject in debate on that occasion. As to what he has said this afternoon, I do not demur at all; in fact, he said very much what I said last week, if I may say so. I hope, therefore, that the House will give a Second Reading to this Bill now, on the understanding that we shall have an opportunity for further debate on this subject though not per haps on this particular Bill.

§ LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH
My Lords, may I ask whether it would not be better to adjourn also the Second Reading of this Bill until that debate takes place, and thereby give the House an opportunity, if it should so desire, of expressing an opinion upon this Bill?

LORD MERTHYR
My Lords, of course the House will in any event have a further opportunity of expressing an opinion on Third Reading. If it should 470 be the wish of the House to adjourn this debate I could not oppose it, be cause it would be merely adopting the same process as we did on the Bolton Bill. On the other hand, I hoped that we might give a Second Reading to this Bill, and then, as I have said already, have a full opportunity for debate on a special day. But I am in the hands of the House, and if the House wishes this debate also adjourned, I shall be glad to agree. Perhaps if the noble Lord wishes to move the adjournment of the debate he will do so. But if he does not, I shall assume that he is agree able to debating this matter on a day to be fixed.

§ LORD SILKIN
My Lords, there is just one short point I should like to make. I am a little concerned that it is possible to put in a Bill a provision which ousts the jurisdiction of the planning authority, so far as planning is concerned. In the normal course of events it is, of course, for a planning authority to say whether the particular area in question is a desirable area for the erection of a building. As a result of the insertion into the Bill of the pro vision which has been mentioned, the planning authority no longer have that power. I hope that the Committee to which the Bill is referred will take that fact into consideration and will consider whether this is a desirable power to have inserted in a Bill. Whether we can discuss this when the Bolton Bill comes up, I do not know, but I imagine that a similar principle will arise there. This is a matter which concerns me, and I am sure must concern other noble Lords. We want to keep the local planning authorities perfectly free to make up their minds on the matter of what is and is not desirable to be erected on a piece of land.

LORD MERTHYR
As I said in my statement which I made on Standing Order No. 91, there are these three Bills dealing with much the same point, though not entirely; and the Nottingham Bill does go a little further than the other two. Incidentally, your Lord ships gave a Second Reading the other day to one of them, the Manchester Corporation Bill, but nobody commented then on this provision. How ever, I have already undertaken that we 471 shall have a debate on the third point which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has just raised. It is not quite true to say that it deprives planning authorities of all their powers. It does not, if I may say so. But I do admit that it does diminish the powers of the planning authority. On the other hand, these Bills are by no means uncommon in your Lordships' House, and I might mention that this Bill is unopposed. Nobody has petitioned against the Bill, so that I felt perhaps justified in asking for a Second Reading this afternoon. Nevertheless, as I have said, if any noble Lord were to move that this debate be adjourned I should not resist the proposal; I am merely wishing to proceed as expeditiously as possible.

§ LORD SILKIN
My Lords, I hope that we shall not regard it as a precedent that, because there is no opposition to a Bill, therefore it is not our business to scrutinise it as carefully as if it were opposed.

§ LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH
My Lords, I beg to move that this debate be now adjourned. I do not want to spend time arguing the matter, but I respectfully submit that it would be very much tidier if this Second Reading were also adjourned. It can come up on the same date as the other Bill, when the discussion will be resumed, and it will leave the House much more in control of the position.