Mr. KINGasked the Home Secretary why, in the case of a person wishing to disinter and remove a body buried in consecrated ground, whether of a cemetery or parish churchyard, he refuses to issue his licence and insists on such person going to the ecclesiastical authorities for a faculty; and whether he will, in the case of any representative of a deceased person, or at least in the case of a Nonconformist, wishing to remove the body from consecrated ground, in future cause his licence to issue?
§ Mr. CHURCHILLThe Home Office does not in the cases referred to "insist" on a faculty being obtained, but the practice followed is necessarily governed by the law with regard to faculties for the disturbance of consecrated ground. For the removal of a body from one consecrated place of burial to another the Home Secretary's licence is, I am advised, not sufficient without a faculty being also obtained from the ecclesiastical authority. On the other hand, it is clear that the faculty is sufficient in such a case without the licence. In these circumstances it has been considered the safer course not, as a rule, to issue a licence in any case where removal by faculty was conveniently available; and there does not appear to be any reason for altering a practice which has worked satisfactorily for more than fifty years.