THE EARL OF TANKERVILLEasked His Majesty's Government:
- (a) Since provisional interest is being paid to former tithe owners on the minimum amount of redemption stock which the Tithe Redemption Commission have ascertained to be due to
911 them, and since it appears likely that the remaining interest due to them will not be ascertained or paid for some time, whether instructions can be given to the Tithe Redemption Commission to pay in addition, when such latter interest is paid, interest calculated thereon at an appropriate rate from the 1st October, 1936, to the date of actual payment; and - (b) How the balance of capital which is not yet apportioned, and which on this account is at present being withheld from former tithe owners, is now employed.
§ LORD TEMPLEMOREIn reply to the first part of the noble Earl's question, there is no authority under which instructions could be given to the Tithe Redemption Commission for the payment of compound interest in the circumstances described by him.
In reply to the second part, the general effect of postponing payments out of the Redemption Annuities Account is to reduce for the time being advances to that 912WA account from the Consolidated Fund under Section 25 of the Tithe Act, 1936. So far as concerns former tithe owners, however, the total amount of interest now being paid each half-year out of the Redemption Annuities Account accords, within narrow limits, with the estimated total amount of stock issuable to them as compensation for extinguishment of tithe rentcharge in respect of which the necessary particulars have been delivered to the Tithe Redemption Commission.