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Draft Church Representation and Ministers Measure

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Draft Church Representation and Ministers Measure CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE HOUSE OF LORDS HOUSE OF COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE THE ECCLESIASTICAL COMMITTEE CORRECTED ORAL EVIDENCE: DRAFT CHURCH REPRESENTATION AND MINISTERS MEASURE TUESDAY 30 APRIL 2019 10 am Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 8 Oral Evidence Taken before the Ecclesiastical Committee on Tuesday 30 April 2019 Members present: Baroness Butler-Sloss (Chairman) Baroness Berridge Sir Peter Bottomley Fiona Bruce The Earl of Cork and Orrery Lord Elton Sir Roger Gale Lord Glenarthur Helen Goodman Mr Dominic Grieve Baroness Harris of Richmond Lord Judd Lord Lexden Rachael Maskell Gavin Robinson Dame Caroline Spelman ________________ Examination of Witnesses The Venerable Dr Jane Steen, Archdeacon of Southwark and Chair of the Steering Committee for the Measure. Professor Joyce Hill, Chair of the Revision Committee for the Measure. The Right Worshipful Timothy Briden, Vicar General, Province of Canterbury. Mr William Nye, Secretary-General of the Archbishops’ Council and the General Synod. The Reverend Alexander McGregor, Chief Legal Adviser. 1 Examination of witnesses The Venerable Dr Jane Steen, Professor Joyce Hill, the Right Worshipful Timothy Briden, Mr William Nye and the Reverend Alexander McGregor. Q1 The Chairman: I welcome the formidable team sitting facing us—Dr Jane Steen, Professor Joyce Hill, the Right Worshipful Timothy Briden, Mr William Nye and the Reverend Alexander McGregor, whom I congratulate on having now become the chief legal adviser. The Reverend Alexander McGregor: Thank you very much. The Chairman: First, since we are now in public session, does anybody have any interests to declare? Sir Peter Bottomley: I am the parliamentary warden of St Margaret’s Church in Westminster and I have had various other church roles. Baroness Harris of Richmond: I have a nephew who is a priest in the Isle of Man, and am also high steward of Ripon Cathedral. Lord Elton: I cannot remember which model rule it is, but I have a daughter who is hoping to be that sort of minister. At the moment she is an assistant curate. I will tell somebody so that they can put in the minutes which bit it is. Fiona Bruce: I am a lay canon in Chester Cathedral. Mr Dominic Grieve: I am a member of the council of reference of Westminster Abbey, my wife is a church warden and I have a sister-in-law who probably falls within these provisions into the category of an assistant curate. The Chairman: I am a member of the council of reference of Westminster Abbey. The Earl of Cork and Orrery: I am a trustee of Chichester Cathedral. The Chairman: And, of course, Dame Caroline is the second chair to the Committee.1 Who would like to go first? The Venerable Dr Jane Steen: Thank you. I will give a few words of brief introduction. These new rules came out of the simplification process which the Church of England has been undergoing to remove constraints— particularly, but not only, legislative ones—to its mission and growth, and to simplify and deregulate some of the provisions by which it governs itself. That simplification task group recommended three ways in which the church representation rules could be simplified. First, they could be streamlined; unnecessary provisions could be removed and other 1 Dame Caroline Spelman MP is also the Second Church Estates Commissioner. 2 provisions brought together such that operating and finding one’s way around them would be less burdensome. Secondly, the administrative burdens of actually operating parish life under the rules could be made less burdensome. That is particularly the case for rural parishes where there are multi-parish benefices with multiple PCCs and where everything has to happen many times. This allows a different approach. Finally, there was a real desire to give parishes much greater flexibility to set out, within certain constraints and under appropriate supervision, their own governance framework so that their governance could work for their own mission and growth rather than having a one-size-fits-all model. My colleague, the vicar general of the province of Canterbury, will say more about that flexibility and local need. The Right Worshipful Timothy Briden: One of the key purposes of the reconstruction of these rules is to address the problem that was not present to any great extent when they were first formulated—initially in the 1920s and then again in 1969—because at that stage it was possible to have a single set of rules that was appropriate to all parishes, both big and small. The ecclesiastical landscape has changed considerably since then. At one extreme there are very large parishes with major churches in them, such as Bath Abbey in the diocese of Bath and Wells. Those parishes were finding themselves unduly constricted by the structure of the rules as they were. At the other extreme, there are the small rural parishes, to which the archdeacon has already referred, where the scope of operation with a very small PCC in a small parish meant that the rules were becoming unduly burdensome and difficult to operate. At that end of the spectrum, the situation increasingly arose in which parishes were organised as multi- parish benefices. In other words, there was one minister potentially holding in plurality a large number of parishes in a particular vicinity. One can understand that operating the old church representation rules in those circumstances became quite a nightmare, because each parish had to comply with the rules separately under the chair of the parish priest of the united benefice. That imposed significant burdens and constraints, so with this legislation we have sought to bring in much greater flexibility. In part 9 of the schedule, which will be the rules, subject to parliamentary approval, is provided a model set of rules that sets out the basic way in which a parish can operate. In part 2 there are important provisions that enable parishes to make their own rules and to establish constitutions of their own that will meet the particular requirements of the locality. This is inevitably not unfettered; there have to be checks and balances, because it cannot simply run as a free-for-all. To strike the appropriate balance, there has to be a two-thirds majority within the parish itself for the change to be made. The scheme put forward has also to receive the approval of the Bishop’s Council and standing 3 committee. Inevitably, as you will see in rule 12, there has to be a clutch of mandatory rules, including matters of disqualification and the like, which have to be treated as entrenched. We hope that this strikes a workable balance between appropriate legal requirement and the ability of parishes to set their own agenda and adopt methods of governance that are best suited to them and not simply dictated from above. The Chairman: Yes. Does anyone else want to speak on this? No. That is a very helpful exposition. Thank you very much. Who would like to ask a question? Q2 Lord Elton: I may have got lost in all this, but I understand that some of the functions are entrenched. I do not know whether you are talking only about amalgamations, but there is a provision that parishes may actually make up their own rules, and that if there is a dispute it is resolved by the Diocesan Board of Finance. I found that strange, because some of the functions are not actually financial. The Reverend Alexander McGregor: I am aware of the provisions to which the noble Lord refers. They are concerned with the creation of joint parochial church councils, joint councils, where there are connected parishes—the sort of situation to which Timothy Briden referred earlier. It is possible for these connected parishes to decide to join together and form a single joint council for all of them that replaces the individual parochial church councils, thereby removing unnecessary bureaucracy and centralising it for the whole group, thus reducing the number of meetings, creating efficiencies and so on. The parishes that do so decide which functions to pass up to the joint council. They can in fact pass up all their functions if they wish to, and in many cases they would be encouraged to do so, because otherwise the individual units would just be too small. Some of the functions that they pass up are therefore likely to be financial functions, looking after the parish’s money. It is possible that at some point in future the parishes that have joined together in that way might want to separate and go back to having their individual councils, or at least might want to pass back some of their functions to the individual councils, perhaps because a particular parish has grown very large compared to the others and needs to have its own arrangements. That is where the Diocesan Board of Finance’s adjudicatory function comes in. If you are untangling a situation in which they have pooled their financial resources and then are separating again, someone has to adjudicate what goes back to the parish that is leaving the arrangement. The view was taken that the Diocesan Board of Finance is sufficiently removed from the local situation to act independently in that way and to form an independent judgment. 4 Lord Elton: I apologise; we had a flood in the basement this morning, which is why I am not quite up to date. You say “some of the functions” but not all the functions are financial—for instance, selecting a new incumbent or a new minister. This seems a very odd body to adjudicate in that case.
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