RESPONDING to last year’s General Synod debate on clergy pay and pensions, and requests that the Church Commissioners enable them to rise, the First Commissioner, Alan Smith, reminded the Synod of what had happened in 1992 when — in the later words of the Commons’ Social Security Committee — the Commissioners had “done more than any other single act to destroy the parish system of the national Church”. He was referring to a disastrous period when the Commissioners’ assets fell by £624 million — more than one fifth of their value (News, 23 July 1993). They had been speculating in retail property to meet commitments to increasing clergy pay and pensions.
Despite the current size of the Commissioners’ fund — £10.4 billion — a fear of over-extension still appears to haunt the corridors of Church House. The history is certainly chastening. In The Church of England in the 20th Century (2006), Professor Andrew Chandler observed that, amid arguments over the proper use of funds, it was when the Commissioners concentrated their efforts on the “uncontroversial spheres” of stipends, pensions, expenses, and parsonages that they “descended into crisis”. When it came to pensions, it was “exceedingly difficult to be sure what the future held”, from ordinand numbers to the economy itself.
Concerns about lack of effective scrutiny of the national church institutions (News, 12 July 2024) are nothing new. “A forceful First Commissioner backed by the staff and the Assets Committee will always take some stopping,” one Commissioner, Sir John Herbecq, observed in 1994. But General Synod members working up the courage to ask questions about finance might draw inspiration from Mike Tyrrell, a Coventry layman, who expressed concern about “imprudent, ill-advised speculation” in 1991, months before the Financial Times broke the story. The portfolio would “prove itself” in the long term, he was told, with the promise that he would be talked to after the debate.
A different question is being asked today: whether planning remains coloured by the fear of past failures rather than the reality of decades of success. “There is currently no agreed plan for . . . what ‘enough’ funds with the Church Commissioners looks like,” the Gloucester diocesan secretary has said. “This only leads to tensions and discord.” The Bishop of Bath & Wells, Dr Beasley, who is set to propose the transfer of £2.6 billion from the Commissioners to diocesan stipend funds, warns that the magnitude of their fund acts as an “active discouragement” to giving. While the Commissioners point to large increases in their allocations to dioceses, frustration with the conditions attached to these is growing. Dr Beasley’s motion is an opportunity for this to be aired before a further set of spending plans is agreed.