Public Bodies Bill [HL]

I know that the hour is late and I shall make only a few brief comments to put certain things on the record—not repeating, I hope, what has been said. I declare an interest as a member of the board of governors of the Church Commissioners —four bishops are elected to the board. The first is to say that the Church Commissioners is a charity. I ask the Minister whether any of the other bodies listed in Schedule 3 is a registered charity. That is an important question to ask if we are thinking of adding the Church Commissioners to the list. The Church of England itself is not a public authority. That was clarified by the Judicial Committee of your Lordships' House a few years ago in the Aston Cantlow case. It is a public authority for only certain limited purposes. We have been speaking in a carefree way, as if the Church of England is simply a public authority. It is not. For certain purposes it is, and there is a rather delicate ecology that lies behind everything here. There is no such legal entity as the Church of England. The Church of England is a symbiotic, organic collection of different bodies, each with certain degrees of independence. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, was wrong when he said that in no legal sense are the Church Commissioners part of the Church of England. They are part of that symbiotic connection, and you can disturb that and lots of other things without intending to do so. The cost of maintaining the historic houses has progressively risen and taken a progressively greater proportion of the income of the Church Commissioners for several decades. That poses the question: how do you responsibly allocate the income for different purposes when you find that the cost of maintaining historic houses, which we know is great, is a constant upward pressure? Those are the decisions that the Church Commissioners are best placed to handle. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, raised the interesting issue of suitability. I live in an old deanery, which is quite big. I reckon that 30 years ago the bishop had four members of staff to support him and his family living in that house. When I arrived in Chester nearly 15 years ago, there were two members of staff. Now there is one. Living in an historic house creates a lot of pressure. It is not quite such an attractive option when you are faced with the reality of handling a house without staff because they cannot be afforded. That is something that has not been mentioned. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, spoke of the Church Commissioners looking on see houses as cash cows. Placing a see house is usually a cash-neutral exercise, if anything, and it often costs more because there are not lots of people lining up to buy the sort of houses that we are disposing of. The noble Lord also referred to the Church Commissioners as engaged, and I quote him, in money laundering. I wonder whether he might withdraw that remark when he makes his closing remarks. It seems an inappropriate term to use in your Lordships' House and I hope we will not slip into that sort of allegation. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, made all sorts of allegations, but I noticed that they were of a general kind on the whole. There is no rush. In the case of Hartlebury Castle, there are five years—2007 to 2012—to see whether a local solution can be found. In the case of Auckland Castle, there is and has been no proposal to sell it. There is a discussion about the castle and its contents that will, no doubt, go on. I am very pleased to hear of the discussions taking place. There is no rush, I promise you. There is only a desire to do what is best in this rather delicate ecology of how the Church of England relates to the nation as a whole.