DRAFT DIOCESE IN EUROPE MEASURE:
DRAFT INTRODUCTION SPEECH by David Froude
Chair
As Members of Synod know, all our dioceses are unique. But by any standards the Diocese in Europe is in a category of its own. Not only is it, at least for the moment, our newest diocese, it also operates across a myriad of national jurisdictions and has a legal status quite different from our 43 other dioceses. Whilst that will continue to be the case, the draft Measure now before you will enable the Diocese in Europe to be treated more ‘normally’ in two respects: its eligibility for grants from the national Church; and its arrangements for an important aspect of Synodical government.
The draft Measure contains two short provisions:
Clause 1 will widen the discretionary powers of the Church Commissioners and the Archbishops’ Council to make grants to the Diocese by making the Diocese eligible to receive grants for the same range of purposes as English dioceses.
Clause 2 will make Europe’s Diocesan Synod responsible for deciding whether to approve business referred to dioceses under Article 8 of the General Synod’s Constitution – as is the case in all English Dioceses.
I shall deal with the background to these two provisions in turn.
Since the Diocese was established by the Diocese in Europe Measure 1980, its eligibility for financial support from the national church has been much narrower than for other dioceses. This is because the Commissioners’ statutory powers, and thus those of the Archbishops’ Council, do not extend to the Diocese, which is not part of the Church of England as established by law.
At present, the only direct support it can receive from national funds is from the Commissioners towards the stipends and working costs of its bishops and the housing of the Diocesan Bishop. However, in recent years, the other dioceses have co-operated in quite complex arrangements to enable the Diocese to receive some funding. The most long-standing example of such indirect support – and the only current example – is that, since 2002, as the Diocese has not been able to receive Mission Development Funding, by agreement it has not paid apportionment to the Archbishops’ Council but has, instead, allocated a similar sum to mission projects.
Last year, following a strategic review of its needs and resources, the Diocese asked if its eligibility for funding could be reviewed. To establish the views of the mainland dioceses, that possibility was canvassed with the Inter Diocesan Finance Forum, the membership of which includes all Chairs of Diocesan Boards of Finance, all Diocesan Secretaries and another member from each diocese, often a General Synod member. The clear message from those views expressed was that, as far as possible, the Diocese should be treated on the same basis as the other dioceses. Reflecting that principle, the Finance Forum favoured legislation that would confer a wider grant giving power enabling the Commissioners and the Council to respond to evolving needs, rather than a narrow power merely to respond to what the Diocese had identified as a current need. In expressing this view the Finance Forum acknowledged that all other dioceses, to a greater or lesser extent, stood to receive lower grants as a result of this change.
Turning to the grant-making bodies themselves, the Commissioners’ Board has no objection in principle to the proposal to allow grants to be made to the Diocese in the same funding streams as other dioceses. But it does wish to make it clear that, if such grants are made, lower sums will be distributed to other beneficiaries. Nothing in the Measure can alter the total sum available for distribution by the Commissioners.
In the light of these views, the Archbishops’ Council has agreed to bring forward the draft Measure before you.
It is important to be clear that the Measure is silent on what level of national support the Diocese might receive in future. It also means that the wider Church is not offering any view on the Diocese’s spending priorities. For example, their recent strategic review identified a problem over the present practice of expecting archdeacons to remain full time chaplains. If the Diocese wants to create one or more freestanding archdeaconries, that will continue to be entirely a matter for them within the overall resources available to them.
The Measure is therefore largely about bringing the Diocese more into the mainstream of our financial systems and treating them differently only if that is unavoidable. For example, some differences will remain because the socio-economic data underlying the ‘Darlow formula’ is simply not available. And factors like population and area do not quite work for a diocese that stretches from Finisterre to the Urals and beyond!
If the Measure is passed, the level of any grants to be made to the Diocese would be determined as part of wider discussions on the distribution of money available from the Commissioners’ fund. It is relevant that the spending plans for 2014-2016 will be discussed by the Commissioners and the Council next year, following the triennial actuarial review of the Commissioners’ fund as at the end of 2012. Although of course no grants could be made under the proposed new discretionary powers unless and until the Measure passed into law, it would be helpful to know the mind of Synod before those discussions begin.
The second issue addressed by the Measure will bring one aspect of the Diocese’s Synodical governance up to date.
At the time of the 1980 Measure, it did not have a Diocesan Synod. So that Measure provided for decisions on Article 8 references to be taken by the Bishop’s Council and Standing Committee. Now that Europe’s Diocesan Synod is well established, there is no reason why the Diocese should be treated differently from other dioceses in this respect. Clause 2 of this draft Measure will accordingly achieve that end, by transferring responsibility for taking decisions on Article 8 business to the Diocesan Synod.
Chair, I commend the draft Measure to the Synod.
Dru Brooke-Taylor is discussing. 
Malcolm, 
Antony Billington, 
stephen cozens and one other person are discussing. 
Jeanette Plumb is discussing. 
Dru Brooke-Taylor 4:00 pm on February 8, 2012 Permalink
Am I the only person who is fed up with the amount of respect given to the so-called Falconer Commission? It has no status, no automatic title to respect. Having once been Lord Chancellor doesn’t mean that for the rest of your life everything you do has some official imprimatur. It’s not a Royal Commission or a Parliamentary Commission or an Archbishop’s Commission. It has no more status that if I got some chums together, who I already knew agreed with me, and asked them to write a report on a subject of my choice. Yet nobody ever seems to mention this publicly. I hope at least somebody pointed this out in the debate.