CLERGY pensions, and what may very well be done to revive them to previous levels after a cut in real terms, was debated by the General Synod on Monday afternoon.
Introducing the talk, the Revd Dr Ian Paul (Southwell & Nottingham) moved his private members’ motion asking the Archbishops’ Council, the Church of England Pensions Board, and the Church Commissioners to “discover a solution to make use of the entire range of assets and resources across the Church to enable the restoration of the clergy pension to its pre-2011 profit level as soon as possible”.
He reminded the Synod that, for 20 years, there had been “real anxiety” concerning the state of the Church’s funds. “We took what felt like mandatory steps,” he said: the pension had been cut as a proportion of the national minimum stipend (NMS), and the years of service had been increased. The clergy pension had effectively been cut by one third in real terms.
The NMS had since dropped by ten per cent between 2009 and 2019 against the Retail Price Index. Meanwhile, the Church Commissioners’ assets had grown “significantly” to £10 billion, while diocesan assets stood at £800 million, he said. “Our financial assets, overall, as a Church, are having fun with rude health, while our ministerial assets — serving and retired clergy — are feeling discouraged, demoralised, and devalued. This can’t be right.”
The annual cost of restoring the pension to pre-2011 levels had been calculated to cost about £25 million, while, in a single yr (2020), the Church Commissioners’ assets had grown by £900 million. If they took on responsibility for pensions for the following 20 years, the entire cost could be not more than five per cent of their entire asset base.
“This shouldn’t be a giant ask; but it surely would make a giant difference,” he said. “We know from research that the only most important consider reversing the decline we’re seeing, and seeing our congregations grow again, is the funding of well-motivated stipendiary ministry that’s intentional about growth. What greater priority can we’ve got as a Church than caring for such people?”
He had not proposed putting financial pressure on dioceses, he said. There was a must put the Church’s assets, and the needs that he had outlined, together. “Synod, isn’t it remarkable how quickly we will have enough money the things we predict are vital?” He reminded the Synod that, when it had made changes in 2008, it had made a commitment to restoring the pension to its previous level. “We can do that; we must always do that; we must do that.”
The chair of the Archbishops’ Council’s Finance Committee, Carl Hughes (Archbishops’ Council), moved an amendment that asked the three bodies mentioned in Dr Paul’s motion to “work along with dioceses to explore ways during which the extent of clergy pensions and stipends is perhaps improved in a sustainable manner”. In doing so, they need to have regard for the findings of the recent clergy-remuneration review (2021), including the policy that the NMS should, in future, on average, increase in step with inflation, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH).
He agreed with Dr Paul that the clergy pension must be “adequate and equitable for cohorts of retirees over time”, and that this could apply to clergy stipends, too. Inflation levels for past 18 months had been at their highest level for the reason that Nineties, and this, combined with the challenges of the pandemic, had meant that stipends had not been increased in step with CPIH. Data suggested that the NMS was almost £4000 lower than if it had tracked CPIH since 2010.
He hoped that each one parts of the Church could work together to enhance stipends, over time. Dr Paul’s use of the words “discover a way” sounded “like a commitment that we discover we’re unable to maintain”, he said. Solutions needed to be sustainable.
Dr Paul accepted the amendment.
The chair of the Pensions Board, Clive Mather (Ex Officio), emphasised that the Board didn’t set advantages: the Synod did. “It is, at heart, a policy query.” The Board had provided two technical papers, which noted that the mechanics of adjusting future service were “relatively straightforward”. If the motion was carried, the Board would work with the Archbishops’ Council to work up proposals and spell out the entire implications.
Mr Mather spoke in support of a forthcoming amendment from Ian Boothroyd. As an “strange layperson”, with many years of experience in pensions, he would vote for Mr Hughes’s amendment and the motion, he said. “Retirement living standards really matter, and have slipped. If the NMS shouldn’t be keeping pace, then the worth of starting pensions falls; we must not lose sight of this, and focus exclusively on the accrual rates.”
The Commissioners had “many ongoing responsibilities”, and there may very well be cheaper ways of attempting to “unwind” the 2008 changes, as set out within the technical note. The introduction within the UK of a “Collective Defined Contribution” pension may very well be a “game-changer”, he suggested.
Robin Lunn (Worcester), an independent financial planner concentrating on pensions, spoke in favour of the amendment, but had concerns concerning the original motion. He was reminded of the ultimate line of a documentary about Gorbachev: “In trying to reform the Communist Party and the Soviet Union, he ended up destroying it.” Mr Lunn was concerned that changes proposed to the pension scheme could find yourself being detrimental. Defined-benefit schemes were “extremely costly”, and there have been only a few left within the UK. Tweaks to the C of E pensions scheme had enabled the Church to keep up it, he said. His definition of “pensions heaven” was having the defined profit as the bottom, but one other kind of pension — money purchase — alongside it. When it got here to the Church Commissioners, assets could go down in addition to up.
The Revd Brenda Wallace (Chelmsford) was in support of the amendment. As a clergy pensioner, her licence had been prolonged when she retired from full-time work. She lived on her state- and church-pensions, having been a wife and mother for just about all her working life — half of that as a stipendiary priest. She lived “adequately — just”. But she was in a position to achieve this only due to inheriting a “small and somewhat dilapidated” bungalow. She didn’t must pay rent or rely on the “rapidly disappearing and increasingly expensive CHARM scheme, which is itself under query”. For the clergy, retirement brought additional costs, comparable to council tax, which were increasing, she said. But, without the contribution of largely unpaid retired clergy, many rural parishes or those in an prolonged emptiness wouldn’t give you the option to sustain sacramental worship or pastoral offices.
Geoff Crawford/Church TimesThe Revd Brenda Wallace (Chelmsford)
The First Church Estates Commissioner, Alan Smith, in support of the amendment, said that, in his parish church, the one who gave him most inspiration was a 90-year-old retired vicar. “How we support our clergy — those that served yesterday, those that serve today, and those that will serve tomorrow — . . . has and should be our top priority.” Sustainable actions is perhaps explored, he said. The Church Commissioners needed to achieve this in “a spirit of humility”. He reminded the Synod of what had happened in 1992. One book had relayed that “the Church Commissioners in a single yr nearly achieved what Oliver Cromwell had tried and did not do, which was to destroy the Church of England.”
The key issue, he said, was not poor investments, but “improperly thought-through commitments, including how we had shaped stipend and pensions packages, actually going back to as early because the late Nineteen Forties and early Nineteen Fifties, which got here through to bite us at the top of the Nineteen Eighties and early Nineties. What we nearly became then was a pension fund which had a little bit of Church appended to it. We cannot let that occur again. . . We want and want a flourishing clergy supported by sustainable and sustaining advantages packages, of which pensions is a key part.”
Also in favour, Julie Dziegiel (Oxford) was a member of the Archbishops’ Finance Committee, but spoke because the vice-chair of the Oxford diocesan board of finance, a deanery treasurer, and a former parish treasurer. In the “church-money merry-go-round, the dioceses are the squeezed [in the] middle . . . despite receiving quite a lot of grants from the Church Commissioners”. The balance was all the time made up by parish share, but, even when it was not met, the diocese still needed to pay clergy. She was “flabbergasted” by the speed at which the reduction in diocesan pension contributions had been used for other expenditure: paying clergy and staff “relatively modest raises”, and keeping parish share inexpensive. Dioceses didn’t have the funds to afford the proposed uplift in pensions: there could be an “outcry” from parish treasurers. “This request can’t be achieved throughout the financial structures as they’re in the intervening time, no less than not without the lack of a substantial variety of clergy posts, which might cost much great harm to the work of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The Bishop of Hereford, the Rt Revd Richard Jackson, who chairs the remunerations and conditions sub-committee of the Archbishops’ Council, said that to return to the 2011 settlement was “unrealistic”. The amendment brought within the dioceses as partners within the conversation. “There must be a recent conversation between the varied arms of the Church, the varied charities that comprise our Church, as to where this money for this pension increase and stipend increase goes to return from. And I believe it’s very unlikely that it’s going to come from dioceses and parish contributions.”
The amendment was carried.
Ian Boothroyd (Southwell & Nottingham) then moved an amendment to request that the three bodies mentioned in Dr Paul’s motion “consider what steps could also be taken to treatment the autumn in the actual value of pensions for clergy retiring since 2021, and to avoid such a fall reoccurring in any future period of high inflation”. The pensions scheme had been “unable to react to the damage done by recent high inflation to the pensions of clergy reaching retirement”. Clergy who retired in 2024 would have a worse deal than predecessors within the previous three many years.
He explained: “The value of the pension at the purpose of retirement is a small share of the national minimum stipend for every year of service, all added together. The current maximum is half the NMS. But it isn’t the present NMS, it’s last yr’s, and the yr of April to March.” Total inflation since 2021 was greater than 20 per cent, whereas NMS had increased by just one per cent. Clergy were retiring with about one sixth less church pension than if the calculation had kept pace with inflation. This was an injustice. The group affected needed “special treatment”.
Dr Paul desired to test the mind of the Synod.
The Revd Martin Thorpe (Liverpool) spoke in support of the amendment, having attended a union fringe event where he had spoken to a retired member who also needed to apply for advantages, and was affected by the changes to Universal Credit. His level of income was set to fall below the “barely adequate floor of our social-security system. That can’t be right. But it is occurring now.” Clergy pay and pensions were “rightly about sacrifice and covenant”.
He had been called to ministry in his early twenties, away from a profession as a research chemist. He had known “full well” that he could be earning as a curate half what he had been earning as a chemist. “But I used to be told at that time that the Church would take care of me; there was a generous pension scheme; I might work the 37 years that may get me to full pension after I was 65: two-thirds of stipend.”
He had also been advised to sell his house to assist to fund his training: “the worst piece of monetary advice I ever had”. He was set to retire this yr with a pension, after 30 years of service, of £9000 a yr. His wife, who had worked half the variety of years in a teachers’ pension scheme would get double that. Could the Church Commissioners not use a few of their £10 billion assets to revive levels? “Our clergy, energetic and retired, surely deserve higher.”
The Revd Graham Kirk-Spriggs (Norwich) said that some people were reluctant to speak about money: “I’m not one in all those people. The terms and conditions that we’re suffering as clergy are . . . an absolute scandal. A clergyperson now earns less of their stipend than a first-year teacher.” He was aware of clergy in his diocese who were being charged £500 a month in energy bills, and were being told that they needed to go on a budgeting course. “We are a Church of social justice; and it is a matter of justice. . . It is a scandal that one in five people have needed to depend on the Clergy Support Trust.” One fellow cleric had been advised to not sell their house, but to maintain it for retirement. “What house?” he asked, to laughter and applause. “It is perhaps all right for those of you who bought your own home in 1973 for a packet of crisps and 14 pence. . . The remainder of us are left behind.” Clergy having to use for advantages was “the sort of thing that Amazon does: counting on state handouts to maximise their profits. . . This is essentially the most worldly thing that we do: the way in which we treat the people who work for us.” He had considered leaving the Church, over the extent of stipend, “because, month after month, it shouldn’t be enough.”
The amendment was carried.
The Revd Barry Hill (Leicester) supported the amended motion. In the approaching weeks, the accountancy firm BDO was set to provide its report on diocesan funds. “They will show very significant financial deficits in lots of dioceses — probably, in total, running well into eight figures, with the entire impact that can have on mission and ministry.” The Finance Committee had reported in York last summer a big real-terms reduction in giving from parishioners. Given the common age, this was likely only to extend, “as parishes struggle to cover the associated fee of their ministry”. Meanwhile, up to now yr alone — and in almost every yr that just about everyone present had been on the General Synod — the asset base of the Church Commissioners had increased by greater than the whole stipend bill. In this context, the “most elegant” solution that he had heard was to ask the Commissioners, through laws, to tackle post-1997 clergy-pension contributions. This would make a “vast difference” to mission and ministry in lots of parishes, he said, and most dioceses. It would save the common diocese about £1 million, or about 15 clergy posts a yr, but would cost lower than one third of 1 per cent of the Commissioners’ asset base: lower than one tenth of the cash they already gave to dioceses.
Paul Ronson (Blackburn), also a member of the Finance Committee, said that the Diocesan Stipends Fund Measure had highlighted the “total inadequacy” of many diocesan stipend funds. He proposed that the Commissioners consider a “one-off, generational, resettlement” to “rebalance” all of those funds: it might be ring-fenced to pay the clergy and their pensions.
Prebendary Pat Hawkins (Lichfield) said: “If we would like to remove the barriers for those from estates, from working-class backgrounds, to ordination, we cannot leave the livelihood in ministry or in retirement to those that either have inherited wealth or a well-paid spouse.” Her sister had needed to take early retirement from stipendiary ministry to look after her husband in 2020. She had lost the pension she had already accrued because she didn’t meet the factors for early retirement. Everyone who had heard this story had been shocked by it. When her husband died, she lost a part of his pension, and was stranded wanting her state pension. The issue needed to be checked out within the broadest possible way.
Canon Bruce Bryant-Scott (Europe) spoke as a “grumpy old man” currently collecting a full pension after 35 years of service within the Anglican Church of Canada. He had also spent nine years on the pensions committee of that Church. He got here from a Province during which clergy pay was increased in step with inflation. When he arrived within the C of E, the concept that clergy were being paid less in real terms was “shocking and appalling”, as was the autumn in pensions. He wouldn’t feel sure that he could reassure clergy considering entering ministry or of their early years concerning the pension awaiting them, he said.
Canon Paul Cartwright (Leeds) had entered theological training in 2006. At that point, he and his wife were told to sell their house, but that they had been in a position to keep it. He got here from an estate, and his parents had not taken up the precise to purchase. They had left £800 to every child once they died. It could be his wife’s pension that “carries us through”. He had been diagnosed with leukaemia in 2008, while training, and had needed to sign away a few of his pension; so, were he to die from leukaemia, his wife’s payout could be reduced. It was time to take pensions away from the diocese, he said, “so that they can focus on mission”. The Commissioners actually had an even bigger bank balance. He supported Canon Hill’s proposal.
The amended motion was carried by 382 nem. con. It read:
That this Synod
(a) request the Archbishops’ Council, the Pensions Board, and the Church Commissioners to work along with dioceses to explore ways during which the extent of clergy pensions and stipends is perhaps improved in a sustainable manner, with reference being made to the impact of changes to clergy pension advantages and the National Minimum Stipend (NMS) since 1998, including the change in level of the pension profit from 2/3 of NMS prior to 2011;
(b) in doing this work to have regard to the findings of the Clergy Remuneration Review (GS 2247 and GS Misc 1298) and specifically the policy that the National Minimum Stipend should, in future, on average, increase in step with inflation (as measured by CPIH) subject to 3 yearly reviews and the necessity to review this position if high levels of inflation establish themselves; and
(c) request the Archbishops’ Council, the Pensions Board and the Church Commissioners to contemplate what steps could also be taken to treatment the autumn in the actual value of pensions for clergy retiring since 2021, and to avoid such a fall reoccurring in any future period of high inflation.
