By Terry Lovell HarperCollins. £15.95
Terry Lovell, a former news editor of The People, claims that the Church Commissioners became involved in business practices which were fundamentally unChristian.
'It was a financial scandal', he claims, that involved 'reckless property investment, unethical conduct, massive borrowings of hundreds of millions of pounds, and a level of administrative incompetence that would cause a parliamentary enquiry to accuse the Commissioners of acting with 'unbelievable naivete'.'
Lovell's book has chapters on the history of the Commissioners, the events leading up to the property crash, the Lambeth enquiry which followed it and the Turnbull proposals for change. One fact that became more widely appreciated afterwards was the Byzantine historical relationship between the Commissioners and the Church. They trace their origin to a gift from royalty ('Queen Anne's Bounty') given to assist the church's work, but they cannot properly be regarded as part of the church; they are more like a state quango, with high level church representation, and a powerful Assets Committee enjoying virtual independence of the main body.
Sale of unattractive central London commercial property gave the Assets Committee the necessary liquidity to take full advantage of the 1980s' spending boom. Between 1985 and 1989 their retail shop investments increased massively, from 16.2% to 48%; but the riskily high concentration on retail projects was concealed in their annual reports and accounts. It was only when Coopers & Lybrand were engaged as part of the Lambeth enquiry set up by Archbishop Carey that the real figures emerged. Their report revealed an extraordinary degree of over-expenditure: due to poor planning, maladministration and incompetence, the original estimated costs of £236m rose to a staggering £517m. One notorious project, the Gateshead MetroCentre, cause a huge budget over-run - from £130m to £272m. In their annual report, the commissioners consistly listed its value as 'over £20m', literally true but somewhat misleading!
Commenting on this book, the Commissioners state that they are a 'reformed, strengthened and fully-accountable organisation, which has moved on significantly from the events in the book'.
