Safeguarding and Clergy Discipline Measure

Debate between Lord Bishop of Durham and Lord Cormack

Thursday 28th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, the Safeguarding and Clergy Discipline Measure is set in the context of our commitment, as the Church of England, to keep becoming a safer church. The Measure itself is only one part of all the work that we are undertaking. The Measure is before your Lordships because the church believes it needs to improve its statutory arrangements: first, to prevent the abuse of children and adults at risk within the church community; and, secondly, to deal effectively with those in authority within the church who seek to harm children and vulnerable adults. It follows on from a wide consultation within the church as to the appropriate legislative steps that need to be taken. When it received final approval before the General Synod, this Measure had unanimous support among those who voted—28 bishops, 145 clergy and 149 laity voted in favour, with no votes cast against it in any house and no recorded abstentions. The Measure has also been placed before the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament and deemed to be expedient.

An important provision in this Measure is to be found in Section 5, which imposes a new safeguarding duty on those in authority within the church. All ordained clergy who are authorised to exercise ministry, along with all archdeacons, bishops, licensed readers and lay workers, churchwardens and PCCs will now be under a specific duty to have due regard to the church’s safeguarding policies and guidance issued by the House of Bishops. It is the House of Bishops which takes the lead on safeguarding matters in the church. It will be misconduct for a clerk in holy orders to fail to comply with that duty, and PCCs will be required in future to state in their annual reports whether they have complied with this new duty.

Churchwardens and PCCs, together with the incumbent, play an important part at parish level in the life and mission of the church. They occupy positions of responsibility in the parish, where they are trusted and respected by others. The church therefore needs to be able to stop those who are unsuitable, from a safeguarding perspective, from serving as churchwardens or as PCC members. Sections 2 and 3 will do that. Any person who is on a barred list under the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 will be disqualified from holding office as a churchwarden, serving on a PCC or being appointed a PCC secretary or treasurer. Furthermore, under Section 3, members, secretaries and treasurers of PCCs will be disqualified if convicted of an offence listed in Schedule 1 to the Children and Young Persons Act 1933. Those grounds for disqualification already apply to churchwardens under the Churchwardens Measure 2001.

This Measure will enable a bishop to suspend churchwardens, PCC members, treasurers and secretaries on certain safeguarding grounds. The bishop will have new powers to suspend them if they are arrested on suspicion of committing an offence listed in Schedule 1 to the 1933 Act or charged with such an offence, or if the bishop receives information from the police or a local authority that they present a significant risk of harm towards a child or vulnerable adult. To protect these lay officers from being unfairly suspended they will have a right to appeal to the President of Tribunals, an independent senior judge, against that suspension.

The bishop will also have new powers to suspend clergy, on the basis of information supplied by the police or a local authority. We realise that there are judgments to be made about where the right balance is between protecting children and vulnerable adults, and suspending clergy when there has not yet been an arrest or a charge. However, we believe that we have indeed struck the right balance here, as the bishop will be able to suspend only if satisfied that the cleric presents a significant risk of harm and, before the bishop suspends, he or she will have to consult the safeguarding officer and such other persons as the bishop considers appropriate. Furthermore, the suspended cleric will have a right of appeal against the suspension to the independent President of Tribunals, and will be eligible to apply for church legal aid for representation to pursue such an appeal.

Under the existing provisions of the Clergy Discipline Measure, disciplinary proceedings against clergy must be started within one year of the alleged misconduct unless the President of Tribunals, upon application, grants permission to make the complaint out of time. The president in such cases has to be satisfied that there was good reason why proceedings were not instituted at an earlier date. This one-year limitation period has been criticised for inhibiting survivors of abuse from making complaints, since it often takes many years before they are ready and able to come forward. Section 7 of the new Measure will remove the current one-year limitation period for any complaint against a cleric alleging misconduct of a sexual nature towards a child or vulnerable adult. This will help survivors achieve justice.

Under Section 8 of the new Measure, in cases where the limitation period does still apply—that is, in complaints that are not concerned with sexual misconduct towards a child or vulnerable adult—the bishop will now have new powers of suspension so that, in serious cases, the cleric can be suspended while the President of Tribunals considers an application to allow a complaint out of time to proceed. To protect the cleric, the test that the bishop must apply will be one of necessity: the bishop will have to be satisfied that it is necessary for a suspension to be imposed and will first of all have to seek legal advice from the diocesan registrar. The suspended cleric will have a right of appeal to the independent President of Tribunals.

As I indicated earlier, in all cases of alleged sexual abuse, or in any other alleged misconduct case, we need to find the right balance between protecting the vulnerable and the damaged on the one hand, and ensuring that the rights of clergy are not unfairly impeded on the other. We believe we have the right balance with this Measure.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I make it plain at the very beginning that I do not dissent from this Measure. I should perhaps declare an interest in that I was a churchwarden for some 36 years, in three different churches, and I am acutely aware of many of the problems that have disturbed people in recent years. I say that by way of preface. We in this House have recent experience of unfounded allegations being made against one of the most respected individuals in this country, albeit not a clergyman. I refer of course to Field Marshal Bramall, who must have gone through the most agonising period.

Not all your Lordships may be aware of this, but a recent colleague from the Bishops’ Benches also had an agonising period of a year or more. I refer of course to the former Bishop of Gloucester, the right reverend Michael Perham, whom I knew on the General Synod when he was Dean of Derby. He was a greatly respected bishop but suddenly, in the glare of publicity, had to stand down as bishop for a period. He was not able to make his farewell because his retirement had already been announced. Although he was completely exonerated by police and church, it was a long, cumbersome and distressing process. I hope lessons were learnt within the church from that. He was able to go back in June last year and, having had that agonising period, say farewell to a grateful diocese. We of course have had the pleasure in recent weeks of welcoming his replacement, the first of the women diocesan bishops, to your Lordships’ House.

I have cited these two cases, and I shall mention another because I knew the right honourable Edward Heath fairly well, in so far as one could know Ted Heath well. I was utterly astounded when accusations were made, and I was totally appalled at the way in which they were publicised by a senior police officer standing outside the late Sir Edward’s house in Salisbury and, in effect, saying, “If you have any complaints against the former Prime Minister, come forward”.

I hope those lessons from cases such as those to which I have referred have been adequately registered within the higher counsels of the church. The new powers and responsibilities that this Measure gives bishops are very considerable, and they must be exercised with enormous care and restraint and in the spirit that has been the watchword of legislation from Magna Carta onwards that an accused person is innocent until proved guilty. Too often in recent years, it has almost seemed the other way round.

Having had some distant knowledge of what the former Bishop of Gloucester went through, because we were in correspondence during his period of self-imposed exile—he stood down before he was suspended—I know a little of the agony that can be felt, particularly when the person is innocent. As one who fought for a constituent who had been wrongly imprisoned for sexual crimes, I also know how families can be destroyed. We know from the publicity surrounding the affair of Field Marshal Bramall that it would sometimes appear that on the flimsiest of evidence a man—or a woman, for that matter—can go through hell.

I mentioned this briefly when the Ecclesiastical Committee discussed this Measure, and I thought it right to put some remarks on the record as we debate it tonight. Indeed, I was encouraged to do so by a couple of colleagues on the committee. The Measure has my support. It is important as we have had some very sad cases of clergymen having indeed been found wanting. It is important that people have total trust in the church—indeed, in the churches, because this is by no means an Anglican problem. Wherever people are gathered together, this can be a problem, whether they be Christian or otherwise. It is vital that the Church of England has safeguarding measures in which the public can have confidence, but it is also right and proper that the church, above all institutions, should have regard to innocent until proven guilty; that every possible help, counsel and advice should be given to anyone who is suspended; and that, so far as is possible, the anonymity of an accused person is preserved until a charge is made. That is difficult in the case of a parish priest—the rumour will go around—but it is perhaps less difficult in the case of, for example, a treasurer or a churchwarden. However, it is important that anonymity is preserved so far as it can be unless and until a charge is laid.

I hope that when the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who introduced this Measure in a moderate way, comes to sum up what will probably be a brief debate, he will be able to give some further reassurance on the point that disturbs me and which I felt it was only right to voice in this Chamber in this debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, perhaps I may express the hope to the right reverend Prelate that when those decisions are made, they are made in a spirit of Christian charity. He says that lessons are being learnt all the time. Surely the lesson that should be learnt here is that to give great publicity to a possibility without giving any opportunity for it to be challenged is itself a rather dangerous precedent.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

I note the point. It is a very difficult decision to have to make. Again I refer noble Lords to the website because there is a very long article on it explaining the ins and outs. I am quite happy to go on the record as saying that one of the lessons learnt in this particular case is that our failing to acknowledge the immensity of the work that Bishop George Bell had done was a failure in our communications process. We should have done it in a different manner.

I hope that I have responded to all the questions raised and I am pleased that everyone who has spoken is supportive of the measure. Perhaps I may now move the Motion formally so that it can be presented to Her Majesty for Royal Assent.