Tackling Child Sexual Abuse

Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to have this short session this evening. I also gave evidence at IICSA in person: I was an expert witness on Anglican religious communities, because that was one of the guises in which Bishop Peter Ball had justified his abuse.

I want to pick up on mandatory reporting, which has been referred to already. For some in the Church of England, and for many in the Roman Catholic Church and some other churches as well, the tradition of the seal of the confessional has been honoured for many centuries and established in canon law in this land. There is an arguable case that the seal allows somebody—and it is more likely to be a victim or witness who comes to the confessional—to make a kind of protected disclosure, which then often would lead to them being helped to make a more public disclosure and allow a perpetrator to be taken to justice. I hope there will be careful discussions with religious bodies as to exactly where the seal of the confessional will fit in with this; I know my Catholic colleagues will particularly be concerned around that. We want what will produce the best safeguarding, but it is not simply that mandatory reporting or getting rid of the seal of the confessional will get better reporting at the end of the day.

On redress, I am vice chair of the Church of England redress board. We are setting up our own scheme because we just could not be bothered to wait for the IICSA recommendation on redress to come into force. But we also think it is important that we are the ones who will be paying out the money where we did wrong to somebody—whether it was in the original abuse, in colluding with a cover-up or in failing to take a disclosure seriously. I would appreciate the Minister’s comments on whether, if we do have a national redress scheme, there will be some effort to recoup the costs from the bodies that were responsible for the abuse, or covering up the abuse, in the first instance, rather than this simply being something that the taxpayer ends up picking up.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for his approach to the issue. I hope I can reassure him that I have already had representations from churches, and I have received at the Home Office a delegation from a cross-religious group to discuss the very issue that he has mentioned about the relationship between the priest or vicar and the individual. I want to explore that and I have given a commitment to discuss that further with those from the churches who made contact with me, and we have had submissions on that. I cannot give him definitive, final positions today, but I hope that we can debate this during the course of the passage of the Bill in this House.

I recognise that the issue of a redress scheme is extremely important. I recognise that victims and survivors will probably be very disappointed that the Government are not yet able to commit to a redress scheme. For those who know the internal workings of government, there is a spending review in the current climate and we have to work through that spending review. I cannot give a commitment today on that issue, but I hope that the right reverend Prelate knows that it is certainly a recommendation to government, and we will examine and respond in due course.