Diocese in Europe Measure
Debate between Lord Bishop of Newcastle and Lord Lloyd of Berwick
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
My Lords, the purpose of this short Measure is twofold: to bring the Diocese in Europe more into the mainstream of the Church of England’s financial arrangements, and to update one important aspect of its synodical governance.
On the first point, on financial systems, the Measure will widen the discretionary powers of the Church Commissioners and the Archbishops’ Council to make grants to the Diocese in Europe. It will enable the diocese to become eligible to receive grants for the same range of purposes as our other dioceses in England. At present, payments can be made only in accordance with the powers conferred on the commissioners by the Diocese in Europe Measure 1980. That provides for the commissioners to pay the costs of the bishops’ ministry and housing. The proposed new power to make payments for the development of the mission of the Diocese in Europe is sufficiently wide to enable the commissioners and the council to respond to evolving needs. The Measure does not seek to specify what level of national support the diocese might receive in the future. If the Measure is passed, the level of any grants to be made to the diocese will be determined as part of the usual wider discussions on the distribution of money available from the Church Commissioners’ funds. The first occasion on which that could happen would be when spending plans for 2014 to 2016 are discussed later this year.
Clause 2 deals with references under Article 8 of the constitution of the General Synod of the Church of England. Article 8 provides that permanent changes to the services of baptism or holy communion or in the ordinal, and certain changes in the Church of England’s relations with other churches, must be referred to the dioceses for approval before they can proceed to final approval by the General Synod. In all English dioceses the reference is made to the diocesan synod. At present, in Europe, references are made to the bishops’ council and standing committee, because when the diocese was established there was no diocesan synod at all. However, the Diocese in Europe now has had its own diocesan synod for a number of years, and therefore it seems very appropriate to amend the legislation to bring the procedure into line with the other dioceses in England. I beg to move.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
My Lords, there is very little that I can add to what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle has said. However, I would like to draw attention very briefly to the evidence given by the current Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe at page 79 of the report. He told us that the diocese has doubled in size since it came into existence in 2008. He meant size not in a geographical sense, because it could not get any bigger than it already is, but in the number of its congregations. So it can be regarded, in many ways, as a success story. It now has, as has been pointed out, a diocesan synod that meets in Cologne, and that makes it possible, therefore, to bring this diocese more into line with the other dioceses of the Church of England. The Ecclesiastical Committee had no difficulty in finding the Measure expedient. I support the Motion.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
I think that we will come to that issue when we deal with the other Measure, which follows immediately after this. I did not mean to interrupt, but I think it will come better at that stage.
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for their comments and support of this Motion. I therefore ask the House to approve it.
Clergy Discipline (Amendment) Measure
Debate between Lord Bishop of Newcastle and Lord Lloyd of Berwick
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
My Lords, disciplinary proceedings for misconduct by Church of England clergy are governed by the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003, which has been in force since l January 2006. The 2003 Measure enables diocesan bishops to deal with formal complaints against the clergy. Where appropriate, and subject to the procedures provided in the Clergy Discipline Measure, the bishop can impose penalties on a cleric who has committed misconduct. That can include, in the most serious of cases, removal from office and prohibition from ministry. For the few cases that cannot be resolved by the bishop, the 2003 Measure has established a modern tribunal system that is compliant with human rights legislation.
This Clergy Discipline (Amendment) Measure amends the 2003 Measure in four main respects. First, the amending Measure in Section 1 will provide an exception to the principle that no proceedings for unbecoming conduct can be taken in respect of the lawful political opinions or activities of Church of England clergy. The new exception relates to racial equality, because under this amending Measure it will be misconduct for Church of England clergy to be members of or actively support a party or other organisation that has been declared to be incompatible with the teachings of the church in relation to racial equality. Because the bishops are the guardians of the doctrine of the church, it will be the House of Bishops that will decide which organisations are incompatible with the church’s teachings. However, any declaration would not come into force if the General Synod disagreed with the declaration.
Although this provision will affect the rights of clergy under the European Convention on Human Rights, especially in relation to Articles 10 and 11—on freedom of expression and freedom of association—it will do so only in a way that is compatible with the convention and solely with regard to the fundamental area of racial equality. The church itself has rights under the convention, in particular under Article 9—on freedom of thought, conscience and religion—and is entitled to ensure that its clergy adhere to its teachings, and to discipline those that do not.
The second main area of reform is in respect of appeals from the findings of disciplinary tribunals. Under the 2003 Measure, there is an absolute right of appeal to an appellate court, and pending any appeal a stay is imposed on the implementation of the penalty. This means that a priest who has no prospect of success can launch an appeal against a finding of misconduct, hold on to office meanwhile, and frustrate and delay the final resolution of the complaint, which is unjust for the complainant, for the parish concerned and for the wider church. Clause 3 of the amending Measure will require a prospective appellant to obtain leave to appeal before making the appeal. That will not remove the cleric’s right to appeal; it merely puts in place a kind of sieve procedure so that hopeless appeals are stopped and dealt with swiftly and fairly. The church, in introducing this amendment, is taking account of the practice in secular courts where leave to appeal is usually required before an appeal can be pursued.
The third main area where the amending Measure makes change is with regard to the powers of the bishop. At the moment, a bishop can remove from office and prohibit from ministry without further proceedings a priest or deacon who has been convicted of a criminal offence if a prison sentence has been imposed by the criminal court. But there have been cases where a serious crime has been committed and the priest has been given a non-custodial sentence and, in those circumstances, the bishop currently has no power to act unless and until a formal complaint is made, and then only if the priest consents to the penalty imposed by the bishop. The amending Measure will enable a bishop to remove from office and prohibit from ministry a cleric who is convicted of certain criminal offences regardless of whether a prison sentence has been imposed. The amending Measure will also enable the bishop to remove from office a cleric who has been adjudged by the Disclosure and Barring Service to be a risk to children or vulnerable adults and who has accordingly been entered on either of the barred lists under the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006. This is surely a desirable improvement.
In addition to these three important areas of reform, the amending Measure makes a number of modest amendments to the 2003 Measure which are essentially of a technical nature. For example, paragraph 5 of the schedule makes amendments with regard to the appointment of members of a disciplinary tribunal and of the two provincial appellate courts.
I hope that this necessarily brief outline of the amending Measure will show that, beneath the rather technical complexity of it all, it will improve the church’s disciplinary procedures, which are indeed already regarded as working well. The Measure rightly received overwhelming support in the General Synod—212 votes in favour, with just two votes against and one recorded abstention—and I commend it to the House.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
Again, my Lords, there is very little that I wish to add to what the right reverend Prelate has said, although there is of course more meat in this Measure than in the other. Its purpose is to amend the existing Measure of 2003. I draw attention in this case to the care with which these Measures have been prepared by the legislative committee of the Synod and presented to the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament. That was especially so in this case, where the comments and explanations submitted to the Ecclesiastical Committee extend from page 15 to page 35 of its report on the Measure and are exceptionally thorough. I suspect that the committee and the House generally should be very grateful to the legislative committee for taking so much trouble.
As the right reverend Prelate has pointed out, the Measure deals with four areas which are set out on page 15 of the report. Of these, the one which was potentially the most controversial was Clause 1, which has already been touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, relating to misconduct. There were a number of questions on that, at page 83 of the report, starting with a question from Sir Peter Bottomley—question 10—and then a question from the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and finally a question from the noble Lord, Lord Laming. I hope that the noble Lord will agree that all those questions were adequately answered by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford.
The other area of importance was the abolition of the automatic right of appeal; now there needs to be leave to appeal which would come before a court of two. That question was dealt with by Charles George QC, the Dean of the Arches, who made the interesting point that the number of appeals has been extremely small; but he also said that, if minded to refuse leave to appeal, he would always give reasons. Once again, the Ecclesiastical Committee had little difficulty in finding this Measure expedient, so I support the Motion.