Channel Islands Measure

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con) [V]]

My Lords, unlike other distinguished Members of this House who have taken part in this debate, and who in some cases have enormous experience of these issues, I have no interests to declare of close connections to the hierarchy of the Church of England, and I have been a not too regular communicant over the years. However, I am a lawyer, and am most interested to see equity and justice.

At one level this is a simple transfer of oversight over the Channel Islands or bailiwicks from one mainland diocese to another—from Winchester to Salisbury—but to me, as a relative outsider, it raises a number of questions, especially now that I have read the papers and reports, from the commission of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, so ably chaired by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Chartres, and the Ecclesiastical Committee’s evidence session on 19 June. I have concluded that a set of unfortunate human relations breakdowns and misunderstandings are the basis of these proposals. Is that a good enough reason for this massive constitutional change? There have been a number of problems, not just one, but is this not using a mallet to crack a nut? Can the right reverend Prelate comment on this?

Also, it appears that there has been a long period—some seven years—with no proper relationship in place between the islands and the mainland Church. Was this not detrimental to the care and protection of the islanders? Looking at the historical issues, the link with the Winchester diocese has, as the right reverend Prelate pointed out, been maintained since 1569, through war and peace, so simply replacing one diocese with another without the same long connection needs a good reason. As the commission’s report also states, none of this should be agreed without a more thorough examination of the legal and constitutional relationships between the Channel Islands and the mainland in Church matters. Again, the excellent report of the commission highlights that mere understandings going back 400 years were not really sufficient to handle disciplinary matters or changes in international human rights rules, and not sufficiently precise in direction to deal with disputes between islands and mainland, and, more practically, between different grades in the Church hierarchy.

I am interested in hearing the right reverent Prelate’s responses, but I am forced to conclude that we must be very careful not to make such radical changes in institutional structures for what might appear, to the layman at least, to be situations which surely are soluble in some other way.