Clergy Conduct Measure

Debate between Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Bishop of Manchester

Wednesday 24th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester for introducing the Measure and to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for setting out the work that the committee that she chairs and that Members, from your Lordships’ House and another place, have done as part of the scrutiny.

As the right reverend Prelate says, the Measure has been a long time in the making. It was first proposed in 2020 and originally approved by General Synod in 2025, but one can go back even further, because, as he and others have said, it implements the recommendations that were made by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which my noble friend Lady May of Maidenhead set up when she was the Home Secretary, in 2014, when I had the privilege of working for her as a special adviser.

Like many noble Lords, I was moved and impressed to hear the discussion between my noble friend and the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, who took part in the “Today” programme—my noble friend guest edited it over the Christmas period—talking about the extensive work that the Church has been doing to make sure that it is delivering for victims and survivors of abuse and speeding up the processes that it has to investigate questions of conduct. It is to be commended for that and for the attitude reflected by the comments of the right reverend Prelate that this is still ongoing work and that there is always more to do to make sure that the processes are working for victims and survivors. Our first thoughts must be with all of them today, as they have been in the debates throughout this Measure.

As we heard, slightly unusually, the Measure was first declared not expedient by the Ecclesiastical Committee. The dialogue between the two parliamentary bodies is a good one when looking at important Measures such as this. I welcome the engagement of the Church on that.

I have a few questions that relate to the changes that have been made to Section 31(3) and the central question of whether the court and tribunal hearings will now happen in public. I completely agree with what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said about the importance of transparency and accountability, and can understand why that change has been made, but these are complex issues that we are dealing with, and the Church is not a regular employer and this is not a regular type of job; this is a vocation and much broader. We ask a lot of our clergy; it is not a nine-to-five job or a Monday-to-Friday job either.

As the Measure sets out in Section 3(1)(d), the meaning of misconduct can include

“conduct which fails to meet the standards required of a clerk in Holy Orders”,

which is a broad term. As the Measure later sets out, supporting a particular political party or even voicing that support can be drawn into it. If a clerk in Holy Orders is divorced, they must tell their bishop within 28 days. Of course, some clergy are not permitted to marry: if you are a gay cleric, you are allowed to form a civil partnership, but it must be a celibate one. These are sensitive issues that do not apply to regular workplaces.

Can the right reverend Prelate say a little about whether allegations of previous relationships that clergy might have had would be covered by the hearing in public or by the new provisions of Section 31(3)(b)? These allow future rules to set out circumstances where, in sensitive cases, they can be heard without some of the prurient details of people’s private lives being brought into it. That would be useful to hear.

The Living Ministry study has found that, of clergy surveyed, 40% feel isolated in their ministry, 41% feel demoralised and 35% have shown signs of mild or clinical depression. Speeding up the system is good for those who are accused, as well as for those who bring complaints. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I welcome the provisions on vexatious complaints. I agree with her about not being speedy in our litigiousness and sorting things out in a human way, as well as having these proper and formal structures to investigate more serious complaints.

We all appreciate that this is a deeply sensitive and complex area. We are appreciative of the work that has gone into this, in the General Synod and the Ecclesiastical Committee here. I note in the report that the committee is picking up the point about the Henry VIII powers. We are strict with Governments in this House on that and, seeing as it is to Henry VIII that we owe the existence of the Church of England, we will be no more sparing in our criticism of secondary powers with the Lords spiritual.

If the right reverend Prelate can say a bit about that, we would welcome it. I thank him and colleagues for the work that they have done and look forward to this new Measure delivering speedier justice for victims and those accused alike.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate and for the questions that have been raised. I particularly thank the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for the scrutiny that she and her committee have given to this matter. I would be grateful if she could pass that on to the committee when it is next in session.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, referred to IICSA. I was another person who gave evidence in person at IICSA. I was the expert on Anglican religious monastic communities before IICSA. It was a gruelling experience to hear some of the horrific things that had been done by people who were claiming that this was an expression of monastic life when it was far from it. The noble Baroness asked about review and reporting structures. Under the existing Clergy Discipline Measure, there is a clergy discipline commission. Similarly, there will be a clergy conduct commission as part of the new Measure, which will constantly review how the Measure is working and whether it needs tweaking here or there. It will produce regular reports to the General Synod, as its predecessor has done. That will allow us to keep the Measure under review at all times.

This raises the question, as the noble Baroness said, of how you make minor changes. We hope that minor changes will largely be made to the rules or to the code. The rules will be laid before Parliament under the negative procedure, if I recollect correctly, so there will be an opportunity for Parliament to comment if there are issues with them. Minor changes that way can be dealt with fairly quickly. I expect that at some time in its life the Measure will need more substantial amendments: that has been the case with the existing Measure. It was produced in 2003, but a number of amendments have been made to it in the years since—particularly in areas around safeguarding, not least so that in safeguarding cases the one-year rule of timing out complaints did not apply. We are extending that in the new Measure to all things that fall at the serious misconduct level, rather than just those that are about safeguarding abuse.

Safeguarding is well integrated. We are going through a process, diocese by diocese and cathedral by cathedral, of independent audits by the INEQE organisation. Manchester gets its turn in May of next year. I have been struck by how positive many of those reports have been as they have come out. They have shown a very different picture of safeguarding in the Church of England today from what it clearly was sometimes in the past. While we are not complacent and those reports are providing us with further areas of work to do, we are conscious that significant progress has been made. That external scrutiny by an organisation that has nothing to do with the Church of England I am sure will continue on a regular basis. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that there will be that kind of auditing of what is going on, and not the Church marking its own homework.

Again on safeguarding, earlier this year your Lordships’ House approved the safeguarding redress Measure. I was the vice-chair of the committee that produced that Measure. Once it is completed, the legal processes will offer a means of redress that is far beyond anything that has been possible before. It picks up much of what was in the IICSA report. IICSA did suggest that government might want to have some sort of redress scheme. We have not seen that yet from Governments of either party, but we have seen that from the Church of England.

The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, reminded us that having the hearings in public is one way of giving the public confidence in how matters are being dealt with. But the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, rightly asks what we do about matters where the interest might be prurience, or where details are discussed where a member of the clergy has a failing in some respect that is not necessarily appropriate for airing in public. Under the existing Measure it is done in private, and I have not yet seen a complaint of that nature ever brought to me in the many complaints I have had to deal with over more than 25 years as a bishop. There will be provision under the new system, and the rules will specify in greater detail that cases, or parts of cases dealing with such details, can be heard in private. That will allow sensitive details to be handled, for matters that should not be coming into the public domain. I hope the noble Lord will accept my assurances on that.

If this was a nine-to-five job, I would have gone home quite a while ago. It is not, but it is one I owe to King Henry VIII, because I sit in this House and indeed in my see by virtue of powers appropriated by the Crown that previously to Henry VIII belonged to the papacy. I have much for which to be grateful to the late King. I hope that with those comments, your Lordships will feel it right to let this go through.

Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Debate between Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Bishop of Manchester

Committee stage
Monday 10th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 25, which was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, and to which, as he set out in opening the debate on this group of amendments, I added my name. I did so because this amendment sits very well alongside the other amendments that he has brought forward on behalf of the heritage rail sector and which we debated earlier in Committee. As with those amendments, it applies to a huge range of organisations, well beyond heritage rail or indeed heritage alone. It follows the thoughts that we expressed previously in Committee, and as many noble Lords did at Second Reading, about the importance of volunteers to so much of the cultural, sporting and heritage voluntary sector that we are championing and have very much in mind as we look at the Bill.

I am very glad that noble Lords have had smaller venues in mind as they have looked at this amendment. They are particularly reliant on volunteers—some of them all the more so since the changes in the Budget to national insurance contributions, which have made organisations that are run on a very tight margin more reliant on people who give their time freely.

There are so many barriers to people being volunteers. The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, mentioned briefly the cost of transport: if you are travelling to a heritage railway, you often travel many miles at your own expense, filling the car with petrol in order to get there. There are many barriers that put people off volunteering and enriching our lives, and we must make sure that this does not become another of them.

The people who volunteer and look after the public in these venues are no less diligent, professional and concerned about the safety of those who come to enjoy those venues, but they certainly need the help, assistance and training that the noble Lord envisages through his amendment. It must be provided in a different way from the way in which is mandated and applied to full-time employees. As the noble Lord says, many volunteers are seasonal and sporadic, so it is important that they are able to refresh their training—for example, students who have volunteered, gone away to university and come back, will need a way of being trained up again and refreshed in these responsibilities.

It is important to note that, because of the serious nature of these new duties on people who look after our cultural venues, they might appear scary. It is important that the training disabuses volunteers of such notions. As the noble Lord, Lord Mann, rightly says, we want to avoid the sort of panic and chaos that come if people are not prepared mentally and practically for how they will deal with the sorts of scenarios that we envisage as we look at the Bill but hope do not come to pass.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, says, the alternative, if there is not the provision that the noble Lord sets out in his Amendment 25, is the snake-oil salesmen that we heard about at Second Reading. They are already offering their views on how to implement the provisions in the Bill before it is an Act of Parliament, and charging small venues huge amounts of money to do it. They are leaving them worse prepared and more frightened about the scenarios that they have to think about.

The noble Lord, Lord Falconer, has been very modest in his amendment: it is a “may” and not a “must” duty. There is much to commend the amendments in this group from the noble Baronesses, Lady Suttie and Lady Hamwee, but those are “must” amendments while that in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, is a “may”. It would make the voluntary job of people who look after these venues a lot easier, and I hope that the Government will look favourably on it.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I will speak in favour of the amendments in this group, particularly that in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester. I have an interest to declare, in that I have 250 or 300 church buildings in my diocese that will come under the terms of the Bill when it is enacted.

I turn first to the provision of training. When, about 20 years ago, I first became a trustee of a large defined benefit pension scheme, it was quite scary, but I found that the Pensions Regulator provided me with training, which, as far I could work out, was free for me at the point of access. The principle that training should be provided and not just left to the private sector—to the snake-oil sales men or women, as the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, just referred to—is important, so that the state can provide good training or enable it to be provided. Similarly, back in 2000, I was involved with a group of friends when the asylum seeker dispersal scheme first began. I set up and won the contract for Yorkshire and the Humber to prove that this could be done morally and effectively, and not simply as a rent-seeking exercise at the expense of the asylum seeker.

State provision, ideally of a good standard that would drive up the quality of standards provided by alternative providers—the amendment does not say it all has to be done through the state—is much to be welcomed.

I recall the difference between volunteers and paid staff. As the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, said, for something that might be covered by one full-time staff member, it takes quite a number of volunteers, each giving small amounts of their time, to make happen. In my churches I have many volunteers—probably several thousand in the diocese of Manchester—who require DBS clearance for their work with children or vulnerable adults. The law is that those who are volunteers get the DBS clearance process for free; I have to pay for clergy and other paid staff of the diocese, but for volunteers it is provided free of charge. It is a good idea to find ways to help the many volunteers who enable small organisations, whether they are churches, heritage railways or small football clubs. My football club, Salford City, is in a rather lower league than the top two, but, again, there are many volunteers on duty to make sure that things are carried out properly.

I support the amendments in this group and hope that we can find some way of ensuring that good-quality training is provided that will avoid voluntary organisations in particular falling into the hands of those who will either charge them so much that they give up or exploit them for their own ends.

CCTV

Debate between Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Bishop of Manchester

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

All police forces are compelled to follow data protection legislation, which is regulated by the Information Commissioner’s Office. They must also comply with human rights and equalities legislation, which is regulated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. So there is a universal application of those across all forces.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of the Greater Manchester Police independent ethics committee. Can the Minister tell us what the Government’s assessment is of the use of CCTV in conjunction with live facial recognition technology by police across the UK, and what legal safeguards are in place to ensure that fundamental rights are upheld?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Polls show that there is public support and, indeed, an expectation on the police to use technology such as this, particularly from victims and their families, to prevent, detect and investigate crime. There is a comprehensive legal framework covering its use. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, mentioned the potential for bias against people from ethnic minority backgrounds. When using it, police must comply with the public sector equality duty, and a human operator is also important in this regard.