Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015 (Extension) Bill [HL]

Lord Scriven Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 10th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to bring a secular voice to the debate on this Bill. If 26 of the established Church’s Bishops continue to get automatic rights to sit in the UK Parliament then, as a matter of principle, equality for women to sit here has to be central to that to deal with the institutional misogyny that has created a lack of equality and opportunity for women in the Church of England, and to which new Bishops are appointed to this House. But what a fascinating and interesting position the country finds itself in that the Parliament of the UK must give legislative time to deal with the established Church’s centuries of discrimination against women taking senior roles and the slow progress it has made in ensuring that women Bishops have equal rights in this House.

We need to look a bit further at why the established Church has been so slow to deal with this discrimination, to see whether it is really committed to equality for women within its structures and to ensure that it is really committed to dealing with the misogyny and believes in the true equality of women within its structures, which is the basis the Bill is established on.

I ask noble Lords to imagine if a colleague of theirs, due to his deeply held beliefs, refused to follow this manager’s instructions simply because that manager was a woman. What would happen? In almost all cases, this would be unacceptable. Places of work would not tolerate it, and would probably find themselves on the wrong side of the law if they did. Although both sex and religion or belief are protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, the law is clear that individuals cannot discriminate against their colleagues just because their religion says they should.

However, that discrimination still exists within the established Church, with a whole system that allows this to happen. The language used to describe and hide it is almost poetic. The CofE calls it “mutual flourishing”. Does that not conjure up a warm and sunlit world, one of equal relationships where all sides are equal and can flourish and reach their full potential based on mutual respect regardless of their sex or who they are?

In practice, it is far from that. There has been a total abdication of responsibility by the leaders of the established Church since 2014, when women bishops were agreed to by the General Synod. A system has been set up to appease the misogyny—a system that is more about keeping the Church of England together rather than one built on mutual respect and equality for all. It is a system that the present leadership of the Church of England encourages and supports. It is not mutual flourishing but a system of institutionalised misogyny.

In practice, what “mutual flourishing” means is that individual churches can refuse to accept women as priests or vicars. The CofE also permits churches to reject the authority of a female bishop. So the state Church affirms women as equal while at the same saying that it is alright for some churches not to accept them. In fact, nearly 600 churches reject the authority of women and flock under the frocks of what are referred to as “flying bishops”. Individual churches are permitted to refuse female vicars and are given the right to be overseen by flying bishops who also oppose women’s ordination, instead of their local bishop, male or female, who ordains women.

In fact, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, who has been in her position since 2018, was on occasions required to delegate her authority to the Bishop of Fulham, a more junior bishop. Women in London, as well as elsewhere in the country, have pointed out that churches will not accept their applications for the post of vicar, and it is almost impossible for women to be appointed vicar at some large churches in the capital of this country.

How can it be in 2024 that the state Church is still discriminating against women, who represent about two-thirds of its congregation and half the population of this country? Does the Leader of the House feel it is correct that, ultimately, the Church of England should end its exemption under the Equality Act and stop legitimising the theology that some of its churches use to limit women’s ministry and equality when this Parliament is giving time to ensure that women Bishops can sit in this House more equally as a matter of principle? The Church of England loves to give the impression that the battle over women’s ministry is all sorted now but let us be clear: there is a long way to go.

From a secular point of view, this raises the wider question of why in 2024, as alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, some 26 seats in this Parliament are in the automatic gift of the state Church. As the Reverend Canon Ian Gomersall said in an illuminating letter in the Times yesterday:

“The anomaly of having Church of England bishops in the House of Lords is compounded by the fact that the clerics in the Lords are from only one church of only one of the four nations of the United Kingdom. On top of this, the Church of England is not the largest worshipping community in the UK”.


In fact, less than 1% of the adult population attends a CofE service on a regular basis.

As the Reverend Canon Gomersall went on to say, removing the Bishops from the House of Lords

“would be not only an act of fairness and justice but also a step towards developing democracy in parliament. Their removal from the Lords would also give the bishops more time to focus on their diocesan duties at this time when the Church of England is in significant decline”.

Any serious proposals to reform the House of Lords must address the unjustified privilege of the state Church Bishops’ Bench. Indeed, 62% of the population, when asked, say that no religious clerics should have an automatic right to seats in the House of Lords. That would not stop the contribution of Bishops to this House, if they were appointed on their own merit as life Peers, but, after a century of decline in religious attendance in Britain, the claim that Bishops or any other religious representatives speak for any significant constituency is unwarranted and does not stand up to scrutiny.

Bishops do not have any special insight. The idea that Bishops or any other religious leaders have a monopoly on issues of morality is offensive to many non-religious citizens. Those of us who profess no religion are no less capable of making moral and ethical judgments. Furthermore, tell the victims of child abuse in the state Church—whose most senior leaders turned away from them, refused to believe them, told them to move on and systematically did not deal with the perpetrators of such abuse—that senior Bishops in the state Church have a superior moral compass.

In a democracy, no religion or its leaders should have a privileged role in the legislature. If the Government are serious about reforms to this House, then the Bench that dare not speak its name in such reform—the Bishops’ Bench—has to be part of that reform. I ask the noble Baroness the Leader of the House whether the Bishops’ automatic right to sit in this House will be part of the consultation that the Government are going to undertake on Lords reform.