Clergy Conduct Measure

Debate between Baroness Brinton and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Wednesday 24th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest that one of my sons is a priest in the Church of England.

I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester for introducing the Measure to your Lordships’ House today, and the Ecclesiastical Committee for its helpful report on the revised Clergy Conduct Measure, published earlier this month, both of which have been very helpful. I also thank those people who have provided briefings and comments ahead of this debate.

My Front-Bench portfolio—victims and vulnerable people—means that I have a particular interest in formal processes to investigate and remedy complaints, whether minor or very serious. I should also add that, as president of the Lib Dems between 2015 and 2019, I was a witness at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse regarding historical sexual abuse by a senior Liberal Party MP. As president, I was involved with changes to our own party’s disciplinary process and worked with the Committee on Standards in Public Life, as well as my opposite numbers in other parties at that time. Some of my questions today reflect my experience of those processes a few years down the line.

Assessing how process works in practice is where I want to start. The statement of purpose for the CCM currently speaks of preserving

“the collective good standing of clergy”.

If viewed from the Church of England’s perspective, this is logical. A new Measure should work so well that it will root out established poor behaviour through a transparent process in which all participants feel heard, even if one party disagrees with the outcome. That would certainly speak to the continuing of the collective good standing of the clergy.

However, those with experience of past complaints under previous Measures that were unsatisfactory might be concerned that this would repeat the old practice, where the good standing of the clergy was there to protect the Church of England, regardless of the claimant and the cleric. That, of course, would be a failure, so it is good to hear the Bishop explain to your Lordships’ House how this system will work.

My first question is: what review and reporting structures will there be to ensure that it is the former and not the latter outcome? Which bodies in the Church will see annual general reports on how the system is working? If minor changes need to be made in practice, is there capacity to do this without starting all over again through synod and then Parliament?

I move on to the details of the process. The division into four categories of complaint is helpful, as is the flexibility for the assessor and/or the bishop to change or reallocate the complaint, in the words of the Measure, if further evidence surfaced so that it needed to move into a different category. I am pleased to see a formal process for vexatious complaints and litigants. It is a sad part of the tribalisation of our society that far too many people move straight to complaints and use the law repeatedly, rather than all parties being more considered and discussing things earlier on in the process —where that is appropriate, of course. It is clearly not in some of the more serious cases that are likely to appear.

The changes in process to reflect the IICSA recommendations are also clear and helpful, and it is right that the penalty by consent, where a penalty was agreed with a bishop entirely in private, has been abolished. The previous arrangement would inevitably lead complainants to believe that deals were being done behind the scenes. That is never good, so it is good that it has gone.

I also want to examine the boundaries between safeguarding and the complaints procedure, because the safeguarding procedure and the complaints procedure are separate but interlinked. IICSA’s full report demonstrated the failures of a number of organisations in our society that at best ignored warnings about abuse and at worst hid appalling long-term abuse by people involved. How will the Church judge the very different needs of a safeguarding service and a conduct process? It is vital that they are not separated but that they are different.

Finally, I note that the Ecclesiastical Committee report expresses concern that it was disappointed that its comments in a previous report about meeting in public were not taken into account, so it was good to hear from the right reverend Prelate that this has now been accepted. Accountability and safeguarding must be at the heart of any process like this, and transparency is also vital. As long as synod and other relevant bodies regularly see the annual data on complaints, including those unfounded or vexatious complaints and allegations of sexual behaviour, then the Church has the mechanism to monitor the type of cases and the judgments in those cases over time. Only that way will the Church get a clear idea of whether it has a fully functioning process. That is because the Church must be firm on dealing with those who are perpetrators of abuse, but also clear when vexatious claims are made to undermine clergy. That is a hard task, but I believe this Measure and its process appears to have the capability to do so. I wish it well.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to the report that I seek leave to present to the House, as chairman of the Ecclesiastical Committee. I will leave the answers to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, to the right reverend Prelate, although I will make just one or two comments.

I chair the Ecclesiastical Committee, which was created in 1919 as a statutory committee, oddly, and not a Select Committee, which means we do not have parliamentary privilege—which every now again I need to remind the 15 MPs and 15 Peers who are its members. Our entire duty is to scrutinise the Measures of General Synod before they reach both Houses of Parliament. The right reverend Prelate gave the exact date, 2003, when there was last a finding by a previous committee of a Measure being inexpedient. Since then, every Measure passed has been accepted by the committee that I now chair.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Brinton and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Report stage
Tuesday 11th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I very much deprecate people who come to this country and commit crimes. The sooner they are deported, the better. However, I do not really understand why we need these amendments. I am hoping that the Minister is going to tell us, as he previously said he would, how the Government are going to move forward in identifying the age of people. Again, I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, that those who are not children—and pretend to be—should be found out.

However, as I said at an earlier stage of discussion on the Bill, when I went to a drop-in centre with Safe Passage some years ago, I met two 16 year-old Afghans: one with a beard and the other with a bushy moustache. We need to recognise that boys in other parts of the world mature, particularly facially, at a much earlier age than they do in this country and in western Europe. That is an issue which raises real problems for identification.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, and the noble Lord, Lord Harper, that, over the last four to five years, we have been round the Houses on this issue, not just in this Bill but in a large number of Bills. It keeps returning because there are concerns.

I want to start by trying to find some common ground on this issue, as we did last week, with the noble Lord, Lord Harper, in particular. Age verification—determining whether someone is 18 or not—is extremely difficult. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, it is completely inappropriate for people who are well over 18 to come into a school system where they are treated as much younger, and even these Benches would not support that.

The difficulty—and the reason why we keep raising this—is that it is clear that no doctor will apply any of the scientific methods. We have had this debate since 2023, when the BMA made it clear that they were unreliable. On that occasion, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, spoke in your Lordships’ House about how hormonal change because of poor diet, and the possibility of hormonal change because of minor and benign tumours, are impossible to tell just from looking at an MRI.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Brinton and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

Does the noble Baroness have any figures for the number of young people whose ages are in dispute, because I suspect that there are not that many? We may be worrying about a relatively small number of people compared with the huge number who are seeking asylum.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful to the noble and learned Baroness and say again to the Minister, who will probably curse me for it, that there is no data and we need that data to understand the size of the problem. It must be not just pure data about age. It must also be about the response when children or young people are placed in the wrong one, and what support they need. I will leave it there.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Brinton and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I find it rather odd to read these two amendments. I am not party political. I sat through a large amount of legislation by the last Government: the Nationality and Borders Act, the Illegal Migration Act and the Rwanda Act. There was a great deal of legislation but there were remarkably few people actually deported. There appeared to be, within the last year of the last Government, even fewer people being deported. There seemed to be—if I might put it like this—almost a degree of lethargy. So listening to the way in which the noble Lord has put forward these two amendments makes me feel, to some extent, astonished. What they are asking of this Government, as far as I can see, is what in legislation they achieved but in deportation they did not achieve. They are expecting this Government to do what the last Government did not do. Sitting as I do on the sidelines, listening to what parliamentarians say and to what the Opposition say to the Government, I find it difficult to see why the Government should have to respond to this. It really seems quite extraordinary.

Following on from what the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, has just said, in subsection (3) of the proposed new clause to be inserted by Amendment 109, there are four ways in which somebody could be returned. One is to

“a country of which P is a national”.

I understand—and they understand, and have said so quite properly—that they would not send the person back to a genuinely unsafe country. So an Afghan would not go back to Afghanistan, I assume, and probably a Syrian might not, even now, go back to Syria. That is where we start.

Then we have

“a country or territory in which P has obtained a passport or other document”.

Is that country automatically going to receive this particular person?

Number three, at paragraph (c), is

“a country or territory in which P embarked for the United Kingdom”.

Again, is that country—mainly France, or Belgium or Holland, I would expect, which are the nearest countries—going to be expected to take back every person who comes over? At the moment, the Government are negotiating a pilot scheme for a few to be taken back. I would have thought that the French would simply say certainly not.

The fourth one is

“a country or territory to which there is reason to believe P will be admitted”.

That is a sensible proposal, but where is that country? At the moment, from what we have heard, there are not likely to be many countries which would want to take the majority of people who have come to this country illegally. As I said earlier, I find these two amendments astonishing.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who eloquently set out some of the history of the most recent slew of immigration Acts.

I have a slightly more practical question for both the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, and the Minister, which relates to the various lists of safe countries. The Opposition will discuss their Amendment 120 later. In Amendment 109, proposed new subsection (5) states:

“P may be removed to a country or territory … only if it is listed in”


their proposed new schedule. That schedule is in Amendment 120, where, for many of the countries listed, it states “in respect of men”—in other words, men will be regarded as safe to go back to that country. However, many of those countries already have severe discrimination against LGBT people, including men. In some countries, it is punishable by death and, in others, by imprisonment—but, much more importantly, society feels at liberty to attack and kill gay men. I ask both the Minister and the Opposition spokesperson: what happens to an individual in that position, where the country is regarded to be safe in general but for one group of people it is clearly not?