Church of Scotland (Lord High Commissioner) Bill

Baroness Goldie Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 19th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, while it is not a registrable interest, I am a member of the Church of Scotland, an elder of the Church and, with recent effect, a worship leader. With that background, I value the presence of the Bishops in your Lordships’ House as Lords spiritual; I am not sure that we voice that appreciation often enough. It is good to see the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London in her place: I see her and her spiritual colleagues less as advocates for the Church of England and much more as disciples of Christ and the manifestation of a Christian presence in Parliament, and I welcome that enhancement.

I am not precious about which Christian denomination discharges that role, and that is not intended to be disrespectful to the Church of England. What matters to me is that, across our different Christian denominations, we believe in the word of God as contained in the scriptures and we seek to live out that example. That is the tremendous strength that we have in common and what cements us together. So, as a child growing up in a sectarian Scotland, there was a lot which I found baffling. I heard the playground slights, the derogatory remarks about those from a different Christian background. What I found increasingly incomprehensible was that these two denominations, the Protestant Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church were apparently commanded to do the same thing, to

“love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and … love thy neighbour as thyself”.

Perversely, this was traduced by so-called adherents of both Churches to a crass representation of hatred, intolerance and bigotry.

Let me be clear that the transgressors were not the practitioners within the two denominations but the so-called hangers-on, whose grasp of theology was tenuous, whose bigotry was entrenched and who personified a complete absence of Christian love and forgiveness. People were judged, dismissed as of no value and written off because of their surname, how they spelled their surname or where they went to school. Fortunately, increasing enlightenment and tolerance over decades have brought about much-needed change. I pay tribute to all the Churches in Scotland, the Scottish Parliament, the politicians and the charities that have worked so hard to erase this ugly stain of sectarianism.

My own parish church in Bishopton has a great relationship with our friends in Our Lady of Lourdes, the local Roman Catholic church, and there are many similar examples to be found across Scotland. Playing her part in this transformation with characteristic skill and compassion was Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The historic and memorable visit by Pope Benedict to Scotland in 2010, when he was received by Her Majesty at Holyrood Palace, was a watershed moment. I was privileged to be there and the sense of history being made, of a new age of tolerance, was tangible.

This Bill is the essence of brevity but, in simple terms, removes an unjustifiable inequality. It abolishes an impediment which has existed for 196 years to a person of the Roman Catholic faith becoming, at the choice of the monarch, the Lord High Commissioner of the Church of Scotland. A Christian might be moved to say “Amen: what more is there to add?” As a Member of your Lordships’ House, I say, “A wrong at last righted, and high time too”. I can think of no more appropriate and distinguished incumbent under these new arrangements than Lady Elish Angiolini. To her, I extend my very best wishes and I support the Bill.