Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Spelman and Kevin Foster

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Dame Caroline Spelman)]

Parish churches will be welcoming parents and families especially back to church this weekend for Mothering Sunday. What better year to record with grateful thanks all of those involved in making it possible for mothers to have their names on marriage certificates? Even though Mothering Sunday takes place during Lent, it is a feast day. In preparation for Lent, the Church has developed a free Lent pilgrim app and emails, and the campaign material is also available on Alexa.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her answer. As she knows, Easter is a special time for us Christians as it represents the absolute core of our faith. There is something unique and special about spending it in church, so can she outline what work the Church of England is doing to reach out via social media and the internet to families who may not normally be church attenders to come and share that special joy with us?

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

The Church has been winning awards for the range of innovative resources it uses to develop support for local churches and encourage their communities to use them. For example, there is achurchnearyou.com, a finder website that has more than 10 million visitors a year and has seen a big increase in the number of people using the site and spending time on it.

Hard copies of the Church’s materials are also available. Should the rigours of Brexit be too much, it is not too late for Members to avail themselves of the “Pilgrim Journeys” book of daily readings to get us through to Easter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Spelman and Kevin Foster

Thursday 17th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

Pakistan is very high up on the Open Doors watch list of countries where Christians suffer persecution. I am sure that like me, my hon. Friend will have heard the case of Asia Bibi raised with the Prime Minister yesterday in the House. It is important not only that we look for a solution for her and her family that assures her protection, but that we remember that what we do on behalf of Christians in other countries can impact others around the world in the same way. The persecution of Christians in Pakistan is high on our agenda.

[Kevin Foster]

As has already been mentioned, yesterday saw the launch of the Open Doors “World Watch List 2019” here in Parliament. Can my right hon. Friend advise me of what use the Church of England makes of the analysis of the trends in the persecution of Christians across the globe in its discussions with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office?

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

Obviously the watch list is a useful guide to where the focus needs to be. The bishops take special interest in particular countries that are high up on that watch list. Bishops regularly pay visits to countries where Christians are persecuted. In fact, the bishop responsible for the plight of Christians in the middle east and Palestine is currently paying his regular annual visit to look at the decimation of the Christians in that region.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Spelman and Kevin Foster

Thursday 18th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

5. What plans the Church of England has to encourage more community use of churchyards.

[The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Dame Caroline Spelman)]

This year, the Church Urban Fund showed that mental health and loneliness are a growing issue in our local communities. Parishes are being encouraged to use their churchyards and green spaces to support community gardening projects to promote wellbeing, caring for their community’s mind, body and spirit. The Church of England is working with the Church Times, the Guild of Health and St Raphael, and the Conservation Foundation to launch the Green Health awards to showcase best practice.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her answer. Paignton churchyard is one of the most historic and beautiful places in Torbay, yet the cost of maintaining safe access to it for the community can end up falling on the congregation. What support does the Church of England offer to its local parishes to ensure that they can maintain and enhance access to such special places?

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

In respect of where the responsibility for safe access lies, there is a distinction between churchyards that remain open for use, which are the Church of England’s responsibility, and those that are now full, for which the responsibility shifts to local government. In the case my hon. Friend raises, the Church of England would be very supportive if it is still an active churchyard, so to speak.

I am delighted to say that in my hon. Friend’s diocese there are two Green Health award nominees: St Sidwell’s church in Exeter and All Saints in Okehampton. I encourage him to look at other churches in this constituency that might be candidates for such awards.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Spelman and Kevin Foster

Thursday 25th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

Unfortunately, I do not think it is possible retrospectively to reimburse the Minster for the measures it has taken, which I believe are in any event temporary at the moment, but may I share the good practice of the House of Commons, the parliamentary estate, Westminster Abbey and Westminster City Council, which work together to try to make these public spaces safer after the terrible events of last year? I will do everything I can to assist the hon. Lady in getting that kind of good partnership working around York.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

Given that the Church of England is responsible for some iconic sites, the attention given to this work is welcome, but will my right hon. Friend reassure me that those wishing to meet the living God will not find a palisade fence separating them from His house?

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

My hon. Friend is right: as Parliament does not wish to turn itself into a fortress because that would cut against what democracy stands for, no more does the Church want so to provide security measures that it becomes a less accessible place to meet with God. That balance has to be struck.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Spelman and Kevin Foster

Thursday 26th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am glad to hear that there are such plans. They ought to get on with it.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that a vocation for the priesthood is fundamentally based on a call from God, and that that call never went only to white men of a certain age. Does she therefore agree that this work is about making people feel able to take up that call and not about setting a target to increase the number of calls that God makes?

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

Very much so; a vocation is gender blind. The 19% increase in the number of women coming forward for ordination is evidence that it is an attractive vocation to enter, and the Church strives to make training programmes more accessible to women and to people from diverse backgrounds.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Spelman and Kevin Foster

Thursday 19th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

Yes, and I encourage all Members to visit Chester cathedral. Last year I invited the vice dean, Canon Peter Howell-Jones, to come and talk to us about how he had turned the fortunes of Chester cathedral around, making it a very attractive visitor attraction, and introducing a brewery and a falconry centre, opening the tower for tours and, intriguingly, removing the entry charge for all of that. He has now moved on to a new appointment and I wish him every success in that new cathedral.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

Happy birthday, Mr Speaker.

Torbay as a tourist destination is blessed with places like Cockington parish church and the historic Paignton parish church. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is vital that those who go to a church find the Holy Spirit, particularly if they are in distress, and an easy way of finding a place for prayer, rather than a ticket desk?

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

Yes. I have just been talking about Chester cathedral, where visitor numbers significantly increased with the removal of the entry charge. A church has always got to be a place where we can all go to find our spiritual base and recharge our spiritual batteries and, as my hon. Friend says, meet with the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Enterprise Bill [Lords]

Debate between Caroline Spelman and Kevin Foster

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

My hon. Friend makes a perfectly valid but separate point. I am addressing the question of whether keeping shops open longer will stop people shopping online; he wants people to have jobs servicing the online industry. As has been pointed out, a number of high street stores are successful in maintaining their high street position and at the same time giving an online offer.

I am prepared to concede that we need to remain competitive as a country, so I asked the British embassy in Paris to give me details of the recent change in French Sunday trading laws. Essentially, my amendment, which I have tabled with the help of the Clerks, seeks to mirror as closely as possible how the French Government have approached the very same question by designating localised tourist zones.

The Macron law—it is named after the Minister who introduced it—extended the number of Sundays for trading in France from five a year to 12 a year. Essentially, it is one Sunday a month. By happy coincidence, it created 12 zones. Six are in Paris, and it might be a welcome distraction to Members to run through where they are: Boulevard Haussmann, Champs-Élysées, Saint-Germain and Montmartre. That gives colleagues a sense of the size of the zones that the French Government identified. There are zones in six other regional cities, including Cannes, Deauville and Nice.

That allowed local government to designate smaller tourist zones, where shops under special licence could open for longer. The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) indirectly asked how the French Government designated tourist zones. The answer to his question is that they collected data on the profile of shoppers who used those zones. Their definition was that the zone should show exceptional attendance by tourists residing abroad. Crucially, those tourist zones do not have wider application, which reduces the negative effects on smaller shops and convenience stores, which we have discussed.

The Olympic park experience is important because, in essence, it is the only practical pilot we have to go on when discussing the likely impact of extended opening. When the practical experience of 2012 was analysed by Oxford Economics, it was ascertained, as Members have pointed out, that small and medium-sized enterprises in up to a two-mile radius from large supermarkets in the area lost over 3% of their weekly sales income. If that is extrapolated to the national scale, it is estimated there would be an annual loss of £870 million in sales for all types of convenience stores and a net loss of 3,270 retail jobs in England and Wales, were longer Sunday trading hours to be made permanent, in line with the experiment during the Olympics.

I have been contacted by local Nisa and SPAR convenience store providers concerned about the implications of these changes on smaller stores. I also share the deeper concerns expressed by my hon. Friends, including my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), the Keep Sunday Special campaign and the Church of England, about the erosion of a general day of leisure on which people can be available for shared activities with friends and family, especially those who build up community spirit and strengthen families.

I have talked to shop workers in large stores who often get their free time in half days on days other than Sunday, when family and friends might not be available. Until today, we have not had a detailed impact assessment, so I tend to agree with the Bishop of St Albans, the lead spokesman in the Church of England on Sunday trading. He said that:

“an increase in opening hours will only lead to more people being pressured into spending Sunday apart from their children and families.”

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

As my right hon. Friend will be aware, I represent a constituency with a large tourism industry. How would her suggestion work, given that in Paignton, for example, parts of the town centre are used by locals, yet the out-of-town supermarket is used by people going to the holiday camps? How would this result in a tourist zone?

[Mrs Spelman]

This is essentially a devolved proposal. It would be for local authorities to express an interest in being a designated tourist zone. My amendment limits temporally and geographically the potentially deleterious impact on SMEs. It has the capacity to deal with extended opening hours during the British holiday season, as well as during the Christmas season, when many places—Blackpool, for example—experience an increase in tourist trade.

Research has shown that the majority of shop workers do not welcome the opportunity to work longer hours on a Sunday. I commend Ministers for including improved legal protections in the current provisions, but the practical reality in the workplace is that if someone is worried about losing their job, they will not want to ask for a special concession not to have to work on a Sunday. Similarly, if someone wants a promotion, they will not want to ask for that concession, because their competitors in the promotion stakes might not ask for a comparable one.

I welcome the Government amendment, which did make it on to the amendment paper, to give local authorities the power to restrict Sunday trading to zones, but I am concerned that the zoning is potentially too broad in its impact. For example, it would not be strong enough to avoid a combined local authority-wide mega-zone occurring, which, in my view, would have an excessively negative impact. A trial would also make it difficult to discern the selected impacts on different businesses within such a wide zone.

It is obviously not the Minister’s fault that the manuscript amendment was not selected. He indicated that it gave us a feeling for what he would like to do—it was a valiant effort—but the difficulty for parliamentarians is that it is not actually on the amendment paper. As somebody said, we need an amendment that we can feel and touch. I believe that a compromise that benefits families and UK competition lies in the tourist-zone model. I strongly encourage Members to support this compromise.