Church of England (Women Bishops)

David Burrowes Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bradshaw]

No, I am afraid I do not agree. For the record, I support establishment, because it provides for what I call a servant Church—a Church that is there for anyone. Many of us will have had experience of that in our constituencies at times of great civic celebration or mourning or simply in the lives of our constituents who may not feel themselves to be particularly religious but find the Church of England is there for them when they need it when they wish to baptise, marry or bury a loved one.

With establishment comes privileges, such as the presence of Church of England bishops in the House of Lords for example, but with those privileges come duties, one of which is the legal requirement for Church of England legislation to be approved by Parliament. To those who say we should not be talking about this, I say not only that we should be but that we do not have a choice. If Synod had passed the Women Bishops Measure, the Ecclesiastical Committee, on which I and a number of other hon. Members and Members of the other place sit, would have had to consider and approve it in the coming months. There would then have had to be debates and votes on the Floors of both Houses.

What has been forgotten in the debate since the Synod vote is that it is perfectly possible that we in Parliament might have rejected the Measure. It is interesting reading the proceedings of this House on women’s ordination more than 20 years ago. Then, Parliament acted as a brake on progress. I remember Members such as John Gummer, Ann Widdecombe and Patrick Cormack, who ensured that extra safeguards for the opponents of women’s ordination were written into the legislation.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is talking about the issue of women bishops, but does he agree that the vote was not simply about the principle of being for or against women bishops? It was about protections for dissenting voices, like those written into the legislation to which he refers. When we talk about those who were dissenting, we should not just characterise them as being for or against women’s rights when a significant number are simply taking a doctrinal view.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I shall come on to that in a while.

I was making the point that back then, Parliament acted as a brake on women’s ordination, but in the intervening two decades there has been a huge change in attitudes in both Houses to gender equality in general and on the role of women in the Church in particular, as we have experienced and witnessed women’s ministry in practice in our communities. My assessment is that when a resurrected Women Bishops Measure comes before the House, the main danger for it is not that it will contain insufficient safeguards for its opponents but that it will contain too many and be deemed inconsistent with widely accepted views on equality.