Lords Spiritual (Women) Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

Indeed. The Church proceeded speedily with women priests and I suspect it would move speedily with the appointment of women bishops, based on merit. The Bill will ensure, as I have pointed out, that female diocesan bishops, as they are appointed, do not have to wait to join the House of Lords as Lords Spiritual.

The Church’s decision to ordain women has been gradual and has taken place over the past 30 years or so. It has been something of a journey for the Church, beginning in 1975 when the General Synod passed the motion

“that there are no fundamental objections to the ordination of women into the priesthood”.

In 1985, it passed legislation to allow women to become deacons; in 1992, it allowed women to become priests; and in 2014, it took the historic decision, warmly welcomed in this House and elsewhere, that women as well as men could become bishops. Last December, the Rev. Libby Lane was announced as the future suffragan bishop of Stockport in the diocese of Chester. As a suffragan, rather than diocesan bishop, she is not yet eligible to join the Lords Spiritual.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Just in case the Minister is coming to the end of his remarks, may I refer him back to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell)? Tomorrow, in the chapter house of Westminster, 100 yards away, we will be celebrating the 750th anniversary of our first Parliament. Back then, of course, every bishop would have been Catholic. I and my hon. Friend are not asking for a statement today. Bearing in mind the fact that women priests unfortunately make union between our two Churches less likely, we simply ask that the Government have an open mind about allowing bishops of other denominations to enter the House of Lords.

[Mr Gyimah]

The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), made it clear during the brief debate on the timetable motion that this is a tightly focused Bill with one substantive clause, and that is what we would like to focus on today.

The Bill would come into effect on the first day of the next Parliament. Subject to the Church appointing a female diocesan bishop, we could therefore have a female bishop among the Lords Spiritual as early as next year. The Bill is supported by the Church and the Opposition. It has been brought forward by the Government, working closely with the Church, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the bishops, senior clergy and Church officials for their help. In particular, I thank the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom I am delighted to see in the Gallery today.

This is a modest but important Bill, and it has one simple aim: to bring female bishops among the Lords Spiritual sooner rather than later. Given how long women have waited to become bishops, that is right. The House of Lords should not have to wait for an unknowable period before its Lords Spiritual Benches reflect the new make-up of the episcopate. I look forward to further debating these provisions in today’s debates.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Bill has a single and momentous purpose: to enable vacancies among Church of England bishops in the House of Lords to be filled by female bishops, instead of the male bishops who would otherwise have become Members of the House under the current law. It is about recognising the important reform that the Church has undertaken and ensuring it is reflected fully in Parliament.

As the Minister said, the journey has been long, and there has been heated and passionate debate within both the Church and wider society. Over 20 years ago, the Church decided women could be priests. It took a long time, but the success of equality campaigners shows the merits of considered and careful argument taking on a thorny issue and creating a consensus about the need for change, and on 17 November 2014, the General Synod enacted the final legislation necessary to allow women to become bishops.

The Bill represents an important milestone towards gender equality. As the Minister said, if the arrangements legislated for under the Bishoprics Act 1878 were left unamended, it would take years for a newly appointed diocesan bishop to become sufficiently senior to take a place in the House of Lords. For that reason, the Archbishop of Canterbury, after consultation with the Lords Spiritual, requested that changes be accelerated to allow the entry of female bishops into the House of Lords. The Opposition welcome this important change. We applaud the Church’s decision to appoint female bishops and we support its decision to speed up their introduction into the House of Lords.

We are proud of Labour’s record on reform of the House of Lords and the equality agenda. In government, we removed all but 92 of the hereditary peers. We created an elected Lord Speaker and a Supreme Court and we introduced people’s peers. We were the party that introduced the Equality Act 2010, establishing a clear legislative platform to tackle discrimination, including barriers to women in all areas of public life. Against that background, the significance of today’s Bill cannot be overestimated.

For the Church, allowing women to take up a diocese will show a renewed relevance. Experience from other countries is interesting. Research from Denmark shows the effect the Church of Denmark’s decision to promote gender equality has had on the service and presence of the Church in communities up and down the country, with a renewed emphasis on pastoral work and delivering everyday, often practical help to families and communities. Having women at the very top of any organisation not only ensures a female perspective and voice at the top table; it can also improve that organisation’s ability to achieve its wider aims. Research has also shown that female clergy are often less interested in tribal conflicts within the Church and more focused on getting the work done for their members and the community. That is perhaps yet another argument for improving female representation in this place as well.

We should not forget the effect this change will have on wider society. Although church attendance is not as high as it used to be and more people do not identify with any faith, the Church of England remains the established Church in England. It is central to many state occasions and many other aspects of community life. Its presence in wider society remains important. We know from our constituencies, including my own, the impact the Churches have, including the Church of England—for example, in running food banks and working with homeless people and various other community groups—as well as the crucial role the Church plays in education. Although operating in different ways, the Church remains a vital institution in our society, so to have gender equality at the very top of its hierarchy is a necessary and long overdue step in the modern world. Ensuring that that is properly reflected here in Parliament seems to me a basic step in affirming this important change.

Let me say something about the broader context of reform of the other place. In supporting the Bill, the Opposition are in no way moving away from our commitment to a democratic second Chamber. We favour an elected senate of the nations and regions, which would ensure a clear voice for the nine English regions in the other place, as well as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Presumably the Opposition are also open-minded about representatives of other religions and denominations being Members of the House of Lords.

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. Part of the argument that I would make for a democratic second Chamber would be about ensuring that the diversity of our modern society is reflected, including people who are from or are representatives of other faiths. There are practical issues with different faiths, such as the representative institutions they have, but as we debate reform of the other place it is absolutely right that, in seeking to have a second Chamber that is a senate of the regions and nations, the diversity of faiths is reflected, alongside the representation of the Church of England.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Sir Tony Baldry)]

In my capacity as Second Church Estates Commissioner, I should like to thank the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for the support they have personally given to this Bill. I should like also to thank the Leader of the House, the business managers and the usual channels for providing an early opportunity for the Bill to have its Second Reading and other stages undertaken, so that, if agreed by this House, it can go promptly to the House of Lords for consideration, ensuring sufficient time for it to be enacted before this Parliament is dissolved at the end of March.

When in 2012 the General Synod failed to agree a measure that would have enabled women to become bishops in the Church of England, I was summoned to this Chamber to answer an urgent question. Shortly after that, we had a half-day debate. The number of hon. Members present on those occasions—from every part of the United Kingdom and from all political parties—who asked questions and made speeches indicated that Parliament was keen for the Church of England to get on and ensure that women could become bishops. When the General Synod did agree the measure, there was genuine rejoicing and happiness that that could now happen, and that sense of happiness was well reflected in the debates on the measure for women bishops in the House of Lords on 14 October last year and in this House on 20 October.

Bishops have been part of Parliament ever since Parliament began. This year, for example, we will celebrate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, and it is worth recalling that the whole idea of Magna Carta had been initiated by Stephen Langton, the then Archbishop of Canterbury who dusted off a 113-year-old proclamation of King Henry I and showed it to the barons, when the idea of a new improved charter, “a great charter” took hold. Indeed, Magna Carta begins, and I translate from the Latin:

“John by the Grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of Anjou, to his Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Earls, Barons, Justices, Forresters, Sheriffs, Reeves, Officers and all his Bailiffs and faithful subjects, greetings. Know that for the sake of God, and the salvation of our soul and the souls of all our ancestors and heirs to the honour of God and the exultation of the Holy Church and of the reform of our Realm, by the advice of our venerable Father, Stephen Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England and Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church; Henry Archbishop of Dublin, William Bishop of London, Peter Bishop of Winchester, Jocelain Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury, Hugh Bishop of Lincoln, Walter Bishop of Worcester, William Bishop of Coventry and Benedict Bishop of Rochester”.

So, it is quite clear that archbishops, bishops and abbots took precedence over earls and barons, and that the list of those from whom the King had taken advice was headed by the bishops. Indeed, we rightly remember that Magna Carta has a number of noble sentiments, such as:

“No free man is to be arrested or imprisoned or disseized or outlawed or exiled or in any other way ruined nor will we go or send against him except by the legal judgement of his peers, or by the law of England”,

and that

“to no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.”

In fact, the opening commitment of Magna Carta, chapter one, clearly states beyond all of those other commitments to the rights of barons or freedoms of individual citizens:

“Firstly, we have granted to God and confirm by this our present Charter for us and our heirs in perpetuity that the English Church—

“Ecclesia Anglicana” in the original—

“shall be free and shall have its rights in full and its liberties intact and we wish this to be thus observed which is clear from the fact that before the discord with our Barons began we granted and confirmed by our Charter free elections which are considered to be of the utmost importance and necessity to the English Church.”

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am very disappointed that my right hon. Friend did not read all that out in Latin. I am sure that you would have been happy to let him do so, Mr Speaker.

Earlier, in an excellent intervention, my right hon. Friend said, quite rightly, that the established Church represented all our churches. I am a warm supporter of the Church of England and its establishment nature, but—I mentioned this earlier—presumably it has no principled objection to the representation of bishops from other denominations, or leaders of other faiths, in the House of Lords.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

That was made clear in evidence to the Wakeham commission, and by the body that set up the Joint Committee earlier in the current Parliament. However, I think my hon. Friend will find that it is said by the Vatican and by the Roman Catholic Church itself—not just in England, but throughout the world—that bishops and cardinals cannot be members of national legislatures. That is entirely an issue of authority. By definition, any Catholic bishop who sat in the House of Lords would have to take the Oath of Allegiance to the Queen, and the Vatican is not willing to allow Catholic cardinals or bishops to take an oath of allegiance that acknowledges the authority of the Crown.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

We do not want to become involved in too theological an argument. My right hon. Friend is of course entirely right, but the Catholic Church has absolutely no objection to the appointment to the other place of lay people who can represent the Church. Believe me, I am not trying to talk myself into a job; I am merely making a point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Tomorrow is the 750th anniversary of when barons, burgesses, bishops and abbots collected in the cathedral chapter, just 200 yards from where we are now sitting, to found our first Parliament. It is rather charming and appropriate that, the day before that anniversary, we should be celebrating a Bill that will apparently ensure the arrival of the first woman bishop in the other place. It has been quite a long wait, perhaps—750 years—although naturally, as a Conservative, I believe in organic change.

The logic is that women bishops should take their position in the other place. I would have thought that the Bill was unopposable. Sadly, that means that the great county of Lincolnshire will have to wait a year or two more to get its bishop into the other place, but we are a patient lot in Lincolnshire, and our bishop, as has been mentioned, is a generous man.

This debate gives me an opportunity to make another point about representation. Nothing that I say detracts from my strong support for the established Church; if we were to de-establish the Church, that would send entirely the wrong signal in an increasingly secular world. The Church of England is such a broad-minded institution—perhaps, in some people’s view, so broad minded that it is sometimes difficult to see where the bounds begin and end, although that is not really any of my business. It seeks to represent all people. I am a warm supporter of the Church of England, of women bishops and of the Church of England being the established Church.

A tremendous amount of work has been going on between the Catholic and Anglican Churches over the past 40 years to try to achieve union. I was speaking recently to Archbishop David Moxon—a superb representative of the Church of England in the Vatican, where he tries to take the process forward. He said to me that excellent progress is being, and has been made, in achieving that union so that we can take joint communion. It is a matter of great pain to many of us Christians that we cannot take communion together. Huge progress—quite surprising progress—has been made on issues that for centuries have proved very difficult indeed, such as transubstantiation of the nature of the real presence in the Eucharist. I think the two Churches can come to some sort of unity of view that it is some sort of spiritual change in the person, so tremendous progress is being made on that.

Tremendous progress is also being made on the nature of the supremacy of the see of Peter: all Christian denominations can, while maintaining their own supremacy in their own dioceses—as does the Orthodox Church—view the primacy of the see of Peter.

Sadly, however, there is one block. I am sorry to mention it, but what appears to be an insuperable block for many years is the fact that we now have women priests in the Anglican Church. This is a difficulty for the Orthodox denominations in the east and the Catholic denomination in the west. I am not going to make any comment on whether having women priests in the Anglican Church is right or wrong; I am just stating a fact that, sadly, we seem to have reached an impasse, but we are where we are. I say that because, very sadly, that will be a situation where we will remain divided for many years.

I want to emphasise the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) and which I have already made in a couple of interventions. I hope that Members on both Front Benches will keep a very open mind when it comes to reform of the other place. Other denominations—other faiths—need to take their place in the House of Lords. I was delighted with the response of the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), when I intervened on him. I was a tiny bit disappointed that when I put the same question to the Minister, he did not choose to answer it. I would have thought that it would be perfectly possible for the Government to announce that they are open minded about any reform.

The reason I say that is that, while I fully support the fact that there are 26 Lords Spiritual in the House of Lords—they are all Anglican and I have no difficulty with that—I do not want people to say that, because there are already 26 religious people there, there is no room for representatives of any other denominations or faiths. We have heard that there is already a Methodist priest in the other place, and we have heard the reasons for there being no Catholic bishops. [Hon. Members: “And the Chief Rabbi.”] There is also the Chief Rabbi.

I sat on a senior committee that discussed what our attitude in the Catholic Church should be towards one of our bishops being invited to join the House of Lords. I believe that the late Cardinal Hume was invited to join the House of Lords. Indeed, the Queen referred to him once as, “My cardinal,” which was quite touching. As the Second Church Estates Commissioner, my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) has made clear, there are difficulties in canon law relating to bishops of the Catholic Church taking their place in the legislature. Be that as it may, I am sure a way forward can be found to have representatives of the Catholic Church and more representatives of the Methodists and of other faiths.

As we discuss those things, I very much hope that we will keep an open mind on the issue. Meanwhile, we wish the Anglican bishops in the other place well and look forward to a woman taking her rightful place there for the first time in history.