Church Representation and Ministers Measure

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

When I was first elected to Parliament, the then Government Chief Whip said to me, “What would you like to do?” and I said, “I would like to be on the Ecclesiastical Committee.” She thought that was so eccentric that it was made absolutely clear that, in that Parliament, I certainly would not be a member of the Ecclesiastical Committee. I did not achieve those dizzy heights until 2010.

For anybody who wants a crash course in Tudor history, the Ecclesiastical Committee is the place to come. It is the absolute quintessence of the British establishment. It is the linchpin of the establishment; it is the very definition of the establishment. If any Member wants to be reminded about glebe lands or the Court of Arches, they too can come to the Ecclesiastical Committee. I think the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who made so many interventions, has been making his own application for the next time there is a vacancy.

The reason I referred to the Tudor pieces of canon law, which have weighed down the Church of England, is that they have become quite burdensome to parish priests. There has been far too much bureaucracy. The Measure is one of a number that have been driven through by the current Archbishop of Canterbury with the support and help of Synod and working groups throughout the Church.

The object is to modernise and simplify the rules of the Church so that it has more time and energy to do the things that it ought to be doing: running social projects, evangelising, preaching the gospel, comforting the sick, helping people who are grieving and celebrating marriages. Those are all things that we really want priests and the Church to be doing, but too much time has been taken up with ticking boxes and filling out forms.

The church representation part of the Measure gives people flexibility on the way they organise their meetings; the Ministers part enables people to be ordained but not tied to a particular parish. That is going to give the Church a lot more flexibility. The Second Church Estates Commissioner, the right hon. Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman), set the case out fully and clearly. I do not wish to say any more, except that we are happy to support the Measure this afternoon.

Question put and agreed to.