Church of England (Women Bishops)

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bradshaw]

My view is that the Church should make every reasonable effort to accommodate those views, but the feeling of the overwhelming majority, both of Synod and of the Church of England, is that concessions have gone far enough. As I shall explain, the danger for opponents is that they may have overplayed their hand at the last Synod, and they will not get a deal as good as the one that was on the table then.

I want to make one more point to those who argue that this is none of our business. Many of us are members of the Church of England, and those who are not have constituents who are. Any Member of Parliament who has had contact with Churches in their constituency in the past two weeks will be aware of the enormous shock and hurt among many Anglicans about the Synod vote. We have had women priests for 20 years. The majority of new ordinands are women. Some of the deans of our great cathedrals are women. The Church has been debating women bishops for years.

Everyone thought that it was a done deal. The dioceses voted 42 out of 44 in favour. In Synod itself, the bishops voted 44 in favour and two against, with two abstentions. Three quarters of the clergy voted yes and even in the House of Laity, 64% voted in favour, but that was 2%—just six votes—short of the required two-thirds majority. If we look at the analysis of those who voted that was helpfully provided by the Thinking Anglicans website, we can see that supporters of women bishops in the House of Laity all voted yes. The blocking minority was made up, as the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) indicated, of opponents from the conservative evangelical and conservative Catholic wings. The composition of Synod is not due to change until 2015, so unless some of those who voted no this time can be persuaded to change their mind, I doubt whether the bishops can be confident of getting a revised Measure through before 2015 under the normal or even an expedited procedure that requires a two-thirds majority in every House.

The only way we might persuade some of the opponents to change sides is by offering them more concessions, but that would be anathema to the majority and would not get through Parliament. There is no guarantee, of course, that if we wait until after 2015, it would be any different.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman as surprised and delighted as I was by a petition that began in one of my smaller villages to try to persuade the Bishop of Oxford to have a shorter, much simpler process in a week? That petition has already gained 1,500 signatures.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I should begin by declaring an interest, one that is in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am a church organist. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) rather surprised me last night when he told me that he has left in his will a stipend—hopefully a sizeable one—for me to play at his memorial service when the dread day comes.

The argument has been about Church governance and whether we should let the Church get on with it or take an interest in it ourselves. I am encouraged by the speeches that have been made, because they will allow the church to make its way through to achieving a resolution. When I was asked, prior to Synod, what members attending it should do, I told them to beware of the House of Laity; its members are representatives, not delegates, just as we are, and will vote as they wish. I said that because there is nothing unspiritual in recognising that the Church of England has to indulge in reason and discourse. I pray in aid Richard Hooker, whom the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) mentioned. He established that there were three pillars on which the Church of England rested—scripture, tradition and reason. His firm belief was that God’s purpose can be worked out as much through discourse as scripture and tradition, and that it was therefore absolutely right to indulge in that. I am not going to dissent from that view except to say that this has to be worked out at the level of the parishes, not at Synod level.

I was very much taken by the news that one of my local villages, which has a socking great abbey in the middle of it, but which is quite a small village now, was putting forward a petition to the Bishop of Oxford to try to get in place a simple, smooth process for resolving this issue. Within a few days, 1,500 people, which, by my estimate, is about double the population of the village, had signed the petition and were going to get a move on with it.

I come from a completely different wing of the Church than my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), but I would not dissent one iota from what he said about the way to tackle this and the process that needs to be sorted out.