Church of England: Safeguarding

Jonathan Davies Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) for the sensitive way in which he opened this debate, and for the detailed way in which he set out the journey that has brought us to tonight’s discussion. It is telling that there are a lot of Members present across the Chamber tonight. Of course, we stand with victims and we are appalled that there have been so many, but I am sure I speak for many of us when I say that we are passionate about the Church of England, what it stands for and what it seeks to do—how it seeks to lift us to another plane and give us hope. We want to see it succeed, but it is so important that the Church gets its relationship with safeguarding right, because so many victims have been failed: victims of physical and sexual abuse, of emotional or financial abuse, and of coercion.

As the Church of England is the established Church and enjoys a privileged position in this country, it is right that it is accountable to Parliament and that we are having this debate. It is important to note that it is not just the Church that has had issues with safeguarding, as profound as those issues may be. It is not just religious groups or organised religions, whether Christianity or other religions; there are many other sectors across society, including the media, education and healthcare, where we can point to very poor safeguarding practices. However, what many people find particularly disappointing about the Church is that they feel it is a place where they ought to be safe, and they ought to be able to trust its leaders. Many of those leaders do an outstanding job, often in difficult circumstances, but fundamentally—as with the other sectors that have experienced these issues—the Church is run by people. In that respect, it is no different.

I want to touch on how the Church has responded to some safeguarding issues and where, in an attempt to provide redress for its past failings, it has been ham-fisted in dealing with cases of people who perhaps have not met the threshold for being on the receiving end of sanction for something that they may or may not have done. I am reminded of the case of Bishop George Bell, whose reputation had been solid, and who was deemed not to have committed any crime at all. There are similar instances that will never be reported, and those people carry around that burden with them. It is important that the Church learns to be proactive about safeguarding and supporting victims, but also ensures that it does not take people through a safeguarding process who should not be there, or perhaps should be investigated but with no further action taken. It is important that the Church understands that it must strike that balance, because if it is taking action against people to safeguard its own reputation, it is failing a whole different set of people. I am sorry to have seen some cases like that in the course of my work.

I am pleased that the Church is beginning to come to terms with what it needs to do to put this right, so that people trust it more than they have been able to in recent years, and that it is keen to learn lessons. However, it is deeply disappointing that the Church has not chosen to have an independent process to give people more trust, removing the almost political priorities of its leaders and their desire to save their reputation—leaders right from the top, down to parish level—in favour of something that can be more objective about individuals’ cases, as well as about wider policy.

As I began by saying, we are desperate for the Church to succeed. It brings so much to all of our communities—there are food banks that have been set up because of what the Church does, and social activities that bring people together. That is aside from all the work that the Church does to support people in their faith and give them hope, so we need it to succeed. It is the custodian of so many of the world’s most important buildings. It makes a fantastic and huge contribution to our cultural life, but it absolutely must get this issue right. If it fails to do so, it will face an existential threat, and I cannot countenance that as a proud Anglican. I want to see the Church succeed, but it must do right by victims. It must embed the change that it needs to embed and change its culture so that it is not characterised in these terms going forward, so that we do not have to discuss this issue any further and so that the Church can get on with what it is here to do.

Tackling Stalking

Jonathan Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

I thank the hon. Member for her question. First, let me pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who is my equivalent in the Ministry of Justice, which leads on the family courts. All I can say about the family courts, which came up in the very first mission board with regard to violence against women and girls, is that we will not solve the issues of domestic abuse or child abuse in our country—we will not go anywhere near to solving them—unless we look at those family courts.

[Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister’s statement. In 2021, a young woman was killed by her stalker in Derbyshire—I will not mention her by name in this House because, given the urgent nature of this statement, I have not had the opportunity to reach out to her family. It was found that she had reported the stalker to the police. The inquest found a number of missed opportunities to take action against that person. Is it is possible to have a means of capturing when things have gone wrong—in public bodies or in the police—and embedding that as a means of driving improvement elsewhere? Furthermore, online providers and social media companies are failing in this space. Will she use her weight to tell them to get their house in order, and if they do not, can we legislate for it?

[Jess Phillips]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I give him credit for the sensitivity that he showed in dealing with that case in his constituency. It is very important that we always seek the consent of a victim or a victim’s family. That does not always happen in this place.

On his first point, I am not sure about the case that he cites, but the I am happy to talk to him about it. In the case of a death of an intimate partner or a previous intimate partner, there would normally be a domestic homicide review, but that would not necessarily happen in the case of a murder by a stranger, where stalking was involved, although it could. This is about how we deal with the findings of a domestic homicide review or a serious case review. Like many people, I am a bit sick of hearing the words “lessons will be learned” over and again, and then find that the same lesson has to be learned by the same local area just three years later. How we use the findings of those reviews to change things is definitely something that we will focus on. I will use all of my weight—however diminished it might be—to ensure that our online tech companies are on board with the safeguarding that we require.