House of Lords Reform

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, if I was watching this debate many miles away from your Lordships’ House, coming home after a long, hard day, I might be astonished to see a House of patronage telling itself that it was doing a relatively good job at improving my life, and that it was going to get better by tinkering with that House of patronage at the edges. I also might look around at the Members taking part in the debate and ask myself these questions: do these people represent me, do they understand me and my community, and do they look like me?

The answer to those questions would, I think, be predominantly no. The reason is that 51% of people in the UK are female. On the Conservative Benches, 25% are female. On the Labour Benches, it is 39%. On the Cross Benches, it is 26%. The Liberal Democrats are on 41% and the Bishops are on 28%. They may also look at the age of this House—age is important to understand where the world is and where it is going. The average age in the UK is 40; the average age in your Lordships’ House is 70. One-third of the Members are between 70 and 79; one-quarter are between 60 and 69; and one-fifth are between 80 and 89. When I came to this House 10 years ago, some of the staff used to refer to me, at the age of 48, as “one of the baby Lords”. Only in the House of Lords can you be 50 and still be called a baby.

The ethnic mix of the House is also disproportionate to the UK. Fourteen per cent of the UK’s population are ethnic minority, but only 6% of this House. Outside this House, regardless of what we say here, for the last decade the vast majority of people say that they wish to see a fully democratically elected House of Lords, because that is the way they think this House will represent them, understand them and look more like them. It is a matter of principle that I support that radical change.

I disagree with the argument that if we have a democratically elected House, there will be words such as “constitutional vandalism” and “crisis”. That argument needs unpicking, not least because electing a second Chamber does not itself lead to conflict. Rather, a whole range of factors, including the distribution of powers, the methods for resolving disputes and the conventions that affect the relationships between both Houses and the progress of legislation need to be addressed. It is not a foregone conclusion that an elected second Chamber leads to constitutional crisis or automatic conflict.

If the Government are going to continue the drip-drip reform of this House, there is one issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, commented on: the role of the Bishops. I notice my friend, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield, sitting there. I promise I will be a little more gentle on him than the noble Baroness was, but I believe that the role of the Bishops has to be part of the reform agenda, in terms of the historical role of the Bishops, which no longer reflects modern Britain. Take a look at the numbers who call themselves Anglican, the number of people who attend church or who would even call themselves religious or Christian in the UK. I believe that having Bishops in this House is not just about a system of representing their parishes. They have a special place as the established Church, to defend that established Church and mingle in legislation on such issues as education, the curriculum and social matters, which I think are outstanding with modern Britain. Therefore, I ask the noble Baroness, the Leader of the House, what is the Government’s thinking on reform of the Bishops’ Benches in this House?

Human Rights Violations: Consular Assistance

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

Again, let me reassure the noble Lord that we do take his imprisonment seriously. He knows very well that I raised these issues, together with him, when others did not. I assure him that the Foreign Secretary has raised the case. In fact, on 18 October, the Foreign Secretary raised it with Foreign Minister Wang Yi; and it was certainly raised under the previous Government on 5 December. We take this incredibly seriously. The problem remains with some issues of consular access because of dual nationals. The noble Lord knows that he and I have taken up other cases on that basis, but rest assured that we will continue to put much pressure on the Chinese Communist Party officials who are taking this action. We are extremely concerned about the continued imprisonment and I repeat that the Foreign Secretary will, as he assured the House of Commons on Monday, meet the family so that we can continue to give support at all levels.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware of a case that I brought to his attention regarding a British citizen held in a jail in the Gulf states. His basic human rights have been undermined and he is being held in conditions that fall far short of international standards. Considering that this type of case is not unique, when will the 2022 Labour conference promise of David Lammy to introduce a legal right to consular assistance be implemented, and will minimum standards be part of that Bill?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I hope I made it clear in my opening response that we are actively exploring with officials the implementation of our manifesto commitment. It is not just a statement from the Foreign Secretary but a manifesto commitment and we want to ensure that we get it right. We are having proper examination of this, both legally and diplomatically, so I hope that we will be able to make an announcement in due course. The problem with a lot of these individual cases—the noble Lord knows this as well—is that sometimes the efforts we put in cannot be as public as perhaps some people want. At the end of the day, as my noble friend raised in his original Question, we want to get these people out. We want to ensure that they are not detained arbitrarily and that proper due process is continued.

Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015 (Extension) Bill [HL]

Lord Scriven Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 10th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to bring a secular voice to the debate on this Bill. If 26 of the established Church’s Bishops continue to get automatic rights to sit in the UK Parliament then, as a matter of principle, equality for women to sit here has to be central to that to deal with the institutional misogyny that has created a lack of equality and opportunity for women in the Church of England, and to which new Bishops are appointed to this House. But what a fascinating and interesting position the country finds itself in that the Parliament of the UK must give legislative time to deal with the established Church’s centuries of discrimination against women taking senior roles and the slow progress it has made in ensuring that women Bishops have equal rights in this House.

We need to look a bit further at why the established Church has been so slow to deal with this discrimination, to see whether it is really committed to equality for women within its structures and to ensure that it is really committed to dealing with the misogyny and believes in the true equality of women within its structures, which is the basis the Bill is established on.

I ask noble Lords to imagine if a colleague of theirs, due to his deeply held beliefs, refused to follow this manager’s instructions simply because that manager was a woman. What would happen? In almost all cases, this would be unacceptable. Places of work would not tolerate it, and would probably find themselves on the wrong side of the law if they did. Although both sex and religion or belief are protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, the law is clear that individuals cannot discriminate against their colleagues just because their religion says they should.

However, that discrimination still exists within the established Church, with a whole system that allows this to happen. The language used to describe and hide it is almost poetic. The CofE calls it “mutual flourishing”. Does that not conjure up a warm and sunlit world, one of equal relationships where all sides are equal and can flourish and reach their full potential based on mutual respect regardless of their sex or who they are?

In practice, it is far from that. There has been a total abdication of responsibility by the leaders of the established Church since 2014, when women bishops were agreed to by the General Synod. A system has been set up to appease the misogyny—a system that is more about keeping the Church of England together rather than one built on mutual respect and equality for all. It is a system that the present leadership of the Church of England encourages and supports. It is not mutual flourishing but a system of institutionalised misogyny.

In practice, what “mutual flourishing” means is that individual churches can refuse to accept women as priests or vicars. The CofE also permits churches to reject the authority of a female bishop. So the state Church affirms women as equal while at the same saying that it is alright for some churches not to accept them. In fact, nearly 600 churches reject the authority of women and flock under the frocks of what are referred to as “flying bishops”. Individual churches are permitted to refuse female vicars and are given the right to be overseen by flying bishops who also oppose women’s ordination, instead of their local bishop, male or female, who ordains women.

In fact, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, who has been in her position since 2018, was on occasions required to delegate her authority to the Bishop of Fulham, a more junior bishop. Women in London, as well as elsewhere in the country, have pointed out that churches will not accept their applications for the post of vicar, and it is almost impossible for women to be appointed vicar at some large churches in the capital of this country.

How can it be in 2024 that the state Church is still discriminating against women, who represent about two-thirds of its congregation and half the population of this country? Does the Leader of the House feel it is correct that, ultimately, the Church of England should end its exemption under the Equality Act and stop legitimising the theology that some of its churches use to limit women’s ministry and equality when this Parliament is giving time to ensure that women Bishops can sit in this House more equally as a matter of principle? The Church of England loves to give the impression that the battle over women’s ministry is all sorted now but let us be clear: there is a long way to go.

From a secular point of view, this raises the wider question of why in 2024, as alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, some 26 seats in this Parliament are in the automatic gift of the state Church. As the Reverend Canon Ian Gomersall said in an illuminating letter in the Times yesterday:

“The anomaly of having Church of England bishops in the House of Lords is compounded by the fact that the clerics in the Lords are from only one church of only one of the four nations of the United Kingdom. On top of this, the Church of England is not the largest worshipping community in the UK”.


In fact, less than 1% of the adult population attends a CofE service on a regular basis.

As the Reverend Canon Gomersall went on to say, removing the Bishops from the House of Lords

“would be not only an act of fairness and justice but also a step towards developing democracy in parliament. Their removal from the Lords would also give the bishops more time to focus on their diocesan duties at this time when the Church of England is in significant decline”.

Any serious proposals to reform the House of Lords must address the unjustified privilege of the state Church Bishops’ Bench. Indeed, 62% of the population, when asked, say that no religious clerics should have an automatic right to seats in the House of Lords. That would not stop the contribution of Bishops to this House, if they were appointed on their own merit as life Peers, but, after a century of decline in religious attendance in Britain, the claim that Bishops or any other religious representatives speak for any significant constituency is unwarranted and does not stand up to scrutiny.

Bishops do not have any special insight. The idea that Bishops or any other religious leaders have a monopoly on issues of morality is offensive to many non-religious citizens. Those of us who profess no religion are no less capable of making moral and ethical judgments. Furthermore, tell the victims of child abuse in the state Church—whose most senior leaders turned away from them, refused to believe them, told them to move on and systematically did not deal with the perpetrators of such abuse—that senior Bishops in the state Church have a superior moral compass.

In a democracy, no religion or its leaders should have a privileged role in the legislature. If the Government are serious about reforms to this House, then the Bench that dare not speak its name in such reform—the Bishops’ Bench—has to be part of that reform. I ask the noble Baroness the Leader of the House whether the Bishops’ automatic right to sit in this House will be part of the consultation that the Government are going to undertake on Lords reform.