Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Peter Bottomley
Main Page: Peter Bottomley (Conservative - Worthing West)Department Debates - View all Peter Bottomley's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(12 years ago)
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Sir Tony Baldry
I am quite sure that the review that is taking place into the way people are elected to General Synod will try to ensure the greatest opportunity for people in the Church to have a vote and feel that they are represented. Parliament, for example, decided long ago that all of us—everyone in every parish—have a vote in elections for church wardens. One would think that at the very least in elections to General Synod everyone on a church electoral roll should have a vote.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I stand as someone who failed twice to get elected to Synod—for Southwark—for being too right wing, and I could not do it in London for being too left wing. Should we not recognise that most of the members of Laity at Synod voted for women bishops, and should we not let women be ordained as bishops and trust the bishops to make arrangements in their diocese that are suitable?