Church of England (Women Bishops)

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I support wholeheartedly the argument for women bishops and believe strongly that it will happen; the question is not if, but when. The recent decision was a great disappointment. It is a great honour and privilege to follow three of the finest speeches that I have heard in some time, by the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy).

I was a lapsed member of a religion. It was well and truly bred out of me by having to go twice a day and three times on Sundays as a child. It may have also been assisted by the fact that I discovered horse racing, and my talent as a bookmaker did not endear me to the local vicar where I went to school. When I became a jockey—a very poor one, I admit—many people prayed that I would improve, because I kept losing on favourites, which upset them tremendously.

I have now reverted to the faith and am an enthusiastic member of the Church of England. I rise to speak not because I believe that I have a great deal to contribute to this debate, but because I want to address one specific issue. I urge that the Church be allowed to resolve this matter—I strongly endorse this—of its own volition and in its own way. It concerns me desperately when the state starts to interfere with matters of the Church. I accept entirely the points made by the right hon. Member for Exeter and endorse the comments made by some of those who intervened on him. It is accepted that this place has a role to play, by reason of its statutory controls, in overseeing and ultimately endorsing the Church’s actions. However, we would take a large and significant step—in this I disagree with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—if we attempted to mandate, order or empower the Church to take any action that it could manifestly resolve itself.

It is self-evident that rights are often won very slowly. Some parties to the argument wish the debate to move speedily and for the matter to be resolved. I am one of them, but that does not mean that I should tell the Church how it should behave such that it would not be able to resolve its own difficulties itself. In that respect, I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry), who said after a previous debate:

“This is not an issue which can in any way be parked for the next couple of years or so, waiting for another round of synod elections…This has to be an issue that has to be resolved as soon as possible.”

That implies that Parliament should get involved, but I disagree.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

That was certainly not the implication. With all due respect to my hon. Friend, he has misunderstood what I said. I was saying that the Church has to get on with it, and I am very glad that it is getting on with it, as evidenced by this week’s meeting of the House of Bishops and the programme of work that it set out.

[Guy Opperman]

I am happy to take that guidance and clarification, because some people will have interpreted some of our debates and the questions that have been asked over the past month or so as giving the impression that we wish to get involved, rather than allowing the Church itself to make those decisions. I endorse entirely my hon. Friend’s point that the Church has bravely taken the step to expedite matters as fast as possible. Tomorrow, some of us will meet Bishop Justin Welby, who I understand is anxious to resolve the matter as quickly and efficaciously as possible.

It is right that we discuss this issue. We should take this opportunity to celebrate the role of women in the Church. It is patently obvious in my constituency that their presence has transformed the Church and improved it immeasurably. The Church is much more open and is much enlivened by the presence of females leading the congregation. That can only be a good thing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Cox]

I will come to that, because I intend to tackle the specifics in a moment. First, it is important that I set out the background to the remarks I intend to make, because I am approaching this, a matter relating to the Church, as beyond political propaganda and the crudity of political discourse; the things we are dealing with are precious to us all. They are part of our common bond of spiritual inheritance. For those who believe in the Church as I believe in the Church—an essential part of the fabric of our constitution that I cannot envisage ever being without—the fate of the Anglican Church is a crucial issue. We need to approach it in a spirit that tries to unite people, not divide them. The rules by which the decision of the Synod was reached the other day were created for a reason. Constitutionally weighted majorities are invariably introduced around the world, not only in the Church, but in countries, to protect minority opinions. That is why the Synod introduced the rule. People may argue with it now. They may say, “It is too high. It is unrealistically high. It puts into the hands of those who do not seek agreement too powerful a weapon”, but two-thirds majorities—weighted majorities—are there for a reason.

So fundamental a change after 2,000 years of tradition should receive a weighted majority. We cannot complain. We should not point the finger of accusation at the Church because those who conscientiously could not agree exercised their right not to do so. The rules were put in place by the Church so that decisions of this magnitude and gravity should be taken only with the overwhelming support of the Church; just because it failed to reach that threshold and the bar was not passed according to that majority, we should not complain. We should not say to the Church, “You have failed to do your duty.” The constitutional threshold was there for a reason: to ensure that when this change or any similar change on so fundamental a matter was introduced, it carried the overwhelming weight of the Church.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who spoke a moment ago and is no longer in his place, that it is inevitable that we shall have women bishops. The question is only how and when, but we must entertain the patience to allow the Church to make that decision on its own, for it will surely do so. We should not bully it or exert pressure on it. My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury will forgive me for saying that although he says he did not do so, when I listened to him in the urgent question the other day, he seemed to go perilously close—I will not say to bullying, because that would be unfair—to putting pressure on the Church. We have 2,000 years of tradition and we have been discussing the question of women bishops for 40. That is not long set against 2,000 years.

We should have the patience and the compassion to allow the Church to work this out on its own. For my part, I daily see the extraordinary devotion and dedication of women priests in my constituency. I am humbled by their dedication. I see them serve remote rural parishes and fight for their communities. I see the good that they do and I grapple with this question of whether we should have had women priests and have women bishops. I try to persuade myself that we should and I am acquiescent in the inevitability that it should happen—resigned. Perhaps I acknowledge too that the doubts I have on that score are wrong, but I simply ask that those who are so fortunate as to have such conviction on this subject to understand that this conflict is serious. It is perhaps more serious than anything in politics, because it affects one’s Christian faith. That is why I urge the House to pause before it takes the step of weighing in to determine this issue on behalf of the Church. Let us allow the Church, guided we must believe by God, to reach this decision on its own in its own time. I believe it will do so.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Will my hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Mr Cox]

No.

If we have to wait until 2015, will it be so bad a thing?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Cox]

I accept that those women will have to wait for another two or three years, but I cannot bring myself to believe that that is the presiding imperative set against the harmony and unity of the Church. Although I respect the work that they do, I repeat that I do not seek to hold out—

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Will my hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Mr Cox]

No, I will not.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

rose—

[Mr Cox]

No, not now.

Let me make it clear that I do not seek to prevent this step, but merely to argue that we should allow the Church to reach this conclusion and to heal itself on its own.

I repeat: it is no use complaining because a constitutional majority threshold was not reached. The liberals in the House and those in the House who believe in constitutionalism have no right to point the finger at the Church and say that somehow its systems are defective. That constitutional majority was not reached. It was set in place for good reason, to ensure that the whole Church, or as much of it as possible, was taken with the decision.

In 1998, the Lambeth conference resolved that those who could not bring themselves to accept the existence of women priests or bishops should nevertheless have rules created for them that allowed them to exist in the highest degree of communion with the Anglican Church. In 1993, the Ecclesiastical Committee, on which the right hon. Member for Exeter serves, accepted that rules should be created in perpetuity for those who took that view. We cannot break those promises but, equally, I agree with him that those who are on the conservative side must negotiate with sincerity. They must not set the bar so high that it is unacceptable to the majority. I appeal to those who have the good fortune to be in the majority to be tender towards those who are in the minority.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Before my hon. and learned Friend concludes may I redirect him to answer the question that was put to him by the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw)? What was it about the Measure, which had the overwhelming support of the archbishops and the House of Bishops, the vast majority of the House of Clergy and a clear majority in the House of Laity, that my hon. and learned Friend found objectionable?

[Mr Cox]

The Measure had the overwhelming support of the House of Bishops, the overwhelming support of the House of Clergy, but not the two-thirds majority required, in the laying down of which my hon. Friend must have participated. He cannot complain—

[Sir Tony Baldry]

That does not answer my question.

[Mr Cox]

I will come to my hon. Friend’s question. He cannot complain, and he certainly, in a genial and bluff manner, should not, as the Second Church Estates Commissioner, kick the Church into adopting a view that he represents when, in fact, the constitutional majority was not reached. That is the rule by which the Church agreed that the decision should be made. To begin to bully the Church into taking action to follow his convictions is wrong and unrepresentative of the Church as a whole.

To come to my hon. Friend’s question, first, the code that is supposed to exist was never written. How on earth can we vote something through, expecting protective measures to be written in future? Why did the Church not create the code, in draft at least, so that members such as me would be able to read it? It was not written. Secondly, there is an existing protection for Church councils to be consulted, including councils that have taken the view that they ought to be excluded from the jurisdiction in which women priests celebrate the Eucharist. The priest must consult the Church council before an invitation is extended to a woman to celebrate the Eucharist. That protection is to be removed under the current provision. How can we expect those on the other side, already feeling bruised as a minority and feeling that the Church does not necessarily want them—that may be the case, but it is certainly not the publicly professed view of the Church—to have confidence in Measures that are not written and which remove existing protections?

My hon. Friend asked for another example. As I understand it, if a Church council writes a letter of request asking to be excluded from the dominion of a particular bishop, a priest is able to veto that request. That does not give confidence to those parishes where a majority feel that they do not wish to be ministered to by a woman bishop. It cannot give confidence that they will be able to live according to their consciences.

I have given my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury three examples, and I hope that he will deal with them. First, the code was never written, so one is asked to accept a series of protective measures that have not even been given proper detail. Secondly, an existing protection is removed—these are only examples—and thirdly, the priest in charge can veto the Church council’s view on the dominion of the female bishop.

I say again that I have no wish to engage in expressing divisive or entrenched views. I accept that women bishops will come. As for my doubts on this score, perhaps I will find that I am wrong when I see the good that they do and the astonishing devotion of some that I know. I hope that I am wrong. I am willing to be wrong, and willing to accept that I am. I profoundly hope that others of my persuasion will come round to the idea, and that the Church’s unity can be maintained. I simply ask my hon. Friend for some patience. I know that he and others have been patient for a long time.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Sir Tony Baldry)]

I think that the whole House will be very grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the debate, and to the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) for the way in which he introduced it. We owe a debt of gratitude to all who have spoken today, genuinely and with integrity and honesty, expressing a strong desire to ensure that we can collectively find the best solution for the Church.

The Church of England is a national Church. It is a Church for the nation, or it is nothing. It is a Church that exists in every parish in the country. It is a Church to which everyone can look for spiritual and pastoral guidance. It is the Church of Remembrance Sunday, it is the Church of funerals and bereavement and of joy, happiness and celebration, and it is also the Church that marks disasters when they occur. Because it is a Church for the whole nation, it needs to reflect the values of the whole nation.

I think that everyone within the Church of England recognises that until we can resolve the issue of women bishops, we will not be able fully to fulfil our role as a national Church, and we will not be fully able to concentrate on mission and growth, which must surely be the fundamental purpose of the Church. As was pointed out by the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), there are many issues that the Church must address, such as justice and poverty, from which we will continue to be distracted as long as we focus on the issue of women bishops.

After the vote in General Synod, the Archbishop of Canterbury said:

“a Church that ordains women as priests but not as bishops is stuck with a real anomaly, one which introduces an unclarity into what we are saying about baptism and about the absorption of the Church in the priestly self-giving of Jesus Christ.”

Earlier this week, the House of Bishops met at Lambeth palace and considered the implications of the recent rejection by General Synod of the legislation to enable women to become bishops. I say to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), and others who perfectly properly have said that women should be involved in the further deliberations, that it was absolutely appropriate that at those discussions with the House of Bishops, the House of Bishops benefited from the participation of Vivienne Faull, the Dean of York, Christine Hardman who chairs the House of Clergy, Dr Paula Gooder and Mrs Margaret Swinson, all of whom are senior women in the Church of England who had all previously served on the steering committee or a vision committee for the legislation.

The House of Bishops rightly started—as almost every contributor to this debate has done—by expressing gratitude and appreciation for the ministry of ordained women in the Church of England. We all owe an enormous debt of gratitude to women priests, deacons, archdeacons, canons and deans in the Church of England for what they do in rural areas, inner cities, hospitals and prison chaplaincies throughout the realm. Without them, the Church of England would have considerable difficulty in reaching, and ministering to, every part of the nation. The House of Bishops recorded its sadness that recent events should have left so many women in the Church feeling undermined and undervalued. I hope that if nothing else results from this debate, a message will go out to all women clergy in the Church of England that they are valued and appreciated by Parliament for the work they do for us all and for our community.

The House of Bishops acknowledged the profound and widespread anger, grief and disappointment felt by so many in the Church of England and beyond. I suspect that many Members will have been surprised by the wider resonance General Synod’s decision had in the community as a whole. In our constituencies, people who one would not normally have expected to take an interest in the Church of England came to us to express concern and disappointment at the decision.

The House of Bishops clearly agreed that the current situation was unsustainable for everyone, whatever their convictions. I was grateful to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) for making it clear that the view of everyone from all parts of the Church is that the current situation is unsustainable, because I think everyone acknowledges that in due course there will be women bishops. Indeed, General Synod agreed in 2008 that there should be women bishops.

The House of Bishops expressed its continuing commitment to enabling women to be consecrated as bishops and, I am glad to say, it intends to have fresh proposals to put before General Synod at its next meeting in July. This is not an issue that can be parked. This is not an issue that, as we lawyers would say, can just be adjourned generally to some other time in the future. It has got to be worked at until a solution is found.

I am glad to say that early next year the House of Bishops will be organising meetings, at which it intends to involve large numbers of lay and ordained women, to discuss how women might more regularly contribute to the Church, and further action will be taken in order to avoid any delay in proposing new legislation. The House of Bishops has also set up a working group drawn from all three Houses of Synod. Its membership, which is to be determined by the archbishops, will be announced before Christmas. That group will arrange facilitated discussions with a wide range of people of a variety of views in the week beginning 4 February next year, when General Synod was due to meet. I very much hope that all right hon. and hon. Members in the House tomorrow will take the opportunity at 9.30 am of going to the Moses Room in the other place to listen to the Bishop of Durham, the Archbishop of Canterbury-designate, because they will hear directly from him, as the next Archbishop of Canterbury, his clear and determined commitment that the Church of England will resolve this issue itself as soon as it can.

The House of Bishops will have an additional meeting in February, immediately after those discussions, and expects to settle at its May meeting the elements of a new legislative package to come to Synod in July. There has been, on occasions, some criticism of the bishops, so may I just say that the House of Bishops voted overwhelmingly in support of there being women bishops in the Church of England? The bishops have sought to give the greatest possible leadership in what is, after all, an Episcopal Church, where the bishops are meant to lead. The House of Bishops has been doing all it can, with God’s good grace, to give that leadership and will continue to do so.

The House of Bishops also made a number of observations that have been reflected in this evening’s debate. It concluded that in future for a Measure to succeed and command assent it will require much greater simplicity. If I may, I will write to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon; I do not want to have a fight now, because that is not in the spirit of this evening’s debate. I can say, however, that the draft code of practice was published earlier this year and there are very good reasons for the provisions to which he drew attention. However, his point illustrated that the whole thing had become so complicated on the protections that nobody was quite sure who was being protected, against what and by whom. I thought, as a member of General Synod, that one of the most moving speeches there was made by a female member of the clergy from the diocese of Oxford, who asked, “Why is it that the Church needs to be protected from me? What is it about me?” That went to something of the heart of some of the issues we had to resolve. Some of the protections had become so complicated, so I think that much greater simplicity will be required.

However, I think it was genuinely helpful that my hon. and learned Friend spoke in this debate, doing so with great sincerity, because I agree that it is also important, as the House of Bishops made clear, that there needs to be a clear embodiment of the principle articulated in the 1998 Lambeth conference that those who dissent from and those who assent to the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate are loyal Anglicans. No one is saying that one form of Anglicanism is better than another; in so far as it can be achieved, everyone needs to be involved in this.

However, an important point made by both Front-Bench teams, and by many in this debate, is that we cannot square the circle by creating second-class women bishops. If we are going to have women bishops—everyone has agreed that we are going to have them—they have in every regard to be treated the same as, and have the same powers, rights, privileges and disciplines as, their male counterparts. One cannot have a category of second-class women bishops or in some way create a church within a Church to accommodate this matter. When I was first appointed as Second Church Estates Commissioner, I went to General Synod at York in 2010 and said, “I need to tell General Synod that if and when a Measure comes to Parliament, it will not get through if it is creating second-class women bishops. This is not whipped business and there is no way in which we will get a Measure through Parliament if there are to be second-class women bishops.” Although of course we need to recognise and seek to involve and include all the traditions, we cannot square the circle in that way.

The House of Bishops also agreed that there must be a broad-based measure of agreement about the shape of the legislation in advance of the beginning of the actual legislative process. The House of Bishops endorsed the view of the Archbishops Council, which had met the week before, that the Church of England must now resolve this issue through its own processes as a matter of great urgency. Some voices this evening, quite understandably, have suggested that if the Church of England does not act, Parliament might need to. It is my earnest prayer that over the coming months the Church of England can and will demonstrate that it can resolve this issue itself.

I have no doubt that there are those in the Church of England who will have heard the voices of people who are not just senior Members of this House but senior churchmen. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) is a very distinguished member of the Church of England and chairs a number of relevant committees and when he finds it necessary to present Bills to the House on the nomination of bishops to the other place, the Church of England should take account of that and listen. These are not enemies of the Church of England—everyone who has spoken in the debate is a friend and supporter of the Church of England who wants it to succeed. I am quite sure that it will listen to what Parliament has said collectively, which will ensure that the Church of England, House of Bishops and General Synod will address the issue with urgency.

If any right hon. or hon. Lady or Gentleman has any concerns about that, I invite them to come and listen to the Archbishop of Canterbury-designate tomorrow. They will hear from the Bishop of Durham a very clear message that there is determination to ensure that there are women bishops in the Church of England at the earliest possible moment.