My Lords, disciplinary proceedings for misconduct by Church of England clergy are governed by the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003, which has been in force since l January 2006. The 2003 Measure enables diocesan bishops to deal with formal complaints against the clergy. Where appropriate, and subject to the procedures provided in the Clergy Discipline Measure, the bishop can impose penalties on a cleric who has committed misconduct. That can include, in the most serious of cases, removal from office and prohibition from ministry. For the few cases that cannot be resolved by the bishop, the 2003 Measure has established a modern tribunal system that is compliant with human rights legislation.
This Clergy Discipline (Amendment) Measure amends the 2003 Measure in four main respects. First, the amending Measure in Section 1 will provide an exception to the principle that no proceedings for unbecoming conduct can be taken in respect of the lawful political opinions or activities of Church of England clergy. The new exception relates to racial equality, because under this amending Measure it will be misconduct for Church of England clergy to be members of or actively support a party or other organisation that has been declared to be incompatible with the teachings of the church in relation to racial equality. Because the bishops are the guardians of the doctrine of the church,
it will be the House of Bishops that will decide which organisations are incompatible with the church’s teachings. However, any declaration would not come into force if the General Synod disagreed with the declaration.
Although this provision will affect the rights of clergy under the European Convention on Human Rights, especially in relation to Articles 10 and 11—on freedom of expression and freedom of association—it will do so only in a way that is compatible with the convention and solely with regard to the fundamental area of racial equality. The church itself has rights under the convention, in particular under Article 9—on freedom of thought, conscience and religion—and is entitled to ensure that its clergy adhere to its teachings, and to discipline those that do not.
The second main area of reform is in respect of appeals from the findings of disciplinary tribunals. Under the 2003 Measure, there is an absolute right of appeal to an appellate court, and pending any appeal a stay is imposed on the implementation of the penalty. This means that a priest who has no prospect of success can launch an appeal against a finding of misconduct, hold on to office meanwhile, and frustrate and delay the final resolution of the complaint, which is unjust for the complainant, for the parish concerned and for the wider church. Clause 3 of the amending Measure will require a prospective appellant to obtain leave to appeal before making the appeal. That will not remove the cleric’s right to appeal; it merely puts in place a kind of sieve procedure so that hopeless appeals are stopped and dealt with swiftly and fairly. The church, in introducing this amendment, is taking account of the practice in secular courts where leave to appeal is usually required before an appeal can be pursued.
The third main area where the amending Measure makes change is with regard to the powers of the bishop. At the moment, a bishop can remove from office and prohibit from ministry without further proceedings a priest or deacon who has been convicted of a criminal offence if a prison sentence has been imposed by the criminal court. But there have been cases where a serious crime has been committed and the priest has been given a non-custodial sentence and, in those circumstances, the bishop currently has no power to act unless and until a formal complaint is made, and then only if the priest consents to the penalty imposed by the bishop. The amending Measure will enable a bishop to remove from office and prohibit from ministry a cleric who is convicted of certain criminal offences regardless of whether a prison sentence has been imposed. The amending Measure will also enable the bishop to remove from office a cleric who has been adjudged by the Disclosure and Barring Service to be a risk to children or vulnerable adults and who has accordingly been entered on either of the barred lists under the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006. This is surely a desirable improvement.
In addition to these three important areas of reform, the amending Measure makes a number of modest amendments to the 2003 Measure which are essentially of a technical nature. For example, paragraph 5 of the schedule makes amendments with regard to the appointment of members of a disciplinary tribunal and of the two provincial appellate courts.
I hope that this necessarily brief outline of the amending Measure will show that, beneath the rather technical complexity of it all, it will improve the church’s disciplinary procedures, which are indeed already regarded as working well. The Measure rightly received overwhelming support in the General Synod—212 votes in favour, with just two votes against and one recorded abstention—and I commend it to the House.