My Lords, I thought that your Lordships might welcome a maiden speech as a kind of interlude in the midst of today’s business. I am most grateful for the welcome that I have received in your Lordships’ House since my introduction on, of all auspicious days, April Fools’ Day. I am particularly grateful for the courtesy, kindness and helpfulness shown by the Lord Speaker, Black Rod, the Clerk of the Parliaments and their staff.
I enter your Lordships’ House as Bishop of Rochester and thus, in a sense, I represent parts of Kent and south-east London which were for a time predominantly Saxon, if tradition is to be believed, in contrast to the Jutes who inhabited east Kent. For most people, such historic divisions have disappeared along with the history of early medieval times, but of course we in the Church of England hold strongly to our historic divisions, even sometimes holding them with affection, and to this day a great gulf therefore continues to be fixed down the middle of Kent in ecclesiastical terms between the diocese of Rochester and the diocese of Canterbury—it outdates us by a mere seven years.
More seriously, I come to your Lordships also as bishop to prisons, a role that I have recently inherited from the former Bishop of Liverpool who I know brought care, commitment and intelligence to that role both within your Lordships’ House and more widely in the nation. It is a role that I have accepted with enthusiasm and some modest knowledge, not least because I am married to someone who has spent a great deal of the past few years in prison—in her professional capacity, I hasten to add. The title of “bishop to prisons” notwithstanding, the brief covers most of the criminal justice and penal affairs world. In that regard, I look forward to engaging, within the life of your Lordships’ House, with matters such as the proposals for secure colleges, which merit some serious thought and attention, and others that no doubt will be touched on in this House next week.
As an aside, I was aware in some of the reporting of the gracious Speech, or rather its televising, of the continued observations that I am part of an all-male Bench. One of the tasks that I carry at the moment is to take before the General Synod in July this year the draft Measure that would bring that position to an end, and I suppose that I crave your Lordships’ encouragement in those matters later this year.