My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for the very full and helpful way in which he introduced this Measure this evening, as he did in the Ecclesiastical Committee itself. I also take the opportunity to put on record my deep appreciation—I am sure I am not the only member of the committee who feels this—for the warm and very effective way in which we are led by our new chair, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who is an outstanding leader of our deliberations.
I very much endorse the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, which concern me deeply. I am a little more cynical than he is about the anonymity
plea, because I fear that it might be counterproductive and would lead to even more gossip and speculation of a very damaging kind. I, too, despair at times about what I have always seen as the ideal foundation of British justice—that people are innocent until proven guilty. So often—too often—people are, in effect, tried, arraigned and condemned by the more irresponsible sections of the media and, indeed, by the gossip of the communities in which they live.
That is the point I wanted to make. Churches are themselves fairly close-knit communities. Particularly in smaller urban or rural areas, they are a very important part of the network of wider society. What we are looking at here can be a nightmare experience, not only for the person who is accused but also for his family and all the rest. I hope I will be forgiven for saying this—instinctively I do not like to say this, because it can sound awfully sentimental—but the basic principle of Christianity, as I understand it, is about love and the application of love in the way we live.
It seems that if we have any real, deep commitment to that principle, we ought to hear a little more—I raised this in the Ecclesiastical Committee—about the arrangements that are being made for counselling and supporting the accused individual during the period in which all these proceedings take place. Of course, if the person is ultimately exonerated, one can rejoice in the fact that he or she is exonerated but that will not undo the damage and, from that standpoint, I would like to see the other side of this coin. I am absolutely convinced that the church is to be congratulated on having faced up to something that needed to be faced up to and should have been faced up to long ago. It is extremely good that it has moved so firmly to try to do this, but the way in which the move is undertaken matters as much as the principle of the move itself, and I hope that the right reverend Prelate will be able to reassure us.