My Lords, it has been a long day and we are on the cusp of a party conference recess. I do not want to detain your Lordships more than is necessary. I am somewhat anxious, and feel, to use the words of a noble Lord a moment ago, a scintilla of fear, standing here for the first time and hearing much of the previous debate about the importance of good leadership and of doing everything well. Perhaps I am a candidate for all that further training that was talked about. It is a great privilege to be allowed to spend this week as duty Bishop in this House and to lead Prayers each day.
I am grateful for your Lordships’ presence this evening, not least because the Measure before us is significant in its application and is about safeguarding. As noble Lords will know, the Church of England has been on a long journey of putting in place appropriate staff, policies and practices to make the Church a safe place for all people, especially children and vulnerable adults. That has been essential as a response to church often being unsafe and to stories—historic and current—of appalling cases of abuse by those in positions of power who should have known better and whom many were willing to trust.
This Measure updates the legislation concerned with the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults by the Church of England. In particular, it responds to a recommendation made by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, known as IICSA. In 2019, the independent inquiry issued a report on case studies it had carried out into abuse committed by Peter Ball, a former Bishop of Gloucester, and on past abuse in the diocese of Chichester. The report recognised that steps had been taken by the Church to tackle abuse, including the passing of the Safeguarding and Clergy Discipline Measure 2016. But the independent inquiry considered that the way the 2016 Measure imposed obligations on individuals and Church organisations to follow correct safeguarding practice was less clear than it should be. This recommendation focused on the requirement in the 2016 Measure that a relevant person must have “due regard” to safeguarding guidance issued by the House of Bishops. The independent inquiry considered that the effect of a statutory requirement to have “due regard” to guidance was not well understood and should be replaced with a requirement that was more explicit in its terms.
The Archbishops’ Council accepted the recommendations contained in the report of the independent inquiry and has been taking steps to implement them. This Measure, passed by the General Synod in April this year, will implement the recommendation I have just described. It replaces the existing duty to have “due regard” to safeguarding guidance with the duty to “comply with” requirements imposed by a safeguarding code of practice. The concept of complying with a requirement should be more straightforward than having “due regard” to guidance.
The code of practice itself, and any subsequent amendments to it, will be subject to prior consultation, including with those who have suffered abuse, as well as with representative bodies of the clergy and the laity. The code will also be subject to scrutiny by the General Synod. The code of practice, and any amendment to it, will be sent to every member of the General
Synod and published online. If 25 or more members of the synod give notice, a code will not come into force until the synod has debated and approved it.
The opportunity has also been taken in this Measure to update the list of “relevant persons”—that is, those individuals and bodies to whom the code of practice will be directed and who will be under a duty to comply with its requirements. Under the 2016 Measure, the list of relevant persons already includes clergy, licensed laypersons, church wardens and parochial church councils. Cathedral chapters will be added by the Cathedrals Measure 2021. This Measure will add diocesan boards of finance and diocesan boards of education to the list. It will also add staff working in the Church of England’s national safeguarding team, meaning that they too will be obliged to comply with relevant requirements contained in the code of practice.
During the passage of the Measure through the General Synod, the issue was raised as to how compliance with the requirements of the code of practice would be enforced, should that become necessary. So far as the clergy are concerned, non-compliance would potentially be a disciplinary matter, as it would be for licensed lay ministers. Bodies such as parochial church councils and diocesan boards are charities, and the Charity Commission takes the safeguarding responsibility of charity trustees very seriously and has statutory powers to intervene where they are not being properly carried out. Cathedrals are subject to visitation by the bishop and will shortly become subject to the jurisdiction of the Charity Commission.
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The sole lacuna in terms of enforcing compliance was found to be the case of churchwardens. As matters stand, there is no power to take disciplinary or other action against a churchwarden who refuses to comply with correct safeguarding practice. The Measure therefore includes a power for the bishop to suspend a churchwarden where he or she has failed to comply with the requirement of the safeguarding code of practice. This is a discretionary power and builds on powers that bishops already have to suspend churchwardens who present a direct safeguarding risk. As with the exercise of those existing powers, a churchwarden who is suspended for non-compliance with the safeguarding code of practice will have a right of appeal to an independent judge.
I must conclude by acknowledging the serious past failings of the Church of England in protecting children and vulnerable adults from abuse—a failure which the most reverend Primate Archbishop of Canterbury has acknowledged on many occasions. As he said in his evidence to the independent inquiry in 2019:
“Overall, I remain utterly horrified by what we have done in the past, our failures, and no doubt there will be failures going on … We have made some small progress. We have a long way to go.”
I hope and pray that this Measure will be another step in making the Church of England a safer place for children and vulnerable adults. I beg to move.