Clergy Conduct Measure
House of Lords · Lords Chamber · 24 Jun 2026 · 16 speeches · Official Report
Motion to Direct
Moved by
That this House do direct that, in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919, the Clergy Conduct Measure be presented to His Majesty for the Royal Assent.
My Lords, I have it in command from His Majesty the King to acquaint the House that His Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Clergy Conduct Measure, has consented to place his interest, as far as affected by the Measure, at the disposal of Parliament for the purpose of the Measure.
My Lords, the Clergy Conduct Measure is a vital part of the Church of England’s ongoing reform of clergy discipline and safeguarding. During the passage of this Measure through the General Synod, the Church has acknowledged that the current clergy discipline system does not always serve complainants well. Too often, they have found the process opaque and painfully slow. Equally, it has not served clergy well, leaving many in a state of prolonged anxiety and limbo, worried they will lose house and job. This new Measure is the result of six years of detailed work to address that situation. The key principle at its heart is proportionality. The system introduces three different tracks that complaints will be allocated to: as a grievance, as misconduct or as serious misconduct. Each of those tracks has its own independent procedure for the investigation and resolution of the complaint. So, by triaging cases effectively from the outset, the Measure seeks to ensure that every complaint is handled appropriately and at the right level of seriousness. Crucially, this will, we believe, lead to a much quicker process. The Measure makes vital strides in aligning safeguarding and discipline processes. The one-year limitation period is abolished for allegations of serious misconduct, meaning that somebody who has been seriously harmed will be able to bring a complaint, regardless of when the alleged conduct took place, without having to seek special permission. In cases involving children...
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely. I invite the noble Baroness to speak.
My Lords, I declare my interest that one of my sons is a priest in the Church of England. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester for introducing the Measure to your Lordships’ House today, and the Ecclesiastical Committee for its helpful report on the revised Clergy Conduct Measure, published earlier this month, both of which have been very helpful. I also thank those people who have provided briefings and comments ahead of this debate. My Front-Bench portfolio-victims and vulnerable people-means that I have a particular interest in formal processes to investigate and remedy complaints, whether minor or very serious. I should also add that, as president of the Lib Dems between 2015 and 2019, I was a witness at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse regarding historical sexual abuse by a senior Liberal Party MP. As president, I was involved with changes to our own party’s disciplinary process and worked with the Committee on Standards in Public Life, as well as my opposite numbers in other parties at that time. Some of my questions today reflect my experience of those processes a few years down the line. Assessing how process works in practice is where I want to start. The statement of purpose for the CCM currently speaks of preserving “the collective good standing of clergy”. If viewed from the Church of England’s perspective, this is logical. A new Measure should work so well that it will root out established poor behaviour through a...
My Lords, I will speak to the report that I seek leave to present to the House, as chairman of the Ecclesiastical Committee. I will leave the answers to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, to the right reverend Prelate, although I will make just one or two comments. I chair the Ecclesiastical Committee, which was created in 1919 as a statutory committee, oddly, and not a Select Committee, which means we do not have parliamentary privilege-which every now again I need to remind the 15 MPs and 15 Peers who are its members. Our entire duty is to scrutinise the Measures of General Synod before they reach both Houses of Parliament. The right reverend Prelate gave the exact date, 2003, when there was last a finding by a previous committee of a Measure being inexpedient. Since then, every Measure passed has been accepted by the committee that I now chair.
However, in the last year, we have stopped two. That was almost unheard of. The first of the two that we stopped was the conduct Measure, and for a very good reason: the Church, through the General Synod, took the view that most of the hearings of serious misconduct should be heard in private. The committee which I chair took the view that the Church needed to be transparent and accountable and to be seen to be so by the public, who were becoming, as your Lordships will know, in some ways rather disillusioned over a number of sexual abuse cases and what the IICSA’s very good report had said. We stopped it on only one issue, although in the report there is also our concern that, where there are what are, in effect, Henry VIII clauses in a Measure, we would like to see the draft regulations, which would actually show what happens on the ground. We put that in the report, which I will present to your Lordships, and the Church has taken that on board.
The Church accepted that there should be the transparency of public hearings and made changes to the draft rules. Unfortunately, from that point of view, the lawyer to the committee pointed out, quite rightly, that these were ultra vires the Measure-in other words, they went beyond the measure-and therefore could not be accepted. Consequently, it had to go back to the General Synod. The committee is absolutely delighted with the current wording of Section 31(3) and is happy to find it expedient. So all is well now. It is an enormous improvement on the previous conduct Measure of 2003. Speaking personally, I cannot wait for it to become a part of the new system of the Church, because it is a huge improvement.
The interesting point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about safeguarding is an important one. Helpfully, church lawyers have provided a flow chart, including grievances, minor misconduct and serious misconduct, which, I assume, is largely either fraud or sexual abuse. That flow chart will make it much easier for everybody who has to work with it to understand exactly how this will work. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, safeguarding is clearly interlocked with conduct, for obvious reasons. I have personally been involved in discussions with members of the Church about safeguarding, with my background as a former family lawyer and family judge. They are certainly finding their way on this. I hope that that will be one of the future Measures of the General Synod to come before this House, certainly not before the end of next year.
I do not feel qualified to express a view on the other aspects that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised. However, I hope that the House will accept my report, as well as the Measure.
My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester for introducing the Measure and to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for setting out the work that the committee that she chairs and that Members, from your Lordships’ House and another place, have done as part of the scrutiny. As the right reverend Prelate says, the Measure has been a long time in the making. It was first proposed in 2020 and originally approved by General Synod in 2025, but one can go back even further, because, as he and others have said, it implements the recommendations that were made by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which my noble friend Lady May of Maidenhead set up when she was the Home Secretary, in 2014, when I had the privilege of working for her as a special adviser. Like many noble Lords, I was moved and impressed to hear the discussion between my noble friend and the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, who took part in the “Today” programme-my noble friend guest edited it over the Christmas period-talking about the extensive work that the Church has been doing to make sure that it is delivering for victims and survivors of abuse and speeding up the processes that it has to investigate questions of conduct. It is to be commended for that and for the attitude reflected by the comments of the right reverend Prelate that this is still ongoing work and that there is always more to do to make sure that the processes are...
I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate and for the questions that have been raised. I particularly thank the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for the scrutiny that she and her committee have given to this matter. I would be grateful if she could pass that on to the committee when it is next in session. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, referred to IICSA. I was another person who gave evidence in person at IICSA. I was the expert on Anglican religious monastic communities before IICSA. It was a gruelling experience to hear some of the horrific things that had been done by people who were claiming that this was an expression of monastic life when it was far from it. The noble Baroness asked about review and reporting structures. Under the existing Clergy Discipline Measure, there is a clergy discipline commission. Similarly, there will be a clergy conduct commission as part of the new Measure, which will constantly review how the Measure is working and whether it needs tweaking here or there. It will produce regular reports to the General Synod, as its predecessor has done. That will allow us to keep the Measure under review at all times. This raises the question, as the noble Baroness said, of how you make minor changes. We hope that minor changes will largely be made to the rules or to the code. The rules will be laid before Parliament under the negative procedure, if I recollect correctly, so there will be an opportunity for...
Motion agreed.
House adjourned at 8.45 pm.