Armed Forces Chaplains (Licensing) Measure

The Church recognises its lamentable failings, which have made it possible for some people to abuse others while others in the Church of England have been reluctant to face up to unpalatable truths and avoided confronting difficult and painful situations openly and candidly. The Measure and draft rules before your Lordships comprise important elements of trying to right those wrongs. In saying that, the Church, of course, must recognise that, for many survivors, the wait for redress has been too long in coming.

Since the commencement of the scheme’s development in 2021, the Church has sought to work through some complex and novel questions, wishing to give careful consideration to the views of victims and survivors. The Church has intentionally adopted a person-centred approach, which enshrines—indeed, in the first section of the Measure—“dignity, respect and compassion” at its heart, and which, considered as a whole, allows for more generosity than the alternative of litigation. Perhaps most crucially, it has been designed to look and feel different from litigation. The scheme is not designed to mirror a court of law or require a decision-maker to resolve triable issues, for which reason the scheme’s arrangements do not incorporate all these features, such as disclosure and cross-examination, which noble Lords would expect in an adversarial process, which this is not.

The Church has reflected carefully on the eligibility conditions and has sought to find the right balance, which provides that the scheme responds where a failure within the Church has been the effective cause of abuse but not, of course, otherwise. The Church has also sought to be clear about the nature of abuse, which is in scope, while allowing for appropriate flexibility to respond appropriately in particular cases, taking into account the personal experience of each victim and survivor.

The scheme provides that applicants should have available independent legal and financial advice if they wish to receive it, but not at a level which allows legal fees to consume a disproportionate amount of the redress fund, to the detriment of victims and survivors. The Church has provided for a review of the operation of the Measure, giving the Church’s General Synod the ability to hold the Archbishops’ Council accountable for the scheme’s operation and which allows the General Synod to extend the lifetime of the scheme if it appears necessary to do so.

In closing, I recognise that this Measure does not and could not meet every person’s hopes, but it is notable for having commanded overwhelming support at General Synod. I ask your Lordships’ House to recognise that there are many victims and survivors who want the Church earnestly and finally to meet its commitment to provide redress. I know that there are survivors watching now who look forward very much, according to your Lordships’ pleasure, to this Measure receiving Royal Assent. As noble Lords will be aware, the Ecclesiastical Committee has considered both these Measures and found them to be expedient. I am very grateful to the committee for its careful consideration. I beg to move.

The second Measure before us, and I will be brief, is the Armed Forces Chaplains (Licensing) Measure, which simply seeks to address a rather odd problem which has been occurring for years, and which this Measure had to be brought forward to correct. Chaplains play a very important role in the armed services. This tidying-up and simplifying legislation avoids the need for a chaplain to get the permission of another bishop, in whose diocese he might be present, to officiate in his or her role as army chaplain. The Measure provides a statutory basis for the current custom and practice, whereby the Archbishop of Canterbury licenses chaplains to His Majesty’s forces, giving them ecclesiastical authority to exercise the Church’s ministry in that role, without them having to also seek permission from the diocesan bishop to exercise their ministry as an Armed Forces chaplain in the area in which they find themselves. This is a wholly sensible and necessary Measure to which all members of the General Synod agreed. We certainly deemed it expedient when we addressed it in committee, and I commend it to the House.

As so well put by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester, this Measure will provide victims and survivors with a consistent single point of access to apply for different forms of redress, ranging from acknowledgement and apology to therapeutic and financial support, guided by the crucial principle that every applicant and every person entitled to apply should be treated with dignity, respect and compassion. It is reassuring that financial support as a form of redress will be provided up front by the Archbishops’ Council to successful applicants and that, being cognisant of the sensitivities involved, requests for voluntary financial contributions from a Church body will be made by an accountable third party rather than in-house from one Church body to another.

In addition, the process outlined for reviewing the Measure after the end of the third year of the five-year period appears both sensible and workable. This will ensure that sufficient data is available to properly assess its implementation and operations before a report is produced by the Archbishops’ Council to inform the General Synod’s decision over the Measure’s extension by a further five years. We consider this a reasonable timeline and hope that other bodies and organisations can learn lessons from the scheme as a model of best practice.

It will be a great relief to many that this Measure is coming before your Lordships’ House to ensure that victims and survivors of abuse can begin to apply for and receive redress in this way. We are in debt to all those individuals who have supported the development of this Measure thus far and will no doubt continue to contribute to its successful implementation.