House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Committee (3rd Day) (Continued)

Amendment 33

33: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause— “Lords Spiritual(1) A maximum of five Church of England bishops may sit in the House of Lords.(2) Of those five bishops, one must be the Archbishop of Canterbury, one must be the Archbishop of York, and the remaining three must be nominated by the Synod of the Church of England.(3) No bishop may sit in the House of Lords beyond the end of the Parliamentary Session in which they turn 70 years old.”Member’s explanatory statement This amendment reduces the number of bishops sitting in the House of Lords from 26 to five.

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 33 in my name, which would reduce the number of Bishops in the House from 26 to five: the most reverend Primates the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and three other right reverend Prelates nominated by the synod of the Church of England. I am delighted to see the right reverend Prelate in his place—he has booked his slot among my remaining three by being here tonight.

I accept that this is not in the Bill, and nor was it in the Labour Party manifesto, but spending perhaps 20 or 30 minutes on this will be worthwhile, and I cannot see any other way to raise the topic. Naturally, I expect all Front Benches to keep a million miles away from this subject. I shall be very brief and leave it to other noble Lords to speak in favour of or against this probing amendment.

I shall give the House some statistics for consideration. The number of Church of England baptisms in 2023 was 67,800. The average Sunday attendance is about 700,000. The average Christmas attendance is about 2.3 million. Of course, we have 26 Bishops and an electorate of 48.2 million people, as of the last election. Therefore, there is one Bishop per 27,000 people at attending church on Sunday. There is one Bishop per 88,500 people at Christmas attendance. The maximum size of a constituency is 77,000.

Last year, the daily attendance in this House was 397. Of course, we do not have constituencies and neither do the Bishops, but the number of Peers who attend divided into the electorate would mean one Peer for every 121,000 electors. But, even with Christmas attendance, we have one Bishop for every 88,000 Church of England attendees.

I accept that it would not take an expert statistician to find fault with my conclusions from these statistics, which I admit are highly flawed, but it seems to me that we are overrepresented by Bishops in this House and I leave it to other noble Lords to offer a view for or against that view. I beg to move.

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 48 in my name and the consequential Amendment 49. Perhaps I might begin by saying that I am not making any personal criticism of any of the present Lords spiritual. Most, and perhaps almost all, are important contributors to our debates. However, in a debate of this kind, we have to ask the question: on what basis do the Lords spiritual sit here? My suggestion to the House is that we should examine the criteria and ask ourselves whether they are well founded.

The objection to hereditary Peers is very similar to the objection to the Lords spiritual. In the case of hereditary Peers, while both the pool of candidates and the electorate are small, there are, at least on the Conservative Benches, both hustings and elections. But the way in which individuals become Bishops is very far from transparent, and there is no filter of elections and hustings. Moreover, the pool of candidates for the episcopacy is a very small one, and indeed the selectorate is even smaller. The process itself is very discreet.

Once an individual becomes a fully fledged bishop, that person, subject to gender preferences, has a very good chance of becoming a Member of this House. It is, in short, a case of the Rt Rev Buggins. In the case of the two Archbishops and the Bishops of London, Westminster and Durham, membership of this House is automatic—a self-perpetuating oligarchy. That is obviously not a good way to constitute our legislature.

So one has to ask: what about the tests of suitability and propriety? Most of the Committee agree that such tests are important. These debates—the last three days—have shown that the Committee values the role of HOLAC. Some of us, in fact, want to enhance its role. But HOLAC has no role to play in assessing the propriety or suitability of individual bishops to become Members of this House. I note, incidentally, that my noble friend Lady Berridge’s Amendment 90B addresses this matter. I know of no scrutiny—certainly none of a publicly transparent kind—that addresses the question of the propriety or suitability of appointment.

My Lords, I must say that I am a little distressed to hear from Conservative Benches the nature of this criticism of the Bishops. It is unfortunate. I understand, however, that people get cross with the Bishops for all sorts of reasons—I certainly frequently do in columns that I write.

I also hesitate to speak on this subject because these are high and complicated matters. But I do feel that somebody has to speak for the Bishops here, because they will not speak for themselves. After all, our Lord said,

“let this cup pass from me”,

and that is more or less so for the Bishops. They cannot say, “No, I want to keep the cup. I want to go on and have another pint in the Bishops’ Bar”. They have to express a becoming humility, which basically means that they have to shut up on this subject—or so they will tend to feel.

Of course, we feel cross about this sometimes and I believe that there is a problem with the Bishops in this period. I will illustrate it with an example. I had a very lovely, pious aunt, who, as a child, attended her parish church. Two clergy preached there: one was very good at it and one was very bad. She said to her parents, “When Mr X preaches, I listen, and when Mr Y preaches, I keep my mind on higher things”. Sometimes, with some of the episcopal utterances we hear nowadays, we need to keep our minds on higher things.

One point of agreement I have with the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, is that there is a link between the rights of hereditaries and the rights of Bishops. It is precisely for that reason that I am against what he is arguing for. We should not allow temporary things to worry us so much; we should look at this sub specie aeternitatis, which, translated into politics, means “after the next election”. We also need to look at it in the light of the past 800 years. The history matters here, because what the Church of England represents in your Lordships’ House is a settlement—one that was very hard to achieve and is constantly under possible threat. It has caused great division and, in the past, murder and conflict.

The noble Viscount was mistaken in saying that the Bishops are not a land-owning interest any more; they are collectively a land-owning interest, and a very big one—although, of course, less than they were. Bishops used to be, for example, Lord Chancellors. Today, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol led us in our prayers; 300 years ago, her predecessor was the Lord Privy Seal. I wonder whether the present Lord Privy Seal, having to put up with rather a lot, might like to swap roles with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol today.

The Bishops have a long history in the power of the land, which has obviously greatly declined. However, that does not mean that they do not matter. In fact, in a certain way in modern times, Bishops have become a little more important in the public eye because of modern communications. An example of that—albeit one that many people do not greatly enjoy—is “Thought for the Day”; another is the way that Bishops and Archbishops in the 20th century have become very well-known and reached much larger audiences than in the past. In that sense, audiences have become more religious, if you like, than they were in, say, the 18th century.

Even in this House, it is occasionally possible for a Bishop to be prophetic in the sense in which bishops are supposed to be. For example, the late Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, spoke in this House, very controversially and famously, against the allied carpet-bombing of German cities. As a result of that speech, he was not promoted to Archbishop of Canterbury, because Winston Churchill was not pleased. However, it was an authentic Anglican response to a very important question.

We must always consider this alongside all the links it makes with other bits of our constitution. The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, referred to the Writ of Summons; he was talking about the Writ of Summons of Peers in general. I recommend an excellent article by the Reader of the Temple, the Reverend Mark Hatcher, in the Ecclesiastical Law Journal. We are summoned in the name of our faith and allegiance to the King—that is what binds us—but the Bishops are summoned in the name of their faith and love for the King. It is an interesting distinction, which shows the historic closeness of the Church in this country, and the whole idea of the establishment in its proper sense, to other institutions and the monarchy. We should not forget the famous phrase that people used to use to defend our constitution, “No bishop, no King”. They were very closely linked—so let us be a bit careful about how we go on this.

Mr Hatcher, Reader of the Temple, did a survey of the Bishops—I do not know whether right reverend Prelates here today were victims of it—in which he asked their opinion of various things and what they thought their role was. They said that they wished to speak for people of faith in their diocese—and I think their territorial role is very important, actually—but that, surprisingly, they did not speak in this House for the Church of England. Noble Lords may think that very odd; surely that is what they are supposed to do. I think not. They are not supposed to have one voice and one line. They are not a trade union for a particular denomination; they are individual Christian voices. That needs to be thought about and, if possible, respected. You could say they are like Cross-Benchers who wear dog collars and lawn sleeves. That is the spirit of what they are—or, at least, what they should be.

You could argue that a lot of this seems very outdated, but we know that Tony Blair thought the same about the office of Lord Chancellor and look what a mess he made of trying to get rid of it, with all the knock-on consequences. We can see how this would happen in the amendment from the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. Looking at the enormous list of things that he thinks must be removed and changed, you realise how many threads have to be pulled out. I ask: to what purpose?

This is in another amendment, so I mention it only in passing, but it is important that the Bishops represent a warm house in our constitution for other faiths and denominations. They are not sectarian. Actually, this is a modernisation; they were not like this 100 years ago, but they are like that now, as is widely recognised by Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Roman Catholics, of whom I am one.

In the conduct of this House, although we may sometimes think, “Gosh, these are all Guardian-reading characters over there”, and that we may as well read the Guardian rather than hear their speeches—sometimes that does occur—they are very careful of the courtesies and conventions of this House. I have never heard a Bishop be rude to anybody here, and we try not to be rude to them. I notice that we defer to them when they get up, for example. They try, collectively, to live up to the prayer in which they lead us every day on the conduct of this House and how we try to behave here. It is very good to hear that prayer and all the other prayers that are said.

I suppose what I am saying is that the Bishops are the spiritual equivalents of the hereditaries. They inherit their role, though not by blood, and it has a real meaning. It is essentially a benevolent custom. Maybe it was not so when they were very rich and oppressive many years ago, but it has become largely benevolent, even though we all know the Church of England is going through a difficult time at present. They try honourably to discharge that role in your Lordships’ House, and that is important.

It follows that, if the basis on which the hereditaries sit here is to be removed, that of the Bishops should go too. There is a grim rationalist logic about that—get rid of the hereditaries and chuck out the Bishops. The famous word used by people who never want to argue but wish merely to assert is to say that it is “indefensible”. In my view, nothing that has existed for a very long time is indefensible, though you may be up against it in certain ways. It needs to be argued and proved.