Lords Reform: Bishops Will Stay

Jack Straw’s White Paper on reform of the House of Lords is supposedly an attempt to “modernise” the Upper Chamber. Unfortunately, that ambition falls at the first hurdle with the Government’s complete refusal to abolish the anachronism that is the Bench of Bishops. According to Mr Straw, not only should the bishops stay, but they should be supplemented by representatives of other religions. The Church Times, however, reports that the Church is bracing itself for a cut in the numbers – probably from 26 to 16.

The Church Times reports that the Bishop of Chelmsford was one of those on the working party who prepared the paper. He said that there was a point below which the number of bishops could not be cut if they were to do their job. “I have got a sticking point. The numbers have still to be worked out, but you need 16 active bishops to make it work, and you need more than that to achieve that number, if some are off ill or away. This is not a settled issue.” The very same Lord Bishop of Chelmsford once wrote on his time in their lordship’s house: “I am listened to because of the position I occupy. And if I write to a minister on House of Lords notepaper protocol dictates that I receive a reply, and speedily …most bishops enjoy their time in the Lords. I love it. The privileges are enormous.”

But by not completely ruling out ex-officio clerical representation, the Government is missing a perfect opportunity to bring Britain’s parliament into line with the rest of the democratic world.

Not one other Western democracy gives religious representatives automatic seats in their parliaments as we do. According to Mr Straw, giving the bishops the boot would be tantamount to disestablishing this Church of England, but that isn’t true. You can have one without the other. And, according to key surveys, popular opinion favours waving the bishops bye-bye, so what is the government afraid of?

It’s not as though we don’t already have plenty of pious voices in the Lords. Even without the bishops, the Second Chamber is much more religiously inclined than the country it purports to represent. This is partly because peers are on average much older than the general population and also because many have been given places simply because they are retired clerics. Just listen to any debate with a supposed “moral” dimension, such as the recent one on the Sexual Orientation Regulations, and note the number of peers announcing that they speak as Christians.

It is an insult to ‘temporal’ peers to suggest they cannot deal adequately with moral or ethical matters without the bishops’ guidance. The bishops are not representative of the country in any general sense: they are all men, middle class and overwhelmingly white, and only come from English dioceses or archdioceses. Church attendance has been in decline for the last six decades to the point that 98% of the population are not in a CofE pew on an average Sunday – yet the bishops claim to speak for us all. The Church shows repeatedly how out of touch it is with the population, and often its own congregants, as it did recently over its opposition to the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill.

The Government’s proposal to bring in more religious representatives from other faiths is the least democratic and most misguided of all courses of action. Where will it end? If you give places to one religion, then why not another? And if to a Sunni representative, why not a Shia? And if to an orthodox rabbi, why not a liberal one? And if to a Baha’i why not a Scientologist? See the problem? Cries of religious discrimination will surely come hot on the heels of such appointments when one tiny sect is appointed and another rebuffed. Trying to accommodate all religion and sects in this country would turn a would-be senate into a synod.

And, again, clerics from the minority faiths are all men. They are even less representative of the population than the Anglicans. According to the Census, the minority religions in total make up less than 5% of the population. And many of the people counted in that total never go anywhere near a mosque or temple.

The Government should bite the bullet and make the second chamber a secular institution, where religious representatives do not get seats as of right. If there are elections, let them compete on the same basis as everyone else. If it is to be selection, let them be appointed only if they have something of value to contribute, above and beyond their religious allegiance – of which there is a surfeit in the House of Lords at present. If we want our parliament to be more democratic, we should begin by ridding it of the medieval throwbacks who are there because of privileges that should have been dispensed with centuries ago.

What You Can Do. MPs will be given a free vote on these proposed reforms, so it is important that we alert all MPs to the necessity of getting rid of the bishops. Write to your MP explaining that the bishops are undemocratic, unrepresentative and an anachronism. You can refer in your letter to a report produced by the NSS which goes into detail about the democratic anomaly that the bishops represent.

Also mention the proposal to introduce even more religion into the House of Lords, and the potentially catastrophic effects this could have, given the amount of religious conflict already apparent in Britain.

The bishops’ role in parliament was explained in a document that headed a previous Government attempt to reform the Lords in 1998. It said:

“Bishops have always been members of the House of Lords. Originally they were summoned in their dual role as major landowners and as the king's counsellors. In more modern times, the presence of the Bishops became increasingly associated with the establishment of the Church of England, although in law the two are quite separate. The establishment of the Church of England rests upon Parliament's powers over its legislation and the requirement for the Sovereign as its Supreme Governor to be in communion with it. The Bishops and Archbishops now sit by virtue of the Bishoprics Act of 1878, which provides for the two Archbishops, the Bishops of London, Winchester and Durham, and the next 21 most senior diocesan Bishops to have a seat in the House of Lords. The Bishops are the only true ex officio members of the House of Lords, as they retire from the House on retirement from their see. Since clergymen of the Churches of England, Scotland and Ireland, and Roman Catholic priests, are not able to be members of the House of Commons, the presence of Bishops in the House of Lords was before the introduction of life peers the only significant non-lay representation of the principal religious denominations in Parliament."

See also: Evan Harris questions Jack Straw in the House of Commons
House of Lords Reform is available here..