The Church by Law Established
Robert's speech in the Commons on the Removal of Clergy Disqualification Bill.

5.6 pm

Mr. Robert Key (Salisbury): I shall vote tonight on the ecclesiastical issues that are raised by the Bill, rather than on the party political ones. As a matter of principle, I shall delight in voting against the guillotine that the Government are imposing.

I do not seek to oppose the Bill. We are assured that the Church of England and other Churches were consulted and are content. I should like to declare an interest, as my late father was a Lord Spiritual, or, more technically, a Lord of Parliament--as opposed to a life peer--during his tenure of the See of Truro. A short while ago, during the passage of other legislation, hon. Members discussed the interesting question whether the time had come for them to record on the Register of Members' Interests their religion and denomination. That is an intriguing possibility, as such a practice would clear the air in relation not only to the matters under discussion, but to similar ones.

The Government are seeking to change the law for the worst possible reasons. The Under-Secretary just managed not to say that the history of the measure started in 1997, but we almost heard him make such a remark. He did not go far back in time, but I shall go much further in deploying my arguments. The introduction of the Bill is

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in the interests of the Labour party and of one man who wants to stand as a Labour parliamentary candidate in the forthcoming election. I do not know Mr. David Cairns and I hold nothing against him personally. I merely point out that, when the previous Government changed the law a few years ago in the interests of one of our colleagues, that person was ejected by his electors at the ensuing general election in 1997.
I understand that Mr. Cairns served as a Roman Catholic priest. Thus, unlike Church of England priests, he cannot draw up a certificate of relinquishment under the Clerical Disabilities Act 1870. Such a certificate would ensure that he relinquished not his holy orders, but the exercise of them. The Under-Secretary will wish that he had remembered that point. It is not that priests stop being ministers under the 1870 Act, but merely that they relinquish the exercise of their holy orders. As a Roman Catholic, Mr. Cairns has had to obey the Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law 1983. Paragraph 3 of canon 285 of that code forbids clerics from assuming public office whenever it means sharing in the exercise of civil power. That is what the Roman Catholic church says.

However, the Government are today inviting us to repeal the whole of the House of Commons (Clergy Disqualification) Act 1801 and parts of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, the Clerical Disabilities Act 1870, the Welsh Church Act 1914, the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 and the Representation of the People Act 1983. We are tinkering, but on a grand scale, and we must pause to remind ourselves why we are doing so. I say "we" not only as a communicant and practising member of the Church of England but as a Member of Parliament, which itself has been interwoven for hundreds of years with the Church in England.

The Bill is part of a process of removing civil disabilities on the ground of religion that goes back at least to the 1780s and attempts to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts. Those attempts concerned the emancipation of Roman Catholics, notably the 5.5 million Roman Catholics in Ireland who came within the jurisdiction of Parliament in 1800 and 1801. That pattern of reformation continued as the Church of England functioned throughout the 18th and early 19th century as the religious embodiment of the state. Church and state belonged to each other, and the Church was expected to embody and express the religious aspirations of our nation. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 and the Catholic Emancipation Act 1829 brought an end to the absolute primacy of the English Church. I stress that it is not only the Church of England but the English Church.

I want to acknowledge the help that I received in sharpening my ecclesiastical history from the staff of Sarum college in my constituency and especially the Very Rev. John Moses, the Dean of St. Paul's. I commend his excellent book "A Broad and Living Way" to those who wish to get more involved in that esoteric subject.

How relevant is the subject to the House? Some of my hon. Friends have said that the Bill has been introduced because it is expedient for the Government before a general election, that not many people are interested in it, and that it has a low priority. I have tried to ascertain the Bill's relevance and the state of belief in this country.

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The 17th report of "British Social Attitudes" was published last year. The table for church membership in Britain shows that 46 per cent. of the population declare that they are Christian; 10 per cent. declare that they are of another religion, and 44 per cent. claim to be of no religion. Those statistics are interesting because the trendy talk nowadays suggests that religion is for a tiny minority. The table for church attendance shows that 45 per cent. of the people of this country claim that they go to church, although 13 per cent. say that they go once a week. A little more than 54 per cent. say that they never go to church.

Do people believe in God? According to the report, 77 per cent. of the people who were polled in 1998 said that they did. Forty-eight per cent. said that they believed in God now and that they always had. Only 13 per cent. said that they did not believe in God now and never had. Again, those statistics are interesting for the doubters.

The Bill may be perceived as unfinished business and further ad-hocery. However, it is characteristic of the way in which the Churches have reformed throughout the years. In the 19th century, the process of disengaging Church and state was piecemeal and pragmatic, like the Bill. The establishment principle was qualified but not abandoned. It should not be abandoned in the 21st century.

For 200 years, the British Government have sought religious neutrality for our state. I shall cite some examples: the removal of restrictions on ground of religion for election to Parliament and public office; the abolition of the powers of church courts; the abolition of compulsory Church rates; the secularisation of the ancient universities; the introduction of civil marriages; the provision of public burial grounds and municipal cemeteries; and the establishment of civil parishes.

Another interesting move was made in the Church of England (Worship and Doctrine) Measure 1974. The redoubtable Enoch Powell spoke passionately in the debate. On the comprehensive nature of the Church of England, he said:

"It was because the liturgy and the articles of religion, being part of the law of the land, were so difficult to alter, were so near as possible to being permanencies, that in age after age successive waves of thought and religious feeling were nevertheless able to find a place within the Church of England and within its unity."--[Official Report, 4 December 1974; Vol. 882, c. 1673.]

Section 6 of the Measure states:

"Section 3 of the Submission of the Clergy Act 1533 (which provides that no Canons shall be contrary to the Royal Prerogative or the customs, laws or statutes of this realm) shall not apply to any rule of ecclesiastical law relating to any matter for which provision may be made by Canon in pursuance of this Measure."

In other words, we must go back a very long time--way beyond 1921 or even 1801--when we are asked to revise these issues.
In spite of all that, because the Church of England is the English Church, and because of the nature of the reformation settlement and the responsibilities attached to establishment--which the Church of England should trumpet with much greater confidence--the Church of England has an outreach throughout the land unequalled by any other religion, Church or sect.

The Bishop of Durham said, in a debate on the Wakeham report in the House of Lords:

"The presence of bishops in Parliament can point to an abiding validity of the Christian tradition to public doctrine and ethical norms. It is the national ministry of the Church of England 'by law

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established' that makes this role possible. Through the dioceses and parishes, through a small army of clergy and licensed lay ministers, through church schools and chaplaincies to many kinds of institutions, the Church of England has a vast constituency of pastoral contact which extends far beyond the core of committed churchgoers. The expression 'national church' is not an anachronism."--[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 March 2000; Vol. 610, c. 932.]

The English Church has, therefore, no cause to feel threatened by the Bill. It should, however, wake up and remember why it is the Church "by law established".

Mr. Bercow: I have listened to my hon. Friend's historical exegesis with interest and respect. I have also noted what he said about church attendances, which I found slightly more surprising. Will he confirm that he is not suggesting that the somewhat better church attendance figures than I had imagined are either an argument for the Bill or against it?

Mr. Key: The figures are an important matter of background information. Some people have suggested that it is a waste of time for Parliament to consider this matter, and that the people out there are not interested. The figures that I have quoted--they are not my figures--prove my point.

The Venerable Bede wrote, in his "Historiam Gentis Anglorum Ecclesiasticum", that there was, in the sixth century, an awareness of England and of the English without parallel in other parts of Europe, and that the English nation was the child of the Church. The Church gave its authority to kingship, to law and to the unity of the nation. It provided the King's chief office-holders and was, effectively, the civil service. The state granted the Church privileges and gave it land and money.

England was never part of the holy Roman empire. The Normans drew England closer to the papacy, but still the English Church fought for independence. The Magna Carta of 1215 asserted:

"ut ecclesia Anglicana libera sit."

That means: thus the English Church will be free.
In 1392, King Richard II stated in statute 16--the statute of praemunire:

"The Crown of England, which has always been so free and independent as not to have any earthly sovereign but to be immediately subject to God in all things touching the prerogatives of royalty and the said Crown, should be made subject to the Pope and the laws and statutes of the realm defeated and set aside by him at pleasure, to the utter destruction of the sovereignty of our Lord the King, his crown and royalty, and his whole kingdom, God forbid."

That was too much for the Pope, and Richard II withdrew it on pain of excommunication. However, it was an expression of the independence of the English Church that eventually bore fruit in the reformation statutes of the 1530s.
School history teaches us--or probably does not, under this philistine Government--that the Tudor reformation was about Henry VIII's desire to get a divorce from Catherine of Aragon. It was about far more than that. It was about the extent of papal involvement in English life, the relation of the papacy to the Crown, and the meaning of sovereignty in a nation state.

Henry VIII's reformation Parliament of November 1529 set in train a process that took until Elizabeth I's

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Parliament of 1559 to establish the monarchy as defender of the faith, and--in the Act of Supremacy 1559--as

"the only supreme governor of this realm as well in all spiritual and ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal."

Against the background of that and all the strife and struggle that followed the reformation, I wish Mr. David Cairns no ill, but as the House debates the Bill on Second Reading it is well for us to remember that the English Church and state are two facets of one society, inextricably bound together in this nation and both much stronger for it.

Mr. Stuart Bell: The hon. Gentleman has given us an interesting recital of historical background that brings us to the concept of Church and state. In the same mould, does he accept that during the 19th century, between Gladstone and Disraeli, the argument about Church and state and the established Church rippled on throughout? It will continue to ripple on, but will the hon. Gentleman confirm that if one disentangles Church and state, the monarchy itself comes into focus? Whether we have a republic or a monarchy is the next issue to be dealt with.

Mr. Key: That will no doubt occupy those who sit on these Benches in a thousand years. I am sad that some hon. Members have not recognised the interweaving of Church and state in this country, which makes it wholly different from any other nation in the world bar none, particularly our continental neighbours. In 1920, the French Church was disestablished.

Mr. Bell: It was 1903.

Mr. Key: I was several years out, which is terrible, but that intervention makes the point that the French Church was disestablished. Only this weekend, I happened to be in old Catholic Munich for a security conference. As we looked at the two onions of the Marienkirche, a French academic laughed about the fact that no one ever goes to church in France, saying that it was a load of mumbo- jumbo. I thought, "Well, that's just a bit different."

Mr. Forth: I am slightly puzzled, I must confess, given my hon. Friend's analysis of the relationship between Church and state and the continued presence of Church of England bishops in a House of Parliament as of right, that he still seems to think that we are able legitimately to legislate as the Bill suggests without giving proper consideration or reconsideration to the related matters of Church and state and the presence of bishops in the other place. How can he suggest that?

Mr. Key: If I considered such matters in detail, I dare say that I would be ruled out of order. However, I would be happy to explore them because I know that, under the Wakeham proposals, the number of Church of England bishops in the other place would be reduced from 26 to 16. That I regret, but the quid pro quo is that there would be more appointees from other Churches and other religions. I have no difficulty with that. When I was a Minister, I established the Inner Cities Religious Council with a number of distinguished theologians and the Bishop of Leicester, Tom Butler, who is now Bishop of Southwark. Were I allowed to, I should have considered

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that important development under the terms of the Bill. I would be happy for a wider discussion along such lines to take place.

Mr. Bercow: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way because my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) has a legitimate grievance about which, I might add, he chuntered furiously to me earlier. Does my hon. Friend agree that one reason for the problem arising--we do not seem to be dealing with interrelated issues in an orderly fashion--is that the Government have engaged in a disgraceful go-slow on reform of the composition of the other place?

Mr. Key: Yes, of course. My hon. Friend is right. If I appear to take a rather long-term view, I make no apology for that. The seat that I represent, Salisbury, sent its first Members to the House in 1260. We in Salisbury tend to think long. We also find it important to take in our stride reforms that have taken place over those many hundreds of years. There is an historical continuity about this place and about our country.

I shall not be surprised if we give the Bill a Second Reading, but I am very surprised that the Government have chosen to rush it through just before a general election, without blushing. It is heroically appalling that they should hurry to the House to legislate so that one of their own party's candidates can stand for election in a few weeks. Nevertheless, that is entirely in character with the way in which the House, over many centuries, has dealt with such issues, the difference being perhaps that 300 or 400 years ago, someone would have been burnt at the stake. I have no intention to vote for that tonight.