Channel Islands Measure

Lord Chartres Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Chartres (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am very glad to follow those comments by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope. He raises some very pertinent questions, which I shall attempt to address as someone who chaired this commission, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham said in his excellent introduction. I was very fortunate in my fellow commissioners, to whom I pay tribute. One is a distinguished Member of your Lordships’ House, the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, and the other is the eminent and learned judge, Sir Christopher Clarke.

The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, very properly described the painful sequence of events. There had been a breakdown in relations between the diocese of Winchester and the church and deaneries of Jersey and Guernsey. We discovered, through our visits to the islands and interviews with the various interested parties, a desire for reconciliation on all sides, but a general agreement that there was no going back. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, very properly asked what the interim measures were. As a matter of fact, interim oversight of the church in Jersey and Guernsey was given to an assistant bishop in the diocese of Winchester, Bishop Trevor Willmott, to whom I pay tribute and who did some extraordinarily good work.

The hope is that this new structure will enable us to move forward and, in course of time, will lead to a healing of memories. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, suggested, it is clear that much of the difficulty arose because of a lack of clarity about the respective roles of the diocesan bishop and the deans of Jersey and Guernsey in the context of the very particular constitutional and legal traditions of the Channel Islands. It was our task as a commission not to pass judgment on the controversies of the past but to identify a clear way forward that would both recognise the enhanced responsibilities of modern bishops in contemporary culture—particularly for matters such as safeguarding—and respect the particular traditions of the Channel Islands.

As we debate this afternoon, there is a great deal of work going on to amend the canons and to establish a much clearer set of protocols to enable a fruitful partnership between the deaneries and other parts of the Church of England. By supporting this Motion, noble Lords will be creating a foundation for the trust and the certainty that are necessary if we are to learn from the painful experience of the past. This measure will ensure that, as far as possible, there is a structure within which the Church of England in both the diocese of Salisbury and the deaneries of Jersey and Guernsey can flourish.