Church Appointments (Repeal of Discriminatory Provision) Bill

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 10th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to follow the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen. I welcome this short Bill, but sometimes the shortest Bills close the longest chapters.

The Jews Relief Act 1858 was a landmark in the emancipation of British Jews. My own family came to Britain after its passage, settling in Tredegar, just up the road from the birthplace of the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, in the south Wales valleys, and, within a few generations, one of their descendants could sit in this House and serve as a Minister of the Crown. The Act therefore marked a decisive change in the relationship between the Jewish community and the state. It represented not merely toleration but the promise of equal participation in the public life of this country. That is a story about this country of which I am immensely proud, but Parliament had not quite finished the job.

Section IV of that Act still prohibits anyone “professing the Jewish Religion” from advising the sovereign “directly or indirectly” on certain Church appointments. The penalty for doing so, as my noble friend pointed out, is “a high Misdemeanor”. It carries permanent disqualification from any Crown office, both civil and military, and the prohibition is in very sweeping terms. It is not confined to a Prime Minister tendering advice to a sovereign; “directly or indirectly” would reach advisers and other Ministers involved in the process.

This is not merely a historical curiosity. When I served as a Minister at the Ministry of Justice, my responsibilities included the Crown dependencies. However, because I am Jewish, I could not advise the Crown on appointments of Anglican clergy in the Crown dependencies. I therefore have the unusual distinction of having been personally inconvenienced by an Act of Parliament passed in 1858. It is an odd experience to find that a provision enacted in the middle of the 19th century still has a practical bearing on the duties of a 21st-century Minister. That illustrates why the repeal of obsolete discrimination is more than a matter of tidying up the statute book.

The serious point is that discriminatory laws matter even when they are rarely invoked. The objection is not that this law is old; many old laws are actually good laws. It is that the law makes a person’s religion determine whether he may discharge the responsibilities of a secular office. The anomaly, as we have heard, is striking. A Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or atheist Prime Minister may advise, but a Jewish or Catholic Prime Minister cannot. Of course, Disraeli himself, our first Prime Minister of Jewish birth, escaped the strictures of this Act only because, as a child, he was converted to Anglicanism. As a matter of short interest—I do not have time to go into it—that was because his father had fallen out with the local synagogue. Some things do not change. It illustrates that the distinction was not only, so to speak, between Jews and Catholics and others; the distinction was even between somebody born Jewish but who later converted to Anglicanism and somebody who continued to profess the religion of his ancestors.

There is an important constitutional distinction as well. The Church is perfectly entitled to impose religious qualifications for religious office, but advising the sovereign is a constitutional responsibility of the Prime Minister, not a spiritual function, and the religion of the officeholder should not determine whether that responsibility may be discharged. There are respectable arguments to be had about the proper place of politicians in church appointments and about an established Church itself. Neither question is raised by this Bill and neither needs to be resolved this evening. The short point is this: so long as Parliament gives the function to the Prime Minister, it cannot sensibly make its exercise dependent on whether the Prime Minister is Jewish or Roman Catholic, or neither.

When the late Lord Sacks of blessed memory was Chief Rabbi, he was a notable defender of the established Church. He memorably compared the Church of England to the host at a cocktail party whose responsibility it is to make everyone else feel at home. The serious point is that he believed, as I do, that minority faiths are at home and flourish best not in a society which banishes religion from public life but in one which gives faith a recognised and respected place. For him and for me, the establishment of the Church of England is not a threat to religious minorities but is, in fact, a protection for them. He also argued that establishment could secure a place for religion in the public square for the benefit of faiths beyond the established Church, which is a very important point.

The provisions by which the 1858 Act achieved Jewish emancipation have all long since been superseded or repealed. The Promissory Oaths Act 1871 removed restrictions on Jews holding public office. The Patronage (Benefices) Measure 1986 repealed the earlier part of Section 4, concerning rights of presentation to ecclesiastical benefices. The point of the present Bill, therefore, is not to undo emancipation, but rather to remove the last discriminatory remnant of the legislation that helped to achieve it. I therefore have just one question for the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal, which might in fact be the easiest question I will ever ask her. The Bill repeals the Jews Relief Act 1858 in its entirety, as she said. I ask only, given the Act’s historical significance, will she therefore expressly confirm that its repeal removes no surviving right or protection enjoyed by Jewish citizens, but instead removes the last remaining disability imposed by that legislation?

The Jews who came to Tredegar, including my family, sought a country in which their religion would not determine the limits of their citizenship. The 1858 Act had been a great step towards fulfilling that promise, but Parliament had left the job unfinished. This Bill, nearly 170 years later, completes that job.