“If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all” – the old saying goes. Unfortunately, such an approach means that people don’t call out bad things. And bad things are left to continue.

This ChurchAbuse.UK blog will report a lot of bad things, and I make no apology for that. But today I want to highlight a good thing.

First, though: I was a tad confused this morning when I read the Church of England’s daily media digest. It highlighted a press release about the appointment of a new chair and trustee to the board of Safe Spaces, the charitable company co-owned by the Church of England’s Archbishops’ Council and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, to provide support to victims and survivors of church-based abuse.

My confusion stemmed from the fact that the Archbishops’ Council’s press release – “Independent support service for survivors of church-related abuse appoints new Chair and trustee to the board” – which was issued yesterday (9 September) announced news that this blog reported on in May – nearly four months ago!

Anyway, searching for the yesterday’s press release drew my attention to a new press release: “New independent chair for Church of England’s National Safeguarding Panel”, which was issued today (10 September).

The National Safeguarding Panel is pretty toothless. Under its previous Chair, Meg Munn, the panel has invited various figures from the Church of England in for tea and biscuits and a cosy chat about what they’re up to. It has never held anybody to account and, frankly, its reports have not provided much illumination on the topics discussed.

Today’s announcement is that the former Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England, Nazir Afzal, has been appointed as the new chair of the NSP.

Do the Archbishops’ Council understand what they are letting themselves in for?

Afzal is an outspoken campaigner for victims and survivors of sexual violence. In August 2021, speaking to Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs, he explained why he left his role as a defence lawyer.

“I just couldn’t do it”, he said. “There was one occasion actually where I’m advising a rape suspect in a police station before his interview. . . I’ve given him a copy of the statement the police provided to me and I can see this guy literally getting off on re hearing and rehearsing what he had done allegedly to that woman and his reaction to reading what she said, just was the icing on the cake in my mind.

“I couldn’t say to plead guilty because he wasn’t going to. He was going to drag her through the courtroom as he ultimately would have done. And that’s his right, absolutely. But why should I be party to that? I wasn’t going to be party to that.

“So I walked out the door literally and handed my notice in almost immediately afterwards. I’m not doing this anymore. I can’t do this – good for people who can, and we do need people who can do that, but it wasn’t for me.”

As a senior Crown Prosecutor with the CPS, Afzal handled some very high profile cases, including the prosecution of grooming gangs in Rotherham. And he didn’t settle for tackling the issues raised in the case only in the safety of the court room.

Again, speaking on the same Desert Island Discs programme, he said this: “I did a Rochdale Town Hall event where I’m speaking to 300 to 400 people and I’m telling them that it beggars belief that a 59 year old man is driving around with a 14 year old girl not of his ethnicity. Why didn’t anybody say anything?

And somebody stands up in the room and says, do you want us to be grasses?

“And I said, no. I want you to be good neighbours. That could be your daughter. That could be your friend’s daughter. You have a responsibility more widely.

“And so I was doing this challenge. The great news is the vast majority of people absolutely understood it and they were shocked about this as anybody else.”

For a number of years, Afzal has been the independent chair of the Catholic Church’s Safeguarding Agency in England and Wales. And he has led reviews into the culture of the London Fire Brigade and the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

He is a man who does not pull his punches when exposing wrongdoing. On publication of his review into the Nursing and Midwifery Council, he gave an interview to BBC Breakfast, and revealed that “a nurse that had Category A child sexual abuse images, which is the worse type  of images, and the NMC decided that was in their private life and so not a matter for them – as though somehow your private life ends the moment you’re about to enter your workplace.”

Very little gives me hope that the Church of England and the Archbishops’ Council seriously want to change the culture of protectionism for abusers and wrongdoing. The appointment of Nazir Afzal is different.

Afzal is a campaigner who gets his hands dirty. I can’t see him serving as an administrative chair. He is a doer who gets things done. With him at the helm of the National Safeguarding Panel, I hope we will begin to see a body with a little more teeth than it has shown so far.