In just over three weeks, members of the General Synod will gather at Church House in Westminster London for what will potentially be the most unusual group of sessions for some time.

And that’s quite a claim, because there have been some very unusual sessions in recent years:

• 2012: the legislation to permit the consecration of women to the episcopate (female bishops) was narrowly rejected in the House of Laity, causing confusion and hurt to both supporters and opponents;
  
  
• 2014: revised legislation to permit the consecration of women to the episcopate passed, with well known and vocal supporters and opponents crossing the floor to hug each other in recognition of the pain that both sides felt;
  
  
• 2016: a “take note” debate on a House of Bishops’ report on “Marriage and Same Sex Relationships after the Shared Conversations” was narrowly rejected in the House of Clergy, leading to the setting up of the Living in Love and Faith initiative;
  
  
• 2020: the Coronavirus pandemic impacted Synod’s ability to meet. Clauses were introduced into the Coronavirus Act 2020 to allow the postponement of elections, effectively turning the quinquennium into a sexennium. An emergency in-person meeting of the Synod, with the minimum members present to meet the quoracy rules, took place to pass emergency standing orders which allowed the Synod to meet remotely;
  
  
• 2023: The Living in Love and Faith report was brought to the Synod, beginning a process leading to the approval of prayers of blessings for couples in same sex relationships; and
  
  
• 2023: Synod members successfully forced the ability of former Independent Safeguarding Board members Jasvinder Sanghera and Steve Reeves to address the Synod, despite attempts by the Archbishops’ Council lawyer, Alex McGreggor, to block members’ attempts to use standing orders to invite them to speak.

All of those examples created very firm memories of those who were there – whether as members, support staff, or observers. But next month’s group of sessions looks set to be even more unusual. It will be the first time the General Synod has met following the resignation of an Archbishop of Canterbury – don’t forget that Justin Welby didn’t retire, he stood down following criticism of safeguarding failures.

And the Church of England’s number two, Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, is also facing mounting calls to resign following his own more serious shortcoming failures and evidence that he has lied to both Synod and journalists.

Safeguarding – in many different guises – will run through the February meeting of the General Synod like the word “Blackpool” runs through a stick of seaside rock.

The Outline of Business was published before Christmas, and for the first time it was annotated with additional information that this document usually omits. I thought it was going to be the start of a new openness for Synod members and observers. But with less than a month to go before the Synod meets, the full agenda and supporting papers has still not been published.

This month, a revised Outline of Business was published, which dropped the final approval of the draft Abuse Redress Measure (more on this later).

Today, the Archbishops’ Council communications team have confirmed that the papers will be published at 2 pm on Thursday 23 January 2025, giving Synod members just over two weeks to read and digest the agenda and paperwork.

There are three Houses of Synod:

• The House of Bishops includes all 42 diocesan bishops in the Church of England, nine suffragan bishops elected by and from all suffragan (assistant) bishops, and  two ex-officio bishops: the Bishop of Dover (currently the Right Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin) and the Bishop to the Forces (currently the Right Revd Hugh Nelson, suffragan Bishop of St Germans in the Diocese of Truro);
  
  
• The House of Clergy includes around 197 elected priests and deacons representing dioceses in the provinces of Canterbury and York, as well as theological colleges, cathedral deans, armed forces and religious communities; and
  
  
• The House of Laity includesaround 250 members elected by members of deanery synods, and a number of co-opted members, including three lawyers (the Dean of the Arches and the Vicars-General of the provinces of Canterbury and York), three Church Estate Commissioners (including the second Church Estates Commissioner, currently Marsha de Cordova, the Labour MP for Battersea), the chair of the Archbishops’ Council’s Finance Committee, the chair of the Church of England Pensions Board, and other lay members who are trustees of the Archbishops’ Council.

Between then, the bishops, clergy and laity who are members of the General Synod will have a range of domestic situations. Some – bishops and other clergy in particular – will be able to allocate some of their “working time” to reading the Synod papers, when they are published. Other – particularly hard working parish priests and working members of the House of Laity – will have to set aside time in their “private time” to read the papers.

And herein lies a major problem: the General Synod is a legislative body with the power to pass laws. The UK Parliament devolved law-making powers to the General Synod in 1919. In February, the Synod is due to give final approval to two significant, but heavily flawed, pieces of legislation. How can they do that if they are not given sufficient time to effectively read, scrutinise and consider the agenda and papers?

Let’s take a look at the safeguarding issues on the “outline” agenda:

• The Makin Review
  5.20 pm, Monday 10 February (1 hour 40 minutes)
  
  Synod members will debate the report by Keith Makin following his review of the Church of England’s actions related to the abuse committed by John Smyth. The Makin Review led to the resignation of Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury.
  
  The Makin Review has been published, but the motion to be debated by the Synod hasn’t been published. It is likely to be a “take note” debate. Past experience suggests that it will begin with a presentation. With just 100 minutes allocated to this item, it is unlikely that all those who would want to speak will be given an opportunity to do so – especially as the chair will ensure that the lead bishop for safeguarding and people on various safeguarding bodies are given priority in the speaking pecking order.
  
  
• Structures of Church Safeguarding Independence
  10.45 am, Tuesday 11 February (2 hours (with possible extension))
  
  This is a debate that will set the direction of travel for the future structures of Church of England safeguarding. After the Archbishops’ Council dismissed its Independent Safeguarding Board, they commissioned Professor Alexis Jay to make recommendations for the future of church safeguarding. She proposed two “structurally independent” organisations – “Organisation A” would be responsible for the delivery of the safeguarding operations of the Church of England; and “Organisation B” would be responsible for the “Scrutiny of Church safeguarding”.
  
  The Archbishops’ Council established a “working group” to water down these proposals. The Working Group will report to Synod and propose two options for the Synod to choose from. We do not yet know what those options are, but we are led to believe that one of them will include “fully independent” safeguarding – the question is, how will the working group define “independent”.
  
  
• Clergy Risk Assessment Regulations
  6.00 pm (approximate), Tuesday 11 February (1 hour)
  
  These regulations are an example of the utter failure of the Archbishops’ Council’s safeguarding function and the National Safeguarding Team. These regulations were first tabled at the last group of sessions, in July 2024, as “deemed business”; but were called in for debate by Synod members. However, no time was available in that group of sessions and so they come to the Synod again next month.
  
  That isn’t the failure. The failure is that these regulations provide some tinkering around the edges – transferring the power of diocesan bishops to approve terms of reference to diocesan safeguarding officers (DSOs) and making DSOs responsible for “implementing and monitoring risk assessments”.
  
  What these new regulations do not do, however, is give power to anybody – the DSO, the bishop, archbishops, or Clergy Discipline Tribunals to take any action against any priest – or other office holder – if a risk assessment shows that a person poses a risk.
  
  BBC Radio 4’s recent File on Four programme on Canon Andrew Hindley highlighted the problems that arise from the regulations, which provide obligations on clergy to undertake risk assessments, but provides no power for a responsible body to act on the risk assessment.
  
  In a statement at the time of the broadcast, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Justin Welby and Stephen Cottrell, said: “We absolutely believe that there is no place in ministry for people who are a risk or pose a risk to others and continue to work to ensure that our systems are made ever stronger and more robust.”
  
  Such a statement is more meaningless “fine words with no action” when the regulations come to be amended with nothing to provide the power that is needed.
  
  In the statement, the archbishops continued: “This case highlights the complexity of our structures and processes and is just one example of why we asked Professor Alexis Jay, the former chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, to provide options and recommendations for how further independence of safeguarding within the Church of England might be achieved. This work is now being taken forward.”
  
  Nothing in Professor Jay’s terms of reference, or her report (which they had by the time of their statement) covered the inability of the church to take action in response to risk assessments.
  
  I hope the Synod reject these proposed regulations and sends them back for further work to ensure that they are fit for purpose and address this serious legislative gap.
  
  
• Appointment of one member of the Archbishops’ Council 
  12.30 pm (approximate), Wednesday 12 February (15 minutes)
  
  What has this got to do with safeguarding? I hear you ask. Well, the answer is that there is much disquiet about the role of the Archbishops’ Council’s conduct the current safeguarding fiasco; and I understand that some Synod members will use this item as an opportunity to vent their concerns.
  
  On a purely procedural point, appointments to the Archbishops’ Council are usually a routine item of business.
  
  Some members of the Archbishops’ Council are ex-officio, including the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Prolocutors of the Convocations of Canterbury and York (in effect, the two co-chairs of the House of Clergy), the chair and vice chair of the House of Laity. Others are elected by Synod members in their respective Houses: two bishops, two other clergy, and two lay members.
  
  The membership includes one of the Church Estates Commissioners, selected by the two archbishops, who can also appoint not more than six other people as members of the Council, subject to the approval of the General Synod.
  
  The Synod usually nods through the appointment of new members of the Archbishops’ Council, but unrest about the council is high. In December, the Rochester Diocesan Synod backed a motion of no confidence in the Archbishops’ Council’s oversight of safeguarding.
  
  In response, the Archbishops’ Council’s secretary general William Nye sent a tone-deaf response which treated Rochester Diocesan Synod members as idiots who were “unaware of how [the Archbishops’ Council] and the National Safeguarding Steering Group, informed by the National Safeguarding Team (NST), are actively responding to the recommendations of the Makin review.”
  
  The Rochester motion was about more than Makin – and its members were well aware of the incompetence of the Archbishops’ Council, after many, many, many “lessons learned reviews” (from which the lessons are never learned) and media exposes.
  
  This week, the diocese issued robust responses to Nye’s letter, with separate letters from the Bishop of Rochester, Jonathan Gibbs, and from the Chairs of the Rochester Houses of Clergy and Laity, Jeremy Blunden and Sarah Poole.
  
  It will be interesting to see how this plays out in this item of business. It could be that the appointment is simply nodded through, as per usual – but it will be well worth watching.
  
  
• Clergy Conduct Measure – Final Drafting and Final Approval
  2.00 pm, Wednesday 12 February
  
  This draft measure is an example of the utter failure of the Archbishops’ Council’s ability to properly consider and draft effective legislation – and also a failure to listen to the concerns of many groups of people.
  
  This measure, if passed, will replace the much criticised Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM). The CDM has been criticised by just about everybody who has had dealings with it. This draft Clergy Conduct Measure has been many years in the making. But it will not make any difference to the problems in the existing legislation. It actually makes it worse.
  
  The opportunity for Synod members to amend this draft legislation is now gone. Any amendments to the draft measure as it currently stands can only be moved by the Measure’s steering committee. We won’t know until the papers are released whether any changes are being proposed.
  
  At the last group of sessions, Synod members were lied to about one of the fundamental problems with the legislation: the secrecy of tribunals. Synod members were told that holding tribunal hearings in private was the norm in other tribunals, such as those held under the authority of the General Medical Council. But this is not the case. GMC tribunals are organised by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.
  
  MPTS tribunals do not operate in secret. Their tribunals – as with all other such tribunals in other spheres – are open to the press and public, with the protection that the tribunal can impose reporting or access restrictions. But the default position is that hearings are in public. Their website gives details about both forthcoming and past cases.
  
  But the Clergy Discipline Commission are desperate to keep their tribunals secret. To do otherwise would shine a light on the incompetence of the tribunal panels and the farcical nature of the unchallengeable processes and decisions. And so Synod is lied to so that they can get their way.
  
  The secrecy of the tribunals is one of the problems with the current Clergy Discipline Measure. That would be retained in the new measure.
  
  The draft measure does remove bishops from the initial stage of the process (and the involvement of bishops in the initial scrutiny stage is one of the problems with the current CDM), but it adds “grievances” to the scope. Grievances should not be part of a disciplinary process focusing on conduct. By widening the scope of the disciplinary process to include grievances, the new measure will over complicate the clergy disciplinary system.
  
  I hope the Synod rejects this proposed Measure unless the steering committee proposes significant change.
  
  
• Safeguarding Code of Practice (Managing / Reporting Safeguarding Concerns and Allegations)
  Safeguarding Code of Practice (Religious Communities)
  6.00 pm (approximately, and only possibly), Wednesday 12 February (1 hour)
  
  These are three Safeguarding Codes of Practice, issued under section 5A of the Safeguarding and Clergy Discipline Measure (2016). That measure poses a duty to comply with the codes of practice.
  
  The draft codes have been published as “deemed” business, which means that they won’t be debated unless a sufficient number of Synod members ask that they are.
  
  I’m still working through the documents, but I have to say that they are a dog’s dinner.
  
  The Managing and Reporting Safeguarding Concerns and Allegations document is 170 pages long; and the Safeguarding Religious Communities document is 90 pages. All rather long for a document that a whole group of people, including clergy, lay leaders, church wardens, PCC members, Archbishops’ Council staff members and any “person who works (on any basis) in a diocese or parish, or at a cathedral or for the purposes of a mission initiative, and whose work to any extent relates to safeguarding children and vulnerable adults.”
  
  As safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, that anybody employed in the church in any way has a duty to comply with the code. Yet it is far too complicated for ordinary people to understand.
  
  The biggest take so far, is that the code looks designed to protect bishops who fail to follow safeguarding advice. For while every one has a duty to comply with the codes, if there are breaches, “the initial approach to allegations regarding a failure to meet safeguarding requirements should be focused on competence and capability, rather than punishment.”
  
  The jury is out at the moment, but these codes look far too complicated and I can’t see how they are an improvement on the current fiasco.
  
  
• National Church Governance Measure – Revision Stage
  2.00 pm, Thursday 13 February (2 hours)
  
  As with the appointment of a new member to the Archbishops’ Council, this item has the potential to open up a wider debate about accountability and scrutiny of the national church institutions. This draft measure would replace the Archbishops’ Council with a new body which would be even less accountable than the Archbishops’ Council, and with less (even no) elected representatives from the Synod.
  
  The Church of England is primarily a parish-based organisation. It does not have a “head office”. The work of parishes has been heavily impacted by the scandals caused by the national church institutions. Synod will need to give careful thought to the question of how beneficial a new less accountable body for the Archbishops’ Council will be.
  
  
• Abuse (Redress) Measure – Final Drafting and Final Approval
  removed from the agenda
  
  The final approval of the Abuse (Redress) Measure has been removed from the outline of business. This is a good thing, because it was clear that the draft measure did not do what the senior leadership of the Church of England thought it was supposed to do.
  
  After the Makin Review was published, Archbishops’ Council member Ian Paul gave an interview to Channel Four News’ Cathy Makin, who has doggedly researched and highlighted the abuse of John Smyth. In the interview, Ian Paul explained that Smyth’s abuse did not take place “within the Church of England”, and said that “The reason it’s impossible to say blanketly, anyone affected by Smyth will receive funds from [the Redress Scheme], is we don’t know what their connections with the Church of England are. The abuse did not happen in the Church of England, but people may have connections with or reason from the Church of England why they’re going to be eligible for that.”
  
  His comments accurately reflected the draft Measure, which, in section 3, stated the conditions that must be met if a person who suffered abuse would be entitled to make a claim. This included that the person who carried out the abuse had authority to perform a role in the Church of England (or the victim had reasonable grounds to believe that the person who carried out the abuse had that authority); AND that there was “a close connection between activities authorised for performing that role and carrying out the abuse.”
  
  The draft measure went on to exclude claims if “the person who carried out the abuse also had authority to perform a role outside the Church of England, and the connection between activities authorised for performing that role and carrying out the abuse was closer than the connection [to the church].”
  
  Which is exactly the position Ian Paul explained to Channel Four News, which was picked up and reported on by other media outlets. In response, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, issued another of his misleading (untruthful) statements, in which he said that the reports  “contained inaccuracies and misleading information” about the proposed redress scheme and said that the interview “gave a misleading impression of those who may or may not be eligible.”
  
  It is quite clear that Stephen Cottrell was either (a) happy to lie, again, or (b) did not understand the draft measure that was coming to General Synod for final approval next month.
  
  To give Cottrell the benefit of the doubt, it may well be that he wasn’t lying, and that he did not understand the Measure – so taking it back to enable further development is the best outcome. But it does serve to add to the evidence that he is unfit to be an archbishop in the Church of England.
  
  
• Questions
  4.00 pm (approximately), Monday 10 February (1 hour, 30 minutes)
  and potentially at other times throughout the group of sessions
  
  The deadline for Synod members to submit questions is midday on Tuesday 28 January. This doesn’t give them much time to read the papers and ask questions based on them. We won’t know until nearer the Synod what the questions are, but it is highly likely that a large number of them will relate to safeguarding.

So, we can look forward to a very unusual group of sessions; and we should pray for the members and Synod staff.

The papers for the February 2025 group of sessions will be published here:
churchofengland.org/about/governance/general-synod/groups-sessions-information/general-synod-february-2025.