The draft Clergy Conduct Measure is being presented as reform. It is not.

At least, it cannot be assessed as reform while the rules that will govern its operation remain unseen.

My second background briefing focuses on a single, fundamental problem: Parliament and the General Synod are being asked to approve a statutory disciplinary regime without sight of the rules that will determine how it actually works in practice.

This is not a technical quibble. It goes to the heart of legislative scrutiny.

Time and again, Parliament has made clear that it cannot properly assess legislation where decisive detail is deferred to later rules or regulations. In the case of the draft Clergy Conduct Measure, those concerns were explicit. Draft rules were requested. They were not provided.

Instead, approval is being sought on the basis of assurances – some of which have already proved unreliable.

The briefing documents how Synod was given inaccurate information during earlier stages of the Measure’s passage, how those errors were never formally corrected, and how Parliament was subsequently presented with a misleading account of Synod’s deliberations.

It also explains why claims that draft rules “cannot yet be produced” do not withstand scrutiny, and why precedent within the Church itself demonstrates that this is a matter of choice, not necessity.

Crucially, the briefing situates the draft Measure within a wider pattern: framework legislation that preserves internal control, displaces scrutiny, and pushes key safeguards into opaque processes that sit beyond effective oversight.

This is not about personalities. It is about structure.

If you are being asked to trust that this Measure will operate fairly, transparently, and independently once enacted, this briefing explains why trust is not a substitute for scrutiny – and why approval without rules is constitutionally and practically untenable.

• The full briefing is available to download here.