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.
I’m afraid you may be viewing General Synod through rose tineted specatacles if you think forcing them to produce draft rules would help. Once Parliament has approved the Measure the Synod can simply replace the draft rules with a new set of completely different rules.
Would they be so devious? Yes. In 2019 Parliament approved a new version of the Chrch Representaion Rules. It allowed for people to appeal against being excluded from Parish Electoral Rolls and said that Appeal Panels could charge “reaonable expenses”. Our MPs and lords probably thought that meant bus fares and notepaper.
Less than six weeks eafter the Rules came into force Synod amended them. They struck out the word reasonable, allowing paness to charge unreasonable expenses. Mullally and Cottrell voted to remove the word reaonable.
Again, one might imagine a Panel woul limet themselves to reasonable expenses anyway. Not so. I made an appeal and the Panel was chaired by the Archdeacon of Macclesfied and she threatened me with expenses of at least £270 per hour amounting, she said to thousands of pounds. These were not what any normal person would consider expenses at all, never mind reaonable ones.
She did howevver encourage me to opt for mediation as an alternative. When I agreed to do this, she suddenly reneged on the offer of mediation and the matter remains outstanding.
Draft Rules provide no safeguard, only Rules that cannt be changed except by Parliament. Please, do not trus the Synod with draft rules that can be changed.