I have today published a new parliamentary briefing on the draft Clergy Conduct Measure — the legislation intended to replace the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM). You can read the full briefing here.

This paper is addressed to members of Parliament’s Ecclesiastical Committee, the small but powerful body charged under the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919 with deciding whether a Church Measure is “expedient” before it proceeds to Parliament for approval.

Why does this matter?

Because Church of England Measures are not amendable in Parliament. If the Ecclesiastical Committee deems a Measure expedient, it typically goes through both Houses “on the nod.” The Committee is therefore one of the few constitutional safeguards between defective church legislation and automatic parliamentary approval.

Last year, the Committee found the Clergy Conduct Measure not expedient. Its primary — though not only — concern was that the draft legislation provided for tribunals to sit in private by default. Last month, the General Synod amended the Measure so that tribunals are to sit in public by default. That sounds like progress — and, formally, it is. But experience under the existing regime shows that statutory wording and operational reality are not always the same thing. The real question is this: what does “public” mean in practice?

Under the current CDM, tribunals have described decisions as being “handed down in public” even where:

• there was no public listing of the hearing;
• no notice to the press;
• no opportunity for observation;
• and the decision simply appeared online as a PDF after the event.

That is not open justice as most lawyers — or most ordinary people — would understand it.

The new Measure still leaves the crucial detail to Rules that Parliament has not seen. Those Rules will determine when hearings can be private, how listing works, what gets published, and what doesn’t. Senior figures at Synod have argued that Parliament should not see those draft Rules at all.

In other words, MPs are being asked to approve the skeleton of a system without seeing the operating manual.

That is not how constitutional law is supposed to work.

The briefing also addresses something far more troubling: how serious sexual misconduct has been framed under the current system.

In one case involving what in law amounted to statutory rape of a minor, the Deputy President of Tribunals, Judge David Turner KC, described the conduct as “an intimate sexual relationship.” The decision itself recorded the victim’s account of grooming, fear and horror. Yet the public-facing description suggested mutuality. A child cannot consent in law. Language matters.

In another case, allegations of grooming, sexual assault and indecent exposure were reframed in tribunal language around “romantic affection” from a vulnerable complainant. She had no standing to challenge that framing.

The Clergy Conduct Measure does nothing to change that imbalance. Complainants still cannot challenge charges. They cannot appeal determinations. They cannot require correction of misleading public language.

If a statutory disciplinary regime cannot accurately describe sexual abuse in its own determinations, and offers no mechanism for the affected person to challenge the wording, that is not merely poor drafting. It is a safeguarding failure.

The briefing also examines structural independence. Under the proposed system, investigators, assessors and tribunal administration sit within the Archbishops’ Council’s legal team. In response to a recent data request, it was stated that even the President of Tribunals sits within that structure.

Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights requires an independent and impartial tribunal. Independence is not a matter of personal integrity; it is a matter of institutional design.

The Ecclesiastical Committee has already once found this Measure not expedient. It was right to do so.

The amended version still leaves core safeguards to Rules not before Parliament. It still replicates the tribunal structure that has produced the very problems survivors have experienced under the CDM. It still relies heavily on assurances of transparency rather than embedding it in statute.

Parliament deserves to see how a disciplinary system will operate before it approves it.

Survivors deserve a system that does not soften abuse into “relationships” or reduce serious misconduct to opaque headings.

The Ecclesiastical Committee has a constitutional duty. I hope members will read the new briefing carefully and consider whether it can honestly be said that this Measure, as drafted, is expedient.

Because if Parliament approves it without clarity, the consequences will not be theoretical. They will be borne by real people navigating a system that once again operates behind the curtain.

• Click here to read the full briefing.