The Second Church Estates Commissioner is, by convention, a backbench MP from the governing party. This gives them the opportunity to answer questions from MPs, not just about the Commissioners, but the wider work of the Church of England.

The current Second Church Estates Commissioner is Marsha de Cordova, the Labour MP for Battersea. She is actively getting to grips with her task, having been appointed in October.

Often, Church Commissioners’ Questions is a piece of soft PR for the Church, with “friendly questions” tabled by compliant MPs, and answers – including responses to supplementary questions – written by the Church of England’s professional Parliamentary team.

No more!

This week, it was very clear that Marsa de Cordova was happy to speak “off script”. She is still supported by Church of England staff, but it is clear that she isn’t going to blindly accept everything she is told. She is going to be a challenge, as well as a mouthpiece.

In questions about safeguarding – and particularly the Makin Review (which led to the resignation of Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury) – she gave some very strong statements, including:

• “This week I met representatives from the Archbishops’ Council, including the Bishop of Stepney, Joanne Grenfell, who is the lead bishop for safeguarding in the Church, to raise my concerns. The House can rest assured that I did that robustly.”
  
  
• “Make no mistake, the Church has an enormous amount of work to do to create a cultural shift. That is what is required. It needs to rebuild trust and confidence.”
  
  
• “It is so important for the Church to view this as the chance to turn a corner and make it a watershed moment. We need change, and those responsible must be held to account.”
  
  
• “…make no mistake that I strongly believe that it is important that the Church is held to account.”

The Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, led by retired high court judge Sir Wyn Williams, has heard evidence of a significant number of senior people who were in a position to challenge information they were given by the Post Office, but who instead just accepted it without question.

If an inquiry is eventually held into the Church of England safeguarding fiasco, senior people will also have been found to have adopted the practice of “corporate blindness”. Not so Marsha de Cordova: by challenging and questioning the information she is given and ensuring people are held to account, she is fulfilling her proper role as a trustee of the Church Commissioners – the body which has had to dip into its bank accounts many times to rescue the Archbishops’ Council from their safeguarding malpractice.