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.

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The Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal for the Diocese of Southwark has now published both its determination of misconduct (17 December 2025) and its reasons on penalty (9 February 2026) in the latest case involving David Tudor.

The tribunal concluded unanimously that it was more likely than not that Tudor had penetrative sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old girl on 28 April 1984, having groomed her and exploited his position as her school chaplain, RE teacher and parish priest. The penalty imposed was Prohibition for Life, together with an indefinite injunction preventing contact.

The tribunal’s reasoning is careful and measured. Its findings are robust. Its recognition of the lifelong harm caused is clear.

But there are serious issues that arise from this case — not in the tribunal’s evaluation of the evidence, but in the language used to frame the complaint and in certain assumptions embedded in the process.

“An intimate sexual relationship”

Paragraph 2 of the determination reproduces the charge as framed by the Deputy President of Tribunals:

“…formed, while she was a child (i) An intimate sexual relationship and engaged in sexual acts with Z…”

Those words matter.

The tribunal found that the first sexual intercourse occurred when Z was 15; that it followed grooming; that Tudor locked the bedroom door; that he instructed her how to put a condom on him; and that her reaction was “absolute horror”. The penalty decision explicitly describes her as having been “groomed and abused”.

To describe those facts as “an intimate sexual relationship” is profoundly troubling.

The complainant was 15. Tudor was 29. He was her teacher, her school chaplain and her priest. She was isolated, seeking guidance, and deeply influenced by him. She described being unable to articulate how he “got inside my head”.

This was not an “intimate sexual relationship”. It was the sexual exploitation of a child by an adult in authority.

“Intimate relationship” suggests mutuality. It implies emotional reciprocity. It risks reframing abuse as romance.

The Deputy President is not a peripheral figure. He is the gatekeeper who decides whether complaints proceed to a tribunal and on what basis. The way he describes conduct shapes how that conduct is conceptualised institutionally.

We do not know how Z reacted to that wording. Under the current Clergy Discipline Measure — and under the proposed Clergy Conduct Measure — she has no mechanism to challenge it. Survivors have no standing to contest how senior judicial office-holders describe what happened to them.

Language shapes culture. Culture shapes safeguarding.

What the criminal law would call it

The determination speculates that Tudor was “most likely” charged in 1988 under section 6 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (intercourse with a girl under 16) and notes that he was acquitted.

Why speculate?

Why was a certificate of conviction (or acquittal) not obtained from the Crown Court record to establish precisely what charge was laid?

More fundamentally, consider the contrast in terminology.

Under the 1956 Act, sexual intercourse with a girl under 16 was a criminal offence. Under the modern Sexual Offences Act 2003, the relevant language is “sexual activity with a child”. Where the adult is in a position of trust — such as a teacher — separate offences apply.

No criminal statute would describe this as an “intimate sexual relationship”.

The criminal law calls it unlawful sexual intercourse with a child. Or sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust.

The contrast with the Deputy President’s phraseology could not be clearer.

The question of “consent”

The determination notes that Z “has never said that the sexual intercourse when she was 15 was not consensual”. It records that she “did not particularly invite it” but “did not refuse”.

This framing is problematic.

Under both the 1956 Act and the 2003 Act, a child under 16 cannot lawfully consent to sexual intercourse with an adult. The law does not turn on whether she refused.

But beyond strict legality lies the reality of grooming.

The tribunal itself found grooming, imbalance of power, spiritual manipulation and significant psychological harm. Z described how he had persuaded her that sex “did not mean anything” and how she absorbed his framing because of who he was.

That is not consent in any meaningful safeguarding sense.

To focus on whether she has “suggested a lack of consent” risks importing adult paradigms into a child-abuse context. Modern safeguarding practice recognises that compliance under grooming and authority is not consent.

The tribunal ultimately concludes she was groomed and abused. That conclusion is right. But the language around consent sits uneasily beside it.

A “public session” no one could attend

Paragraph 1 of the determination states:

“We announced our decision in public session on 20th November 2025 and reserved our reasons.”

Yet there was no public listing of the tribunal. No notice enabling attendance. The Church issued a press statement on 24 November referring to the tribunal process, but the determination itself was not publicised until much later.

If a decision is truly announced “in public session”, the public must be able to know it is happening and attend.

Otherwise, “public” becomes a formal label without substantive openness.

Transparency is not achieved by assertion. It requires accessibility. And members of Parliament’s Ecclesiastical Committee will need to consider this when it considers the skeletal replacement for the Clergy Discipline Measure — the Clergy Conduct Measure — when it consider’s whether the text’s deferrence to the unpublished “Rules” mean public hearings in practice.

The broader issue

It is important to be clear: the tribunal’s factual findings are serious and balanced. Its penalty decision properly recognises the gravity of the abuse and the lifelong harm.

My criticism is not directed at the panel.

It is directed at the language used by the Deputy President — a senior judicial gatekeeper — to describe the sexual exploitation of a 15-year-old girl as an “intimate sexual relationship”.

That language does not reflect modern safeguarding understanding. It does not reflect criminal law terminology. And it does not reflect the tribunal’s own findings of grooming and abuse.

If those entrusted with gatekeeping clergy discipline conceptualise child sexual exploitation in such relational terms, the Church’s safeguarding culture still has work to do — as we all know it does.

The actions of David Tudor considered by the tribunal took place in 1984. The Archbishops’ Council will repeatedly say that things have changed. Yet this post challenges something that took place now. It is now, today, that child sexual abuse was described by a senior ecclesiastical (and secular) judge as an as an “intimate sexual relationship”. And it is this that the Church of England should address now.

Safeguarding reform is not only about structural change. It is about language, assumptions and power.

Words matter.

And in cases of child sexual abuse, precision is not optional.

The post Why does the Church of England describe child abuse as an “intimate sexual relationship”? appeared first on Church Abuse.

If you don’t want to read the full 1,245 words, go to the 287-word TL;DR summary

Yesterday’s votes at the General Synod on the Clergy Conduct Measure were inevitable. Once the Ecclesiastical Committee concluded that the Measure was “not expedient”, the Legislative Committee had little realistic choice but to amend clause 31(3) so that tribunals sit in public by default.

The amendment was always going to pass. It did. But inevitability does not mean that the underlying constitutional concerns have been resolved.

Indeed, the debate itself illustrated the deeper problem: how much of the system Synod and Parliament are being asked to approve is not contained in the Measure at all.

Parliament’s principal concern — but not its only concern

The Ecclesiastical Committee’s principal objection was the presumption of private hearings. The amendment reverses that presumption. That addresses the headline issue.

But the Committee raised further concerns: the absence of draft Rules, the lack of visibility over operational safeguards, and whether Parliament had sufficient information to judge expediency.

Those concerns were not technical. They go to the heart of the 1919 constitutional settlement.

Under the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919, the Ecclesiastical Committee must report on the Measure’s “nature and legal effect” and on its “expediency”. That duty cannot be discharged in the abstract. It requires understanding how the Measure will function in practice.

The Rules remain unpublished. The operational detail remains unseen. Parliament has still not been given what it repeatedly requested.

“Informal discussions” and constitutional silence

Speakers referred repeatedly to “informal” meetings between the Legislative Committee and the Ecclesiastical Committee. Such discussions may be convenient, but they are not provided for in the 1919 Act.

The 1919 Act establishes a formal legislative pathway: Measure, report, parliamentary scrutiny, approval motions in both Houses, and Royal Assent. It does not provide for private pre-legislative negotiation to substitute for formal scrutiny.

In UK constitutional culture, legislative scrutiny is conducted publicly. Evidence is published. Draft material relied upon by committees is ordinarily placed on the record. Opaque reassurance is not a substitute for visible accountability.

If draft Rules were shown formally to Parliament, they should be available publicly. If they were shown informally, Parliament should not be expected to legislate on that basis.

“Not within the function of the Ecclesiastical Committee” — and why that misses the point

Sir Robert Buckland told Synod: “Presenting a full set of rules to the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament risks usurping the vital role of this body in receiving, scrutinising and amending those rules before they go to Parliament.”

He continued: “Strictly speaking, the consideration of rules and other secondary legislation is not actually within the function of the Ecclesiastical Committee in any event.”

He further argued that rules: “can only ever be in draft as a matter of law, because the power to make them does not come into force until Royal Assent is given to the primary legislation.”

Formally, that has surface force. The Ecclesiastical Committee scrutinises Measures, not statutory instruments.

But that is not the Committee’s concern.

The Committee has stated that it must have sufficient information about how Measures are intended to work before it can declare them expedient. Where a Measure defers substantial operational content to Rules, those Rules are not peripheral. They are the mechanism through which the Measure takes effect.

The Clergy Conduct Measure is skeletal. It establishes offices, stages, and powers. But it leaves to Rules:

• the gateway requirements for complaints,

• the mechanics of investigation,

• the participation of safeguarding actors,

• the structure and content of reports,

• the detail of procedural protections,

• and the practical operation of hearings.

When Parliament is asked to determine whether legislation affecting legal rights is expedient, it must understand how that framework will function in practice.

If the practical safeguards, investigatory mechanics, confidentiality architecture and protections against vexatious complaints reside primarily in unpublished Rules, Parliament cannot realistically assess the Measure.

This is not Parliament intruding on Synod’s jurisdiction. It is Parliament attempting to discharge its statutory duty under the 1919 settlement. Framework legislation without operational visibility undermines meaningful scrutiny.

Why the CDM experience matters

This is not theoretical.

The Clergy Discipline Measure 2003 provides the cautionary example.

The Measure itself is consolidated and updated on legislation.gov.uk. But the Clergy Discipline Rules are not consolidated there. A composite version of the Clergy Discipline Rules is produced by the Archbishops’ Council. The Code of Practice and Statutory Guidance add further operational layers.

Over time, significant aspects of the discipline system have developed through Rules and Guidance rather than primary legislation:

• An “overriding objective” imported into the Rules.

• Confidentiality norms shaping pre-penalty proceedings.

• Publication removal periods set out in guidance rather than statute.

• A “minor complaints” process created in the Code but not expressly established in the Measure.

• Vulnerability assessments structured through Rules rather than primary text.

None of those features were debated in Parliament at the point of primary enactment.

The Clergy Conduct Measure is designed to replace the CDM. Its Rules, Code and Guidance will be drafted by the same institutional actors, through the same internal processes.

Parliament is therefore not being asked to approve a closed text. It is being asked to approve a framework that will later be populated by instruments it will never see.

That is precisely why the Ecclesiastical Committee requested draft Rules.

Uneven access and unanswered questions

Sir Robert Buckland also stated that “an indicative set of rules … about 75 per cent complete” had been supplied to members of the Ecclesiastical Committee.

Yet those Rules have not been published. Most members of Synod have not seen them.

If Parliament has seen them formally, they should be on the public record. If provided informally, Parliament should not be legislating on that basis.

The asymmetry is troubling: some appear to have access to material unseen by the majority.

A debate shaped from the top

Yesterday’s debate (you can read a transcript here) was front-loaded with senior office holders: the Bishop of Chichester, the Dean of the Arches, Sir Robert Buckland, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chair of the House of Laity — many members of the Legislative Committee itself.

When amendment 507 was debated, the Prolocutor of York spoke first. Immediately afterwards, the speech limit was reduced to three minutes.

The effect — whether intended or not — is that establishment voices frame the debate before ordinary members speak. That structure discourages dissent and narrows the space for scrutiny.

When scrutiny is already limited by the absence of draft Rules, this matters.

Public hearings “the norm” — but no apology

Several speakers emphasised that public hearings are the norm in other professions. That is correct. I have been arguing this for years. But for much of the Measure’s passage, Synod had been told the opposite.

The earlier assertion that private hearings were commonplace elsewhere has not been formally corrected or apologised for.

Transparency cannot be selectively rediscovered when Parliament insists upon it.

A rare correction — and a contrast

The Archbishop of Canterbury corrected an earlier misstatement during final approval. That immediate correction is to be welcomed. It reflects healthy parliamentary culture.

Such corrections should be routine. They should not require a speaker to be the subject of a formal complaint before realising a correction and apology is needed — as was the case with the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell last year.

The fact that a routine correction is worth noting says a lot about how the Synod is treated by senior officers of the Church.

Inevitable — but unfinished

The Measure now returns to Parliament with clause 31(3) amended.

But draft Rules remain unpublished. Informal discussions have substituted for visible evidence. Framework legislation continues to be advanced without operational transparency.

The Church has moved because Parliament required it to move.

That is necessity, not constitutional renewal.

TL;DR: Open hearings, closed details

Yesterday’s General Synod vote on the Clergy Conduct Measure was inevitable. Once Parliament’s Ecclesiastical Committee concluded that the draft Measure was “not expedient”, the Church had little choice but to amend it. The key change — reversing the presumption of private hearings — addresses Parliament’s principal concern.

But that does not resolve the deeper constitutional problem.

The Ecclesiastical Committee’s objections went beyond open hearings. It questioned the absence of draft Rules and the lack of visibility over how the system will operate in practice. Under the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919, Parliament must assess a Measure’s “nature and legal effect” and its “expediency”. That requires understanding how it will function in reality — not just reading its skeletal framework.

The Clergy Conduct Measure establishes offices and stages, but leaves critical operational detail to Rules that have not been published. Those Rules will determine how complaints are made, how investigations run, how safeguarding actors participate, what reports must contain, and how hearings function. If those safeguards and procedures are largely contained in unpublished Rules, Parliament cannot meaningfully assess what it is approving.

This is not theoretical. Under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003, significant elements of the discipline system developed through Rules, Code of Practice and Statutory Guidance rather than primary legislation — including confidentiality norms, publication policies, vulnerability assessments and informal complaint processes. These were not debated in Parliament.

The Clergy Conduct Measure will be implemented by the same institutional actors using the same processes.

Parliament is therefore being asked to approve a framework whose real content will emerge later.

The Church moved because Parliament insisted. But draft Rules remain unpublished, informal discussions have replaced transparent scrutiny, and the core constitutional concern remains: legislation without operational visibility undermines meaningful accountability.

The post The real Clergy Conduct Measure is still behind the curtain appeared first on Church Abuse.

If you don’t want to read the full 2,450 words, go to the 300-word TL;DR summary

Why do the powers that be in the General Synod continue to mislead members about private or secret tribunal hearings being the norm?

That question sits at the heart of today’s Synod business on the Clergy Conduct Measure. Once again, members are being asked to take decisions on the basis of a claim that simply does not withstand scrutiny: that secrecy is standard practice in other disciplinary and professional tribunal systems, and that the Church of England is merely following an accepted model.

It is not.

It also matters to understand why this issue has resurfaced in today’s Synod agenda. The Legislative Committee is now asking Synod to reverse the presumption of private hearings and make public hearings the norm — but not because the Church’s leadership has suddenly accepted that it got this wrong. It is doing so because Parliament has forced its hand. The Ecclesiastical Committee has made clear that it will not allow the Clergy Conduct Measure to proceed to the House of Commons and House of Lords as expedient unless this change is made. In other words, Synod is being asked to fix a defect that Parliament has identified, not one that the Church was willing to acknowledge on its own initiative.

Crucially, the Ecclesiastical Committee did not stop there. In its scrutiny of the Measure, it also called for the Draft Rules to be provided to it — recognising, correctly, that the Rules will contain the real substance of the system: how complaints are handled, how hearings operate, what information is disclosed, and where secrecy is imposed in practice. The committee was plainly concerned that Parliament was being asked to approve a skeleton Measure while being denied sight of the operational detail that would determine how justice is actually done.

The Church’s response to that request has been to insist that Rules cannot be drawn up until after a Measure has been passed — language used repeatedly in evidence to the Ecclesiastical Committee. That position is wrong. It is contradicted by recent legislative practice within the Church itself. When Parliament considered the Abuse (Redress) Measure, the Legislative Committee did present Draft Rules to the Ecclesiastical Committee, precisely to allow informed scrutiny of how the scheme would operate in practice. The claim that this is impossible or improper is therefore not a matter of principle; it is a matter of convenience.

Repeating a false premise to Synod

In the report to today’s meeting, the Legislative Committee again relies on a partial transcript of Synod proceedings in which members were told that private hearings are the norm in other systems, including professional regulators such as the General Medical Council. That claim has been doing heavy lifting throughout the synodical process. It was used to neutralise concern, to truncate debate, and ultimately to justify making secrecy the default position in primary legislation.

But it is false. The constitutional principle of open justice means that tribunals exercising public functions sit in public unless there is a clear and specific justification for departure. Professional regulators do not reverse that presumption. They allow privacy by exception, not as a starting point.

This was not a matter of interpretation or opinion. Parliament was told exactly that when it examined the draft Measure.

Parliament was not persuaded

When the draft Clergy Conduct Measure came before the Ecclesiastical Committee, members from both Houses repeatedly challenged the presumption of secrecy.

One peer cut straight to the point, questioning why a Church tribunal exercising statutory authority should depart from ordinary standards of open justice at all. Another asked why victims, complainants, and the wider public should be expected to trust a system that begins from privacy rather than transparency.

Most strikingly, Danny Kruger MP, drawing explicitly on a written briefing I had provided to committee members, challenged the comparison with professional regulators. He quoted from that briefing to make the point that the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service lists hearings publicly as a matter of course, and that hearings are open unless specific reporting restrictions are imposed.

The committee’s scepticism was unmistakable. Members pressed Church representatives on why secrecy had been elevated into the Measure itself, rather than left to judicial discretion on a case-by-case basis. The underlying message was clear: Parliament did not accept that secrecy was either normal or necessary.

That scepticism ultimately found expression in the committee’s conclusion that the Measure was not expedient, precisely because it made private hearings the default.

“A very robust debate”? No, there wasn’t.

In oral evidence to the Ecclesiastical Committee, the Archbishops’ Council’s lawyer, Edward Dobson, attempted to reassure MPs and peers that Synod had consciously and robustly chosen this path. He told the committee:

“There was, during the course of the debate at General Synod, an amendment that sought to reverse that presumption… There was a very robust debate and the Synod decided to stay with this presumption.”

That statement mattered. It was designed to convey to Parliament that Synod had been fully informed, that arguments had been tested, and that secrecy was a deliberate, settled choice.

It was also untrue.

The amendment in question was never substantively debated. It fell because fewer than 25 members stood to allow debate to continue — after Synod had been told, incorrectly, that secrecy was commonplace elsewhere. A procedural lapse is not a debate, still less a “very robust” one.

Being called out — and doubling down

After the evidence session, I wrote to Mr Dobson asking him to correct the record. I set out why his description was inaccurate and reminded him that Synod members had been misled about other tribunal systems.

His response did not correct the record. Instead, it attempted to redefine events. He argued that an exchange limited to two speakers was sufficient to justify the description “robust”, and that the amendment lapsing: “in effect amounted to a decision by the Synod to retain the clause as drafted.”

That is simply wrong. Standing Orders explicitly distinguish between a debate on the merits and a failure to secure enough members to permit debate. One cannot be retrospectively converted into the other.

More tellingly, Mr Dobson’s response entirely avoided the central issue. He did not explain why Synod had been told that secrecy was normal elsewhere. Nor did he address the fact that the same false claim appeared in the written report of the Revision Committee.

When pressed again on that point, the silence remained

How many times does this need saying?

This was not the first warning, nor the second.

In July 2021, even before the Measure had been drafted, I prepared a formal briefing to Synod members on behalf of the Jill Saward Organisation, setting out why secrecy in clergy discipline had no sound legal basis, why open justice mattered, and how comparable tribunal systems operated transparently.

I have also repeatedly called out the false assertion in other posts here on churchabuse.uk, including:

• 25 July 2024 – “Archbishops’ Council lies about GMC in battle for secret clergy discipline tribunals”, documenting in detail how Synod had been misled about professional regulators.
  
  
• 15 August 2024 – “Archbishops’ Council ignored chances to fix safeguarding risk assessment loophole”, showing how opacity was being preserved by design.
  
  
• 15 January 2025 – “The General Synod and safeguarding – a look ahead to February’s group of sessions”, again correcting the false comparison with the GMC and explaining how professional tribunals actually operate.
  

Each time, the same claim resurfaced. Each time, it was wrong.

So why does it continue?

Which brings us back to the question that refuses to go away.

Why do the powers that be insist on giving Synod a misleading impression on this most fundamental point — about openness, justice, and trust — even after Parliament itself has exposed the claim as unsustainable?

And what does it say about the culture behind this Measure that, when falsehoods are identified and evidenced, the response is not correction, but entrenchment?

This matters because the issue is not simply one clause in one Measure. It is about whether Synod is being treated as a deliberative body capable of weighing evidence honestly, or as something to be managed through selective information and procedural sleight of hand. When members are told that secrecy is normal elsewhere, debate is truncated. When Parliament then exposes that claim as false, the response is not candour, but a reluctant concession forced by external scrutiny.

It also matters because secrecy does not protect justice; it protects systems. Victims and survivors do not gain confidence from processes that operate behind closed doors by default. Nor do clergy accused of misconduct benefit from a system in which outcomes are hidden, precedents are obscured, and public confidence is eroded. Open justice exists precisely to prevent error, arbitrariness, and institutional self-protection.

Synod is now being asked to correct a flaw that should never have been there in the first place — and only because Parliament has refused to wave it through. That should give members pause. If this much resistance has been shown to transparency at the level of primary legislation, what confidence can there be about how the system will operate once the detail is pushed into Rules, guidance, and practice directions beyond Synod’s effective reach?

So the question remains — and it deserves an answer. Why do the powers that be persist in giving Synod a misleading impression on so fundamental a point, even after being called out by Parliament? And until that culture changes, how can anyone have confidence that the Church’s disciplinary system is being designed in the interests of justice rather than institutional convenience?

TL;DR — Why Synod is still being misled about secret hearings

The General Synod is once again being asked to take decisions on the Clergy Conduct Measure on the basis of a claim that does not stand up: that private or secret tribunal hearings are the norm in comparable disciplinary systems. They are not.

This claim has been used repeatedly to justify making secrecy the default position in the Measure. Synod members were told that professional regulators — including the General Medical Council — routinely sit in private. That is false. Open justice is the constitutional norm. Other tribunals operate with public hearings as the default, allowing privacy only by exception.

The issue has resurfaced now because Parliament has intervened. The Ecclesiastical Committee has refused to allow the Measure to proceed to the House of Commons and House of Lords as expedient unless the presumption of secrecy is reversed. The Legislative Committee is therefore asking Synod to change course — not because the Church has acknowledged error, but because Parliament has required it.

The committee also demanded sight of the Draft Rules under the Measure, recognising that these will contain the real substance of the system. The Church’s response was to insist that Rules cannot be drafted before a Measure is passed. That claim is wrong. When Parliament considered the Abuse (Redress) Measure, Draft Rules were provided precisely to enable informed scrutiny.

During the Ecclesiastical Committee’s evidence session, members repeatedly challenged the secrecy default. Danny Kruger MP quoted directly from a briefing showing that professional tribunals are open by default. Parliament was not persuaded by assurances that secrecy was normal or necessary.

Despite this, the Archbishops’ Council’s lawyer told the committee that Synod had reached its position after a “very robust debate”. That claim is inaccurate. The amendment in question was never substantively debated; it lapsed after Synod had been misled about other tribunal systems.

Even when challenged directly, the response was not correction but defensiveness and entrenchment.

The question remains: why do the powers that be persist in misleading Synod on so fundamental a point — and what does that say about the culture behind this Measure?

The post Even after Parliament called it out, Synod members are still being misled about secret hearings appeared first on Church Abuse.

If you don’t want to read the full 2,450 words, go to the 300-word TL;DR summary

The General Synod meets this week (starting tomorrow) for the first of three scheduled Groups of Sessions this year. It is the penultimate Group of Sessions this quinquennium, with the Synod being prorogued after the July meetings in York.

The November meeting marks the formal start of the next quinquennium: think of the State Opening of Parliament without the pomp, held every five years rather than annually. The King, as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, is expected to deliver a message to mark the formal opening of the new Synod with its newly elected or re-elected members.

The last opening of the Synod took place in November 2021. The current Duke of Edinburgh — then the Earl of Wessex — Prince Edward, stood in for the late Queen Elizabeth II and delivered the message she had written. It was the first time in the Synod’s 51-year history that Queen Elizabeth II missed the opening of a quinquennium. She had been advised to rest by doctors following a brief hospital stay the previous month.

When this quinquennium began, it did so with one of the biggest — if not the biggest — turnovers in membership. Many members, including me, had to get used to Synod processes, procedures and tactics. I say “tactics” because I soon discovered the lengths to which the Archbishops’ Council goes to curtail difficult debate, especially on safeguarding. Combined with a Business Committee that often appears to act as though it were the Archbishops’ Council’s business committee rather than the General Synod’s, the effect has been to blunt Synod members’ attempts to secure safeguarding reform that most people can see is needed.

Parliament says no

I believe that the Church of England is now at the centre of a governance crisis. Parliament’s Ecclesiastical Committee has ruled the draft National Church Governance Measure not expedient, rejecting the case for a new body that would concentrate more power and provide less accountability than the existing arrangements under the Archbishops’ Council.

We don’t know what MPs and peers made of the draft Measure, because the Ecclesiastical Committee cannot publish its report unless the Synod’s Legislative Committee signifies that it should be presented. Although the Legislative Committee has reported that the Measure was rejected, it has not, as yet, published the underlying report or set out the reasons.

Alongside this, the Charity Commission is finally taking a harder line on the Church of England’s safeguarding failings. Over the past year it has:

• written to Synod members who are also charity trustees, reminding them of their safeguarding duties as trustees;

• written to diocesan bishops — who are Synod members and charity trustees — reminding them of similar duties and asking whether structural impediments prevent them from fulfilling those duties;

• warned the Archbishops’ Council that it must “rapidly accelerate” safeguarding reforms and meet an 18-month expectation, faster than the Council’s stated plans, including in its report to this week’s Synod;

• issued official regulatory warnings to two Diocesan Boards of Finance — Chelmsford and Liverpool — because their trustees (the bishop’s council) failed in their safeguarding governance and trustee duties in relation to allegations concerning the former Bishop of Liverpool, John Perumbalath.

For many years, the Archbishops’ Council has, in my view, relied on obfuscation and — more seriously — dishonest statements. Victims and survivors of church-related abuse have said this for decades. In recent years more campaigners and advocates have added their voices, and they have repeatedly been dismissed.

Now Parliament and the Charity Commission — the statutory regulator — have recognised what is happening and are signalling that poor practice must end.

How do the Archbishops’ Council respond? It defaults to type and continues to obfuscate.

They may get away with this approach with victims, survivors, campaigners and advocates. It won’t work against Parliament and the regulator.

Am I being too hard on the Archbishops’ Council?

A regular feature of General Synod is Question Time. Every Synod member may table up to two questions to several national Church bodies, including the Archbishops’ Council. Written answers are circulated shortly before the Group of Sessions begins, and each substantive question may attract up to two supplementary questions on the floor.

Let us look at two questions, and the written answers, for this Group of Sessions.

Janette Allotey, a lay member from the Diocese of Chester, asked the Presidents of the Archbishops’ Council — the Archbishops of Canterbury and York —this question:

“‘The Commission’s guidance is clear that trustees must take reasonable steps to protect from harm all people who come into contact with their charity.’ In the Regulatory Action Plan of November 2025 issued to the Archbishops’ Council following publication of the Makin Report, the Charity Commission expressed concern that the Church did not treat allegations of abuse from an adult not assessed to be vulnerable as a safeguarding issue. What steps, if any, are being taken to address this criticism?”

“Identifying the issues”

The written response came not from either archbishop but from a lay member of the Archbishops’ Council, Canon Alison Coulter. She wrote: “This is a matter that was also raised in the Charity Commission for England and Wales’s findings in relation to the Dioceses of Chelmsford and Liverpool. Staff of the Council are working to identify the questions, issues and requirements this raises and have written to the Charity Commission seeking a discussion on what changes may be needed. I will keep the Synod informed of progress and any changes required. However, Synod should note carefully the expectations that the Charity Commission has of trustees, of which they have helpfully reminded us.”

So: a Regulatory Action Plan in November, two Official Warnings to Chelmsford and Liverpool, and the Archbishops’ Council’s position is that it has written to the Charity Commission to seek “a discussion” while staff work to “identify the questions, issues and requirements” raised.

This response is extraordinary. The Charity Commission’s “questions, issues, and requirements” are not recent inventions. They reflect the legal duties that apply to every charity trustee.

Those duties are set out in the Charities Act 2011, which largely consolidates earlier charity legislation. The core obligations of trustees did not begin in 2011; they have been part of charity law for many years.

The Archbishops’ Council should already know what the Charity Commission expects of trustees, because those expectations arise from the law.

Perhaps, one might say, the Council is composed of well- meaning people acting in good faith who lack the specialist knowledge to navigate trusteeship. Maybe that is why it has written to the Charity Commission to seek a meeting.

A well-lawyered institution

That explanation does not withstand scrutiny. In July 2022, during my time as a Synod member, I asked how many lawyers the National Church Institutions (NCIs) employed, what they cost, and how many external lawyers they instructed for specific work.

The Secretary General, William Nye, replied that the number of legally qualified staff, and their immediate support staff, rose from 10 in 2017 at a salary cost of £935,078 to 13 in 2021 at a salary cost of £1,483,801.

On external lawyers, Mr Nye said that “the information requested is not readily available and could not be obtained without disproportionate cost.”

A brief aside on that claim. The Archbishops’ Council is a large charity. In 2021, the last year covered by Mr Nye’s figures, the council’s income was £128.09 million and its expenditure was £128.74 million. In 2024, published figures show income of £235.64 million and expenditure of £229.41 million.

An organisation of that scale does not run its finances on handwritten ledgers. It uses an accounting system with structured ledgers and cost centres that should allow external legal spend to be identified without disproportionate cost. On an ordinary reading, that is a basic requirement of financial control.

When Mr Nye said that the information “is not readily available” and could not be obtained without disproportionate cost, one of two things was true. Either the Archbishops’ Council was capable of producing the figure and chose not to disclose it (in which case Mr Nye lied), or it could not readily identify its external legal spend, in which case the trustees were not exercising proper oversight.

That aside illustrates the gap between the Archbishops’ Council’s claims to transparency and what it is prepared to disclose when pressed.

The larger point is that the Council cannot plausibly plead ignorance of trustees’ legal duties or of what the Charity Commission expects. It employs a substantial in-house legal function, and it spends well over £1 million a year on the salaries of legally qualified staff and their support.

Why, then, does the Archbishops’ Council present itself as needing to “identify” the Charity Commission’s “questions, issues and requirements”? Why does it need a meeting to establish what charity trustees are obliged to do?

The Regulatory Action Plan was issued in November last year. The Official Warnings to Chelmsford and Liverpool Diocesan Boards of Finance were issued last month.

These are unusual — and serious — interventions by the regulator, and I doubt they will be the last. Any organisation confronted with this level of scrutiny would normally treat it as a priority: trustees and senior officers would meet, identify the failures, and implement corrective action.

The Charity Commission’s intervention is not a “Lessons Learned Review” commissioned internally and filed away. It is a formal regulatory signal that practice must change. Incidentally, the Church of England no longer uses the “Lessons Learned Reviews” terminology. It now calls them “Safeguarding Practice Reviews” — an implicit acknowledgement, perhaps, that lessons have too often not been learned.

Janette Allotey’s question asked, directly, what steps were being taken to address the Commission’s November criticism. The written answer, as at February, was that staff were still “identifying” issues and seeking a discussion with the regulator. To me, that reads as an admission that the Archbishops’ Council do not have a firm grip on what charity trustees are required to do.

A letter seeking a meeting three months later raises obvious questions. Where is the urgency? Where is the action? Where is the change on the ground?

Another question for this week’s Group of Sessions is equally revealing.

Dr Brendan Biggs, a lay member from the Diocese of Bristol, also directed his question to the Presidents of the Archbishops’ Council. As with Janette Allottey’s question, the written reply came from Canon Alison Coulter.

Dr Biggs referred to the letter that the Charity Commission’s chief executive, David Holdsworth, sent to diocesan bishops in January 2025. It asked whether, after decisions taken by the General Synod in February 2025, there remained any “structural, procedural or constitutional arrangements under ecclesiastical law” that conflicted with, or prevented, bishops and their co-trustees from fulfilling their safeguarding duties as charity trustees (“legal impediments”). Dr Biggs asked whether bishops’ responses had collated centrally, and whether there was a plan to address any legal impediments identified.

Canon Coulter’s response illustrates, again, what I regard as a failure of the Archbishops’ Council — and of Diocesan Boards of Finance — to discharge basic trustee responsibilities.

She wrote: “Some dioceses have shared their responses with the staff of the Archbishops’ Council, but we have not produced a central digest.”

After referring to the Charity Commission’s November 2025 intervention, she added: “We continue to work with the Charity Commission on the Regulatory Action Plan and the Archbishops’ Council is determined to improve practice to fulfil our requirements. We very much hope that dioceses will work in partnership with us.”

That answer sits uneasily with her answer to Janette Allotey. In response to Ms Allottey, Canon Coulter said the Council had written to the Charity Commission to seek a discussion to understand what changes might be needed. Here she says the Council continues “to work with the Charity Commission on the Regulatory Action Plan”.

Which is it?

More seriously, the answer discloses a lack of proactive action. The Charity Commission’s January and February 2025 letters were public. Rather than treat them as a prompt for urgent, coordinated work, the Archbishops’ Council appears to have waited for the regulator to act and is now presenting itself as seeking clarity on what trustees are required to do.

What the Charity Commission expects is neither novel nor obscure. It expects trustees to fulfil their legal duties as trustees.

Instead of waiting, the Archbishops’ Council should have convened the bishops and asked them what “structural, procedural or constitutional arrangements under ecclesiastical law” prevented them from fulfilling safeguarding duties as charity trustees.

There is an obvious mechanism for doing that. The House of Bishops meets regularly, and this issue could, and should, have been on its agenda throughout the past year.

The General Synod has limited powers to initiate legislation. In practice, that is the preserve of the Archbishops’ Council. If “structural, procedural or constitutional arrangements under ecclesiastical law” must change to enable trustees of Church of England charities — including Diocesan Boards of Finance — to fulfil safeguarding duties, the Archbishops’ Council is the body that must bring forward the necessary legislation.

Independent charities — selectively

The Archbishops’ Council has often said that Diocesan Boards of Finance are independent charities and that it cannot require them to take particular action. The line that dioceses and DBFs are separate, independent charities has become a limiting principle: the Council does not, on that account, instruct, compel, or enforce outcomes, but relies on persuasion, encouragement, or legislative change.

Yet the Council invokes this principle selectively. In the second Past Cases Review (PCR2), dioceses were instructed on which files to review, the qualifications required of the reviewers, the actions expected of diocesan safeguarding teams, the timescale, the content of diocesan summary reports, and the manner of publication.

When asked to produce a report collating the recommendations made by reviewers across dioceses, the answer was that the Archbishops’ Council could not do this because the data belonged to those independent charities (the bishops’ councils).

This “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach is not legally defensible. Call it what you will — institutional blindness, deliberate ignorance, turning a blind eye, plausible deniability, or failure of oversight — the practical effect is the same: avoidance of responsibility and avoidance of scrutiny.

By failing to ask the questions that trustees ought to know must be asked, and by failing to require the information needed to discharge their duties, the Archbishops’ Council displays the same pattern that public inquiries have criticised elsewhere. In the criminal courts, directors who operate in this way may face exposure to corporate manslaughter investigations, health and safety prosecutions, and professional sanctions.

It is no longer good enough for the Archbishops’ Council to sit back and wait, suggesting that delay reflects a need for “clarity” from the Charity Commission. It must act — not because I demand it, and not only because the Charity Commission demands it, but because charity law requires trustees to act.

TL;DR — Synod questions expose a governance blind spot

Two questions at this week’s General Synod expose a deeper problem at the heart of the Church of England’s governance: how members of the Archbishops’ Council understand — or evade — their responsibilities as charity trustees.

In November, the Charity Commission issued a Regulatory Action Plan to the Archbishops’ Council following the Makin Report. It criticised the Church for failing to treat allegations of abuse from adults not assessed as vulnerable as safeguarding matters. Since then, the Commission has issued Official Warnings to two Diocesan Boards of Finance and written directly to bishops and Synod members reminding them of their legal duties as trustees.

Against that backdrop, Janette Allotey asked a simple question: what steps are being taken to address the Commission’s criticism?

The written answer was striking. The Archbishops’ Council said staff were still “identifying the questions, issues and requirements” raised by the regulator and had written to the Charity Commission to seek a discussion about what changes might be needed.

But the Charity Commission’s expectations are not new or unclear. They are rooted in long-established charity law. Trustees are required to act in the best interests of their charities and to protect people from harm. Those duties do not begin with correspondence from the regulator.

A second question reinforced the same picture. Asked whether bishops’ responses to the Commission’s letter about possible “legal impediments” had been collated centrally, the answer was no.

Together, these replies reveal a pattern of delay and deflection. Despite employing a substantial in-house legal team and spending well over £1 million a year on legally qualified staff, the Archbishops’ Council presents itself as needing “clarity” on what trustees are required to do.

That stance might once have gone unchallenged. With Parliament and the Charity Commission now watching closely, it no longer will.

The post When the regulator comes knocking, the Archbishops’ Council puts on the blinkers appeared first on Church Abuse.

I have just published a new detailed briefing, critically examining the Archbishops’ Council’s latest proposals for independent safeguarding in the Church of England.

The briefing document, written for Synod members, MPs, trustees, and all those concerned with safeguarding reform, sets out why the latest proposals, to be debated by the General Synod later this month, fall far short of what is needed.

The briefing explains that, despite years of promises and external scrutiny, the Church’s new safeguarding plans do not deliver genuine independence. Instead, they propose a slow, staged approach that keeps real control within existing Church structures for years to come. The analysis highlights how this approach fails to meet the expectations of victims and survivors, the requirements set out by the Charity Commission, and the calls for urgent action from General Synod and Parliament.

Key sections of the briefing cover the collapse of the Independent Safeguarding Board, the findings of the Jay Review, and the recent intervention by the Charity Commission. It argues that the Church’s current direction represents a retreat from previous commitments and risks further eroding trust among survivors and the wider public.

The document also challenges the claim that all IICSA recommendations have been delivered, pointing out that true independence in safeguarding remains undelivered.

The briefing concludes with a call for Synod and Parliament to reject the current proposals and instead demand a credible, accelerated route to statutory independent safeguarding, with robust interim measures in place.

It also offers a suggested amendment for Synod members to use, ensuring that reform is not delayed any further.

For anyone interested in the future of safeguarding in the Church of England, this briefing provides a clear, evidence-based summary of why urgent, decisive action is needed now.

You can download it here [PDF].

The post Delay and control: the problems with the Archbishops’ Council’s safeguarding plans appeared first on Church Abuse.

One of the least understood – and most consequential – features of the Church of England is the way its legislation becomes law.

Measures passed by the General Synod do not remain internal church rules. Once approved by Parliament, they have the same legal force as Acts of Parliament. They can shape safeguarding systems, disciplinary regimes, rights of access to information, and the treatment of victims and survivors.

Yet Parliament does not scrutinise these Measures in the way it scrutinises Bills.

This is not because Parliament chooses not to. It is because the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919 does not allow it to.

My first background briefing explains why that matters.

The 1919 Act created a constitutional settlement that reflected the assumptions of a very different era. Under it, Parliament may approve or reject a Measure, but it may not amend it. It may identify defects, but it may not require them to be corrected. Even when serious concerns are raised, Parliament’s only option is an all-or-nothing decision.

Worse still, the Act restricts transparency. A Parliamentary committee examining a Measure cannot necessarily publish its conclusions independently. In effect, an external body – the Church of England – is placed in a position of controlling whether and how Parliament’s concerns are made public.

That is constitutionally extraordinary.

This briefing does not argue that Parliament should rewrite ecclesiastical legislation. It does not trespass into theology. What it does is set out, carefully and factually, how the current framework limits democratic accountability, and why those limits have real consequences.

In particular, it explains how safeguarding and disciplinary systems have been enacted with the force of statute, while being insulated from the normal corrective processes that apply to other legislation.

If you want to understand why Parliament keeps approving legislation it cannot fix – and why “scrutiny” in this context often amounts to little more than observation – this briefing provides the necessary background.

It is written to be durable, accessible, and usable.

• You can download the full briefing here.

The post Why the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919 needs urgent review appeared first on Church Abuse.

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.

The post The draft Clergy Conduct Measure: why approval without draft rules is untenable appeared first on Church Abuse.

This site exists because the Church of England has failed to tell the truth about itself.

For years, churchabuse.uk has documented safeguarding failures, institutional defensiveness, procedural injustice and the routine prioritisation of reputation over people. Much of that work has been done through blog posts: immediate, reactive, often written in response to breaking developments or first-hand testimony.

That work will continue. It is essential.

But it is not sufficient on its own.

Blog posts are designed for immediacy. They respond to events as they unfold. They challenge statements, expose contradictions, and record failures in real time. What they are not designed to do is provide a stable, long-lasting factual foundation that can be relied on months or years later by people trying to understand how Church systems actually work.

That is why I am now publishing formal background briefings.

What the briefings are – and what they are not

The briefings are intended to sit alongside this site, not replace it.

They are not opinion pieces. They are not campaign leaflets. They are not “explainers” written to flatter institutional narratives. They are structured, evidence-based documents that set out how particular systems, legal frameworks or decision-making processes operate, and why those structures produce the outcomes they do.

They are written to be durable.

A blog post is often anchored to a moment: a Synod debate, a report, a court hearing, a press statement. A briefing is designed to remain useful long after that moment has passed. It should still make sense when quoted by a journalist, read by a parliamentarian, used by a survivor trying to understand a process, or relied upon by someone encountering these issues for the first time.

In short, blog posts deal with events. Briefings deal with architecture.

They exist because one of the Church of England’s most effective defensive strategies is fragmentation: scattering responsibility across Measures, rules, guidance, committees, working groups and unpublished conventions until accountability dissolves. Briefings pull those strands together in one place.

Why launch them now?

Because the same patterns keep repeating.

Every few years, the Church announces reform. Every few years, it insists that lessons have been learned. And every few years, survivors find themselves confronting the same secrecy, the same lack of independence, the same procedural barriers, dressed up in new language.

That is not an accident. It is the product of how power is structured.

If reform is to be meaningful, it has to be informed by an understanding of the systems that shape outcomes regardless of intent. That requires more than commentary. It requires clear, accessible, factual accounts that do not rely on institutional goodwill or selective disclosure.

The briefings are an attempt to provide that.

Why these two briefings first?

Although the briefing series is intended to range widely – across safeguarding, governance, accountability, redress and institutional power – the first two published briefings focus on issues that are foundational.

The first examines the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919: the constitutional framework that governs how Church legislation acquires the force of an Act of Parliament. This is not an abstract constitutional curiosity. It is the mechanism that explains why Parliament is repeatedly asked to approve legislation affecting safeguarding and discipline while being structurally prevented from amending it.

Until that framework is understood, debates about individual Measures risk missing the point. The briefing therefore focuses on process rather than theology, and on democratic accountability rather than ecclesiastical autonomy.

The second briefing addresses the draft Clergy Conduct Measure. It does so not to rehearse every criticism already made on this site, but to isolate a central problem: the attempt to secure final approval for a statutory disciplinary system without providing the rules that will determine how it operates in practice.

That issue goes well beyond one Measure. It speaks to a wider legislative habit within the Church: deferring decisive detail, limiting scrutiny, and relying on assurances that are neither binding nor transparent. The briefing sets out why Parliament has repeatedly objected to this approach, and why those objections matter.

These subjects were chosen first because they illuminate how institutional failure is embedded upstream, long before individual cases collapse downstream.

What comes next

These briefings are not a closed set. They are the beginning of a body of work intended to grow over time.

Future briefings will address other areas where survivors, advocates and observers are routinely expected to navigate opaque systems with little reliable information: safeguarding structures, redress mechanisms, the use of guidance in place of law, and the concentration of power within internal legal processes.

Each briefing will be focused, finite and written to stand alone.

They are offered freely because information should not be gated by institutional convenience. They are published separately from this site so that they can be read, shared and cited without being lost in the flow of blog commentary.

The blog will continue to do what it does best: challenge, provoke, and record institutional failure as it happens.

The briefings exist so that when the Church once again claims that “lessons have been learned”, there is a clear, factual record explaining why the system was never designed to learn them in the first place.

The post Why I am publishing background briefings – and why they matter appeared first on Church Abuse.

In a country where transparency is increasingly recognised as a cornerstone of public trust, it is striking—astonishing, even—that Clergy Discipline Tribunals (CDTs) remain entirely outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act. At a time when public institutions, regulators, and professional bodies are expected to operate in the open, the disciplinary system governing the Church of England’s clergy still functions behind a statutory curtain. And the question practically asks itself: why?

The UK has a long and proud tradition of using transparency to strengthen confidence in public and quasi‑public bodies. Many of the tribunals that sit outside HM Courts & Tribunals Service are nevertheless subject to FOIA, and the benefits of that openness are clear.

Take the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, for example. Its decisions shape the careers of doctors and influence public safety. Because the MPTS is subject to FOIA, journalists, researchers, and members of the public can scrutinise how cases are handled, how sanctions are applied, and whether the system is functioning fairly. That scrutiny has exposed inconsistencies, prompted policy reviews, and ultimately improved the way the medical profession is regulated.

Or look at the Traffic Commissioner inquiries, which oversee the conduct of professional drivers and operators. FOIA has enabled campaigners to obtain data on licence revocations, safety breaches, and enforcement patterns—information that has directly informed road‑safety campaigns and parliamentary debate. Transparency has not weakened the system; it has strengthened it.

Even the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, dealing with some of the most sensitive matters imaginable, is subject to FOIA. While exemptions apply for obvious reasons, the principle remains: where public power is exercised, public accountability follows.

And yet, Clergy Discipline Tribunals—bodies that adjudicate serious allegations including bullying, harassment, spiritual abuse, and sexual misconduct—operate with none of this statutory openness. Their decisions can profoundly affect complainants, clergy, congregations, and communities. They deal with matters that go to the heart of safeguarding, trust, and institutional integrity. But unlike the tribunals regulating doctors, nurses, solicitors, pharmacists, chiropractors, or even crofters, CDTs are shielded from the basic transparency obligations that apply across the public sphere.

This exemption is not merely an administrative quirk. It has real‑world consequences.

Without FOIA, there is no right to request data on how long cases take, how many complaints are dismissed at preliminary stages, how sanctions vary across dioceses, or how often safeguarding concerns intersect with disciplinary allegations. There is no enforceable route to obtain internal policies, training materials, or anonymised case statistics. There is no mechanism for journalists or researchers to test whether the system is consistent, fair, or effective.

In short, there is no sunlight.

And sunlight matters. We have seen, time and again, that institutions dealing with misconduct and safeguarding cannot rely on internal assurances alone. Transparency is not an optional extra; it is a safeguard in its own right.

Some may argue that ecclesiastical tribunals are part of a religious institution and therefore should not be subject to FOIA. But this argument collapses under the weight of comparison. Many of the tribunals already covered by FOIA regulate professions that are self‑governing, self‑funded, and independent of the state. The General Medical Council, the General Dental Council, the General Optical Council—none are arms of government, yet all are subject to FOIA because they exercise public functions affecting public trust.

Clergy Discipline Tribunals do exactly that. They adjudicate on the conduct of office‑holders who perform marriages, funerals, pastoral care, and safeguarding responsibilities. Their decisions shape public confidence in the Church’s ability to police its own standards. That is a public function by any reasonable measure.

So the question becomes not “why should CDTs be covered by FOIA?” but why on earth aren’t they already?

If transparency improves every other disciplinary system it touches—and the evidence shows that it does—then the continued exemption of Clergy Discipline Tribunals is not just outdated. It is indefensible.

It is time for Parliament, the Church, and the public to demand change. A disciplinary system that affects real people, real communities, and real safeguarding outcomes must not be allowed to operate in the shadows. FOIA coverage would not undermine the Church. It would strengthen it, by ensuring that justice is not only done, but seen to be done.

And that is the very least the public should expect.

The post Why are clergy discipline tribunals still exempt from the Freedom of Information Act? appeared first on Church Abuse.