Tag: blog

Note: this page was updated on 5 July 2023 to provide a link to the revised briefing paper.

Yesterday, I tabled a "further motion", or "following motion" to be debated at the General Synod this weekend, about the Archbishops' Council's decision to get rid of its Independent Safeguarding Board. That motion - which is available here with a background briefing - was ruled "out of order" on the basis that the presentation on developments at the ISB, which will take place on Sunday afternoon (9 July) is a "free standing" presentation which isn't linked to a report. Well, what on earth is GS Misc 1341, a report by the Secretary General of the Archbishops' Council, Mr William Nye, on recent developments with the ISB, if it isn't a report?

I'm not easily beaten. And so I've amended the motion with a preamble which links it directly with the Annual Report of the Archbishops' Council. This motion has been tabled and, like yesterday's motion, has been supported by other Synod members.

I have heard that this one has been accepted as being in order - so Synod members will be able to debate the Archbishops' Council's handling of the ISB after all. The new motion is below. An amended version of the background paper is now available here.

This Synod -

1. notes that the Archbishops’ Council cites the establishment of the Independent Safeguarding Board in September 2021 as a ‘Key Management Action’ in response to the Principle Risk of “failure to deliver core safeguarding projects and to properly embed safeguarding policies and practice across the Church” (page 47 of the  Archbishops’ Council Annual Report for 2022, GS 2308);
2. further notes:

   1. as stated in paragraph 6(a) on page 4 of GS 2307, the Report and Recommendations from the  National Church Governance Project Board, that the Governance Review Group had: “identified Safeguarding as a significant governance failure of the National Church, defining it as ‘the most tragic example of the human cost of governance failure that can be imagined’” [emphasis in the original] and that “the historic failure at a National Church level to have recognised and prioritised the significant risks posed in relation to safeguarding and to invest appropriately has damaged the Church reputationally but more importantly contributed to significant harm both to individuals and communities”;
   2. as reported in paragraph 3.5.5 of GS Misc 1340, the Annual Report of the Archbishops’ Council Audit Committee 2022/23, that the Archbishops’ Council did not agree to a request In Autumn 2022 from members of the Audit Committee for an internal audit review into the formation and governance of the Independent Safeguarding Board;
   3. as recorded in the Report of Proceedings for the February 2023 group of sessions of Synod, that in answer to a supplementary question by Professor Helen King related to Question 56, the Chair of the Audit Committee said that they “do not have the ability [to audit the Independent Safeguarding Board]. We are not the Audit Committee of the ISB. We are the Audit Committee of the Archbishops’ Council”; a statement that was later corrected by a letter to Professor King dated 1 March 2023 and noted in an Annex to Report of Proceedings, stating that “The Archbishops’ Council’s Audit Committee does have the ability to commission an internal audit of all or of aspects of the work of the ISB, but it has not done so…” and
   4. in answer to a question (Question 85) at the February group of sessions the Bishop of Rochester informed Synod that the unaudited expenditure of the ISB for 2022 was £472,000 and that the Archbishops’ Council 2023 approved budget for 2023 included £465,000 for the ISB;

3. further notes that the creation of the Independent Safeguarding Board and details of its operation does not feature in any detail in the Annual Report of the Archbishops’ Council;

therefore –

4. is dismayed by the recent decision of the Archbishops’ Council to disband the Independent Safeguarding Board and terminate the contracts of its members;
5. notes that a Serious Incident Report has been made to the Charity Commission in respect of this governance decision;
6. recognises and laments that any working relationship between many survivors and victims with the Archbishops’ Council has been broken;
7. in consequence, calls upon the Archbishops’ Council, working with its Audit Committee, to commission an independent inquiry led by a senior lawyer (judge or King’s Counsel) into the safeguarding bodies, functions, policies and practice in and of the Church of England, to report within a maximum period of 12 months, and
8. requires that the report of that Inquiry be fully debated by the Synod to enable it to make decisions about future safeguarding in the Church of England.

Further reading:

• The Report to General Synod by William Nye, Secretary General, on behalf of the Archbishops’ Council.
• Background Briefing on the Following Motion

SOME campaigns are for causes whose aims and objectives are so obvious, you wonder why anybody actually has to campaign for them. Other campaigns may be for such a large proportion of society that you’d think sheer weight of numbers would enough to deliver those campaign aims.

Take International Women’s Day, which falls this year on Wednesday (8 March). Women make up near enough half Earth’s population. And it is difficult to see how anybody could credibly argue against a world without gender-based violence, where men and women share equality of opportunities and access to resources and justice.

And yet, here we are again: more than 100 years after the first National Women’s Day in the USA – the precursor to International Women’s Day – we have another annual day to highlight the ongoing campaign for women’s rights. Why?

Some 37 years ago, on 6 March 1986, a woman was raped at her home by a gang of burglars. The attack dominated headlines and news bulletins for days. The woman was 21 years old and a virgin. The home was a vicarage. Her father was a vicar – and both him, and the woman’s then-boyfriend received fractured skulls. The woman was Jill Saward. Six years later, she would become my wife.

In 1991, Jill Saward waived what was left of her anonymity to write a book about her ordeal as part of a near-30 year campaign to improve the way victims and survivors of gender-based violence are treated. Her campaign came to an abrupt end in January 2017, when she suffered a stroke and died.

Jill Saward saw many positive changes for victims and survivors.

Some changes came about as a direct result of the public outrage at the way Jill herself was treated. These changes include the strengthening of anonymity laws and the right to appeal against unduly lenient sentences.

Other changes came about as a result of the campaigning that she, and many other campaigners for women’s justice did – these include a ban on defendants directly cross-examine complainants, and limits on the questions that can be asked about the previous sexual history of a complainant.

But despite these – and many other changes – the law is still not fit for purpose when it comes to protecting people from gender-based violence. Let me add a caveat: I know that men are also victims of sexual violence; but in the overwhelming majority of cases, it is women who are the perpetrators and men who are the abusers; so on International Women’s Day, please excuse me for concentrating on women.

In January, the Crown Prosecution Service published a summary of its statistics for the period from 1 July to 30 September 2022. It headlined the release by trumpeting a 13.7 per cent increase in “the volume of suspects charged with rape” – from 666 in the previous six months to 757. They highlight that this was the fifth consecutive quarter where this figure has risen.

Any increase in the number of rape allegations that lead to a charge has to be welcomed. But I can get excited about the CPS “success story”. Those two figures average out at less than 3,000 rape charges in the year. But, also in January, the Home Office released data showing that in the 12 months to September 2022, there were 70,633 rapes reported to English and Welsh police forces – the area covered by the CPS – and a further 199,021 other sexual offences on top of this.

The statistics show that only four per cent of the 70,633 rape cases reported to the police result in a charge. But a charge isn’t the end of the story. Charges may be dropped by the CPS and suspects may be found not guilty.

The statistics released by the CPS in January showed a significant fall of almost 17 per cent in the number of completed rape prosecutions; and a drop of more than seven per cent in the number of convictions for rape.

Despite the successful campaigning by Jill Saward and many others, there is still much to do. When Jill died, I vowed to continue her campaign. I haven’t done much – certainly not by her standards. But the situation for victims and survivors is so bad that it could be argued that we don’t need to continue a campaign, but to start a fresh one.

This International Women’s Day, there will no doubt be claims on social media and elsewhere that “we don’t need an International Women’s Day”, or calls for an International Men’s Day (there already is one, on 19 November).

Such a response is mild compared to the abuse that women in the public eye face on social media. And that response to women is a symptom of the same attitude that leads to so many cases of sexual violence.

If a significant part of society treats women as second-class citizens when it comes to speech and words, then it can hardly be a surprise when parts of that society treats women as second- class when it comes to actions.

While the law and criminal justice processes do need to change to improve the way victims and survivors are treated; it is society’s attitudes that need to change if we are to reduce the number of new victims. And that’s not a women’s issue. It’s a man’s issue.

And so, if you are a man, use this International Women’s Day to consider what you can do to reduce sexual violence against women and girls. Challenging hate speech, misogyny, and the abuse of women online and in person is a good place to start.