Church of England General Synod debates safeguarding next steps

Divisions have surfaced on the General Synod meeting in Westminster over the urgency of bringing forward laws on independent safeguarding for the Church of England.

Members debated the long run of safeguarding at Synod on Saturday, three days after the publication of Professor Alexis Jay’s report which heavily criticised the C of E’s system and practices. The former chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse called for the creation of two independent charities, one to deliver the Church’s operational safeguarding, the opposite to scrutinise it. 

The debate also got here after a report in December by leading barrister Dr Sarah Wilkinson into the controversial disbanding of the Church’s Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) in June 2023. She found that a “complex matrix of reasons” lay behind the termination of the ISB members’ contracts, including roles that were “not clearly defined”. 

Speaking to the Synod by video, Professor Jay told members: “Safeguarding within the Church today falls below the usual expected and set in secular organisations, that are required to follow statutory guidance.”

She called on the Church to “challenge erroneous beliefs about safeguarding which proceed to be held”.

“For example, we heard from plenty of folks that safeguarding must be rooted in Scripture and that being a practising Christian must be a prerequisite to holding a safeguarding role,” she said.

The Church’s lead safeguarding bishop, Joanne Grenfell, Bishop of Stepney, circulated a document, GS 2336, to members before the talk. Paragraph 12 of GS 2336 recommends the creation of “an internal team” to “run deep engagement with Diocesan Safeguarding Advisors/ Diocesan Safeguarding Officers and others in dioceses and cathedrals to unpick reactions on different elements and develop detailed proposals”. It also calls for the creation of a “survivor and victim focus group” to “hear the views of victims, survivors and their advocates on the proposals”.

Bishop Grenfell moved a motion that “this Synod thank Sarah Wilkinson and Alexis Jay for his or her work and request that the method set out in paragraph 12 of GS 2336 for forming a response to, and considering any essential implementation of, their recommendations be pursued as a matter of priority”.

Clive Billenness, a lay member for the Diocese in Europe, proposed an amendment to the motion to “instruct independent legislative counsel to arrange a draft Measure giving effect to Professor Jay’s proposals in the style advisable by Dr Wilkinson (i.e. using external consultants)”; “to publish the draft Measure for open consultation by 30 April 2024”; and “to bring that draft, along with a report setting out responses to the consultation, for first consideration at General Synod in July 2024”.

Bishop Grenfell resisted the move to push ahead with preparing laws. She said: “The work that should be done now could be deep and wide engagement, not immediate delivery. We’ve only had the (Jay) report for a number of days.”

Mr Billenness’s amendment fell in a vote requiring a majority in each of the three Houses of Synod. The House of Bishops voted against it by 27 to eight; the House of Clergy by 95 to 62; however the House of Laity supported it by 83 to 80.

Amendments apologising to the previous members of ISB passed but the talk descended into bitterness when the Rev Robert Thompson, a clergy member for London Diocese, called on the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Archbishops’ Council Secretary-General, William Nye, to resign.

He said: “Apology must be embodied and at present nobody is embodying that inside our Church. I even have on social media called for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the General Secretary (sic) to resign and I feel that’s now what is required. Trust is totally broken.”

The predominant motion passed in a vote of the entire Synod by 337 to 21.

Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.