PROJECT SPIRE, the plan to put aside £100 million from the Church Commissioners’ funds for investment to handle the legacy of the slave trade, got here under renewed attack within the General Synod on Monday evening.
During Questions, members of the Synod, meeting in Church House, Westminster, closely scrutinised the proposals — which might require the Commissioners to register a latest charity, then apply for permission from the Charity Commission to transfer £100 million to it — and raised legal, financial, and historical concerns.
But the Bishop of Salisbury, the Rt Revd Stephen Lake, who’s the deputy chair of the Commissioners, offered a strong defence of Project Spire, insisting that it was being pursued appropriately.
All the cash that had up to now been spent on developing the plan had taken place in consultation with the regulator and after first taking legal advice, Bishop Lake said. He rebutted requests to publish this recommendation to the Synod.
“The Commissioners remain committed to establishing a latest charitable fund to be an agent of change focused on achieving healing, repair, and justice for all,” he said. “We are progressing this work in a responsible, lawful, and diligent manner.”
Criticism of the proposals got here thick and fast, nonetheless. The first 16 of the written questions submitted to those Synod sessions all related to Project Spire, and all but one got here from opponents of the scheme.
Richard Brown (Chelmsford) noted the aspiration of the project’s oversight group to grow the £100 million to multiple billion in total, and asked whether another organisations had yet committed funds to the brand new fund.
Bishop Lake said that the Commissioners were in private discussions with many, each at home and abroad, but he couldn’t announce any names yet.
When Mr Brown followed up by raising concerns that the Commissioners might make up the £900-million shortfall with their very own funds, Bishop Lake swiftly replied: “Not on my watch.”
Other members probed on the source of Project Spire: research commissioned by the Commissioners which concluded that its predecessor fund within the 18th century had benefited financially from investments in corporations involved in slave-trading. Several members asked whether the Commissioners had tendered for this research or used skilled historians.
Bishop Lake insisted that the Commissioners believed that they’d “proven the case”, and urged those that were concerned concerning the project to conduct their very own research into what had been published online and to “inform themselves” — relatively than take the lead from “those with a specific view”.
The Bishop continued to say that the vociferous opposition to Project Spire had weighed so heavily that the Commissioners had needed to put support in place to guard the “well-being” of the staff working on the Project. The public debate, which had spilled over into Parliament and the national media in recent months, and the hostility from some had change into “deeply personal”, he said.
He also sought to correct other questioners who presumed that the £100-million investment must, by default, mean cuts to the Commissioners’ funding for on a regular basis ministry within the Church. “There will likely be no reductions for parishes due to Project Spire,” the Bishop told one member who asked about this.
Facing questions on the precise legal means by which the Project Spire fund could be established, Bishop Lake said that the Commissioners weren’t yet able to apply formally to the Charity Commission for the brand new charity, but that he had every confidence within the staff to finish this work to a high standard.
It was possible that the regulator might reject the applying and forestall the £100- million transfer, he said, but, even when this did occur and the Commissioners needed to reconsider, “the the reason why we engage in Project Spire won’t change.”
The Synod was not unanimously critical of the proposals; several members asked what they and their parishes could do to push forward the project.
Canon Andrew Dotchin (St Edmundsbury & Ipswich) said that justice delayed was justice denied, and asked how the Synod could assist the Commissioners to handle the legacy of slavery with “humble penitence”.
Bishop Lake reiterated his call to churchgoers to familiarise themselves with Project Spire’s website and research, and said that the backlash on the ground of the Synod didn’t match what he and his colleagues had present in parishes, week by week, during consultation.
Ultimately, Bishop Lake warned, as a “responsible Christian investor”, the Church couldn’t ignore its links with a “fundamental historic improper” without torpedoing its “moral leadership in the current or the long run”.
