Bosco Peters Liturgy Ordination Requirements
Rebecca Chapman Church Times General Synod should be more than a talking shop
“Its members need clarity about who is making decisions and what they are voting on”
Meg Munn Chair of the National Safeguarding Panel National Redress Scheme
Hansard [HL], 10 July 1919 (debating amendments to the Enabling Bill): “LORD SHEFFIELD I must entirely traverse the statement made by the most rev. Primate [Lang] and the noble Earl [Selborne]. They have both told your Lordships that this is not a new constitution for the Church. In my view it is an entirely new constitution. You have two Provinces in this country, York and Canterbury, who are independent of each other and who pass resolutions quite different from each other. You have the House of Laymen, an ecclesiastical caucus, a body which has no authority whatever. It has no more… Read more »
Commenting on Meg Munn’s review of the National Redress Scheme I note that financial and non financial redress will be based on civil proceedings which considers the balance of probability. What like CDM does! Will they be giving the contract to Winckworth Sherwood! Good luck to the 2 survivors that will actually get it!
The financial implications seem to have been dodged: in particular it seems likely that applicants will in practice need some sort of legal assistance or even advocacy. I wonder who will pay for that?
Having read Meg Munn’s piece twice, I confess I am still not clear how this is expected to work. The law firm, however ‘independent’ are wholly under the control of, and to be managed by, the Church. However honourably conducted, the scheme will not provide independent advice to the survivor claimant. Then there is this strange paragraph: ”Concerns were raised by Panel members that there may be companies that offer their services to survivors for a cut of their award, which has happened with other schemes. Simon Stanley responded that this is being considered within the Invitation To Tender and a… Read more »
Thank you, RW. The Church’s idea of ‘independent’ is real doublespeak. Who do they think they’re fooling? Meg Munn? Who is she paid by? As for the CDM, it’s not what they say, it’s what they do that matters. Many survivors do not formalise complaints because they believe that they could never ‘prove’ the abuse if the only option available were to use the CDM. The CDM is seen as a barrier to justice, and survivors’ concerns are shared. As one Archdeacon put it: “We really seem to have tied ourselves in knots…… The intention of trying to create a more transparent and equitable system seems to be not far… Read more »
The point which, perhaps, I didn’t make sufficiently clearly is that if employing a law firm (I take that to mean solicitors) the Church of England will be the client in the resulting solicitor and client relationship. I see no problem in employing solicitors with expertise in assessing damages (actually an essential requirement if justice is to be done), but I’m not clear where the survivor claimant fits in to what we we have been told so far. I have done this work (in a wholly non-church context) and all claimants were independently represented and advised by their own lawyers.… Read more »
The Church of England seems intent on recreating, from scratch, unplanned and piecemeal, an ad hoc system of jurisprudence, with analogues of the criminal and civil courts, and an investigatory function analogous to the police. Even if that could be done effectively and professionally, it would be enormously expensive and completely redundant. Nothing like this is proposed for, say, the educational or medical services. Would it not be easier and cheaper to hand all of this over to the secular system?