INTRODUCTION
This report covers the groups of sessions held in February 2018 and July 2018. Both meetings again saw significant amounts of legislative business, with a number of items giving effect to proposals emerging from the simplification strand of the Archbishops’ Council's ‘Renewal and Reform’ programme or directed in other respects at simplifying or streamlining the Church's substantial body of statute law. Indeed, such has been the level of legislative activity over the last two years that in the course of 2018 no fewer than nine Measures have been enacted – the highest number in a single year since the Church acquired the ability to make Measures having the force and effect of an Act of Parliament under the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919.
DRAFT ECUMENICAL RELATIONS MEASURE
The provisions contained in this draft Measure had originally been contained in the draft Church Representation, Ecumenical Relations and Ministers Measure that was given First Consideration by the Synod, along with draft Amending Canon No 38, in February 2017. However, unusually, the Revision Committee for the draft Measure decided to divide both the draft Measure and the draft Amending Canon into two, with the provisions relating to the Church's ecumenical activity being contained in the draft Ecumenical Relations Measure. It, and draft Amending Canon No 38 in its reduced form, completed their Revision Stage in February and received Final Approval in July.
The Measure and Amending Canon both give effect to proposals emerging from Phase II of the work of the Archbishops’ Council's Simplification Task Group. The Measure amends the statutory provisions that enable the Church of England to participate in ecumenical activity with other Christian Churches, extending the General Synod's existing powers to make provision by Canon for the participation of members of other Churches in Church of England services and updating provisions that enable the Church of England to participate in ecumenical schemes. It also enables the bishop temporarily to designate Churches that have not been designated at the national level as ecumenical partners of the Church of England within a diocese and requires the House of Bishops to issue a code of practice on co-operation by the Church of England with other Churches. In reliance on the widened statutory provisions, Amending Canon No 38 replaces the former Canon B 43 (relations with other Churches) and Canon B 44 (local ecumenical projects) with a new Canon B 43 to be entitled ‘Of ecumenical relations’.
DRAFT CHURCH REPRESENTATION AND MINISTERS MEASURE AND AMENDING CANON NO 39
The remaining provisions of the draft Measure and draft Amending Canon introduced in February 2017 are contained in what became, respectively, the draft Church Representation and Ministers Measure and draft Amending Canon No 39. Both also give effect to proposals emerging from Phase II of the Simplification Task Group's work.
The draft Measure will substitute new Church Representation Rules for those contained in Schedule 3 to the Synodical Government Measure 1969. While preserving various basic features of the old rules, the new ones will implement a range of reforms – including by allowing the creation of joint councils covering two or more connected parishes and replacing the individual parochial church councils (‘PCCs’). Additionally, the rules relating to parish governance take the form of models which represent a simplified form of the existing rules, but which it will be open to a PCC to amend, supplement or replace by way of a scheme made by an annual parochial church meeting (subject to approval by the bishop's council): only where a parish does not make a scheme will the model rules automatically apply.
Amending Canon No 39 will make a number of changes to the Canons in relation to different aspects of ministry. It includes amendments that are concerned with the requirements as to the holding of certain services in parish churches to cover the position of multi-parish benefices and benefices that are held in plurality, and also makes amendments to Canons concerned with ordination, with certain appointments and with the exercise of ministry.
The draft Measure and Amending Canon completed their Revision Stage in July and will return for Final Drafting and Final Approval in February 2019.
DRAFT AMENDING CANON NO 40
July saw the giving of First Consideration to draft Amending Canon No 40, which will, for the first time, provide a canonical framework for religious communities in the Church of England. Among other considerations, the introduction of such a structure will help to support the promotion of good safeguarding practices among religious communities. The Amending Canon will introduce a new Canon providing for the House of Bishops to declare communities to be religious communities in the Church of England; and a community will have to meet criteria set out in regulations made by the House of Bishops before that house can make a declaration in respect of the community. The House of Bishops will be able to include provision about other matters relating to religious communities in the regulations; it will also be empowered to issue guidance for religious communities.
It is expected that provision made under the new Canon will reflect recently agreed voluntary provision set out in A Handbook of the Religious Life, issued by the former Advisory Council on the Relations between Bishops and Religious Communities. It is also expected that the functions conferred on the House of Bishops by the Canon will be exercised by the Advisory Council, which has now been reconstituted as a committee of the House of Bishops.
CONSOLIDATION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS MEASURES
July saw two Measures receiving final approval, after having been introduced in February, that, while not concerned with simplification as such, serve the related purpose of putting the Church's statute law into a more satisfactory and up-to-date format.
The Church Property Measure consolidates, with corrections and minor improvements, a number of enactments relating to church property, including dealings with parsonage houses, dealings with and the management of glebe land, and the acquisition of new land for church purposes. It also consolidates a number of miscellaneous and general provisions relating to church property. The Church of England Pensions Measure consolidates, again with corrections and minor improvements, a number of enactments concerned with pensions for the clergy, church workers and church administrators, and their surviving spouses, civil partners and dependants. The latter Measure could be progressed faster than would otherwise have been the case as a result of the making of the first order under section 8 of the Legislative Reform Measure, which enables the Archbishops’ Council to make an order making amendments relating to a particular area of ecclesiastical law in order to facilitate its subsequent consolidation.
Also in the field of legislative ‘housekeeping’, the draft Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure, which had been introduced in July 2017, completed its Revision Stage in February and received Final Approval in July. It will make a range of miscellaneous changes to ecclesiastical law, united only by their being uncontentious. The most potentially significant of them is a new power enabling the Church Commissioners to make grants to the Archbishops’ Council for the purposes of its functions, which has been introduced with a view to facilitating the funding of worthwhile projects that could not be supported by the Council because of the restrictions on the use of the funds it receives from the Commissioners under section 2 of the National Institutions Measure 1998.
However, such is the need to keep the Church's body of statute law up to date that sufficient further changes had been identified to justify the introduction in July of a further draft Measure making miscellaneous uncontentious changes, in the form of the Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) (No.2) Measure. The draft Measure was accompanied by draft Amending Canon No 41, which will similarly make a number of uncontentious changes to the Canons.
CATHEDRALS
At the July group of sessions, the Synod welcomed the recommendations made in the Report of the Cathedrals Working Group, which had been established by the archbishops in 2017 to look into recommending improvements to the governance and management of cathedrals, and requested the Council to bring forward a draft Measure for the First Consideration at the July 2019 group of sessions to give effect to the recommendations that involve legislative change. The report made a very large number of such recommendations, many focused on governance and regulation. The draft Measure that comes to the Synod in July 2019 can therefore be expected to be a substantial and significant item of legislation which, if and when approved, will shape the life and witness of cathedrals for years to come.
