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Sex Discrimination (Religious Organisations)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. O'Hara. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) on securing this important debate. It is a not debate about what instructions we should give to the Church of England, but a spirit of inquiry from my hon. Friend, who represents a part of the Church, just to test the matter and have the Minister be clear about what the law says so that it can guide the Church in its deliberations. Just as my hon. Friend declared his interest, I can declare my interest as a man and as a Christian, albeit a member of the Catholic Church rather than the Church of England. However, I am afraid that I do not come to this debate with such an impressive list of theological or Church qualifications. Like the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), I would normally hesitate to discuss the tenets of another religion, but, as my hon. Friend accurately said, whatever faith we have, and whatever view we take about the establishment of the Church of England, it is the established Church and we in Parliament are asked to take a view of it. In a sense, even not taking a view is taking a view, in that not participating in the debate or not taking a particular view may affect the outcome of that debate. I had thought that, coming to this debate as a Catholic, I should do a little research myself to see what current Catholic thinking is. I dug out the Ordinatio Sacredotalis, the apostolic letter of the late John Paul II to the bishops of the Catholic Church on reserving the priestly ordination to men alone. Unlike the Church of England, the Catholic Church takes a definite position on this issue. Indeed, according to the late Pope, the Catholic Church does not really have any authority on this matter at all, in the sense that it has said that it is not the deciding factor on whether women can be ordained as priests in the Catholic Church. In his letter, the late John Paul II made his position clear:"““Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren…I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.””" That does not leave a lot of room for doubt. However, the Church of England, of course, does things in a somewhat different way. My hon. Friend raised some important issues and they are important for two reasons: first, because of the draft Measure that, as he said, is being debated in the Church of England. He said that he seeks guidance from the Minister here today on exactly how the current law will apply to that Measure, so that he can give the Church some guidance about how it should draft it and decide on it. The second reason why my hon. Friend's points are important concerns the Equality Bill; I apologise if referring to that Bill upsets the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon, but I will refer to it only briefly. I understand that schedule 9 to the Bill just converts existing legislation relating to the requirement to be of a particular sex to a new framework. However, I want to ask the Minister whether anything in that schedule would affect what the current law says. Given that the Equality Bill will come back to this House for Report and Third Reading, if he says anything now about the application of current discrimination law, we might need to look again at those aspects on Report. If I have got the nub of my hon. Friend's argument right, this may be where the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon and I disagree. I quoted the Catholic teaching on this matter because the exemption on direct discrimination in the current law only applies, as I understand it—I think this is what my hon. Friend said—if the religion itself says that there is a specific legitimate theological reason why a post may only be held by a certain person: in this case, by a man. The Church of which I am a member still holds that to be the case, so it would trigger that exemption in the law and would be able to discriminate against women and say that only men can be priests. However, my hon. Friend made the point that because the Church of England has decided in principle that women are able to be priests and bishops, that exemption does not apply and regular law therefore applies, and the Church of England would have to treat women bishops in the same way that it treats male bishops. Consequently, it should not undermine the authority of women bishops and it should have sensible procedures in place so that they are not undermined. That directly relates to the decisions that the Church of England will have to make ahead of February 2010, when it passes its Measure on this subject. I think that is the nub of what my hon. Friend said. I reinforce the questions that my hon. Friend put. They are pertinent and important because they may affect what the Church of England decides to do, and, therefore, the nature of the Measure that is brought before this House for approval.