The Bishop of Chichester speaks in the House of Lords on Slavery and domestic violence

The Lord Bishop of Chichester: My Lords, I strongly support the noble and learned Baroness in everything that she has just said. She has very starkly set out the figures and the likely impact of not sending this back to the Commons. She has quite rightly said that people could die as a result.

It is hard to engage in this discussion without having a rerun of the long debate that we have just had about the non-pursued Pannick amendment. It seems to me that we are in considerable confusion-and I have to say, with all due respect, that I do not think that the Minister helped us at all in this-about whether what is really at stake is the focus, orientation and purpose of the Bill, or whether it is a genuinely financial provision.We are really-I nearly used the expression “having the wool pulled over our eyes”. I feel profoundly unsatisfied and unpersuaded by what we heard earlier this afternoon.

This boils down to the question of what kind of society we want to live in…

Read it all.

print

Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, * Culture-Watch, * International News & Commentary, Anglican Provinces, Church of England (CoE), CoE Bishops, England / UK, Ethics / Moral Theology, Law & Legal Issues, Theology, Violence