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MPs back efforts to increase number of women bishops in House of Lords

By Stephen Price
The House of Lords. Picture by the House of Lords (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

MPs have supported extending measures designed to increase representation of women bishops in the House of Lords.

The Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015 (Extension) Bill continues for a further five years the policy of filling any vacancies that appear on the bishop’s benches in the unelected house with female bishops.

It received an unopposed second reading in the Commons on Thursday and will undergo further scrutiny at a later date.

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Legislation

Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said: “There are 26 bishops that sit in the House of Lords and before 2015 the process for how and when they sit in the other place was determined solely by the Bishoprics Act 1878.

“Five seats are automatically allocated to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York followed by the bishops of London, Durham and Winchester.

“The remainder were filled on the basis of seniority – in other words, length of tenure.

“In 2014, the General Synod of the Church of England passed legislation to allow women to become bishops for the first time. But because of the rules of seniority, we would have had to wait many years before these first female bishops could have been eligible to receive their writs of summons and become lords spiritual.

“That would have created a situation where women were prominently involved in church leadership but were unrepresented in the House of Lords.

“To address this at the request of the church, both Houses passed legislation in 2015 to fast-track female bishops into the House of Lords and the effect of that legislation is that if there’s a female diocesan bishop available when a lords spiritual seat becomes vacant, she will be appointed to the seat ahead of a male bishop irrespective of seniority.”

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Bill

MPs heard there have been six female bishops sit in the Lords earlier than they otherwise would have done thanks to the legislation.

The Government has brought forward the extension Bill after it was requested by the Church of England.

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15 comments

John Ellis

In our contemporary society there should be no bishops in the legislature if they're there purely on the basis of the office which they hold.

Reply
hdavies15

No bishops and elimination of upper house based on elevation to peerage. Second house should be elected by the people.

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John Ellis

The potential difficulty there which is routinely raised is that as both houses would then have a democratic mandate, disputes between them as to which should get the final say would be generated. But legislatures in other nations appear to have got round that potential difficulty satisfactorily. Germany and Ireland might be useful comparators? However I know too little about how their systems work in practice to offer an informed opinion.

Reply
Y Cymro

How ironic. Wales has lost 8 MPs from 40 to 32 with the Tory boundary changes reducing our already nonexistent voice at Westminster to a mere whimper. We have Welsh Conservative Andrew RT Davies spitting feathers about the increase of Senedd members from 60 to 96. Who wants a costly referendum even though he was present in the Senedd chamber when any increase was debated and later passed by majority vote. Andrew RT Davies is well aware the bill also went out for public consultation in 2018. Received a positive response and that Welsh Labour was elected in 2021 with their intention clearly printed on their manifesto. So any petition has been done like the 20 mph "blanket ban" to deliberately whip up hostility & anger. With that said. I don't the Welsh Tories call for a referendum on any increase of female bishops in the House of Lords as they do with Wales and devolution, or do I see UK Labour ignore the Church of England's requests for more female bishops in the Lords? It's only Wales whose requests for further devolution continually fall on deaf ears? Strange that.

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Welsh Patriot

Wales has lost 8 MPs from 40 to 32  Because in Wales one MP represented as few as 42,000 people, when the mean across the UK was 80,000

Reply
Barry

Degressive proportionality has a purpose.

Reply
Alun

There shouldn't be an increase of anything in the house of Lords. The numbers need to be vastly reduced and a peerage should be a fixed term a term of under 10 years. What a bloated waste of money it is in its current state.

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Tomi Bennett

There are only two legislatures in the world that have clerics as members: ENGLAND and IRAN. That says it all. Everyone here in CYMRU should be campaigning vigorously to get rid of those ENGLISH bishops from the legislative process. In truth, the House of Lords as an institution is archaic and undemocratic and MUST be replaced with an elected second chamber.

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Karl

No bishops is the number we need. Especially after the recent scandal. That and the head of that churxh gone.The Lords must go

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Mab Meirion

The promotion opportunities for Bishops (female) could not be better than at this time, I imagine...

Reply
Howie

No hereditary Lords no Bishops or other religious members of HoL.

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Welsh Patriot

Do we need the House of Lords and do we really need Bishops sitting there? Like something out of the 14th century.

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Mab Meirion

No Church in Wales bishops sit in the HoL and bishops have been pulling our strings for a lot longer than that...and we still don't have a day off to show for it...

Reply
Jeff

Equality then? When you have the likes of Hanan and Mone and Elliot in the house, not really bothered with the clergy being there. The whole place needs a rethink.

Reply

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