THE new Second Church Estates Commissioner is to be announced in the coming weeks, after the longest wait since the office was established in 1948.
A Cabinet Office spokesman confirmed on Monday that the name would be made public “in the next few weeks”. It is understood that the appointment was confirmed in mid-July but has not been made public. Parliament went into recess on 30 July, shortly after the General Election, and reconvened on Monday. The new Commissioner is scheduled to answer oral questions on 15 October.
The Second Church Estates Commissioner is, by convention, an MP drawn from the governing party in the House of Commons. His or her primary parliamentary role is to answer oral and written questions from MPs about Church of England matters.
It is a Crown appointment, made on the advice of the Prime Minister, and the post-holder is required to be a confirmed lay member of the Church of England.
Almost nine weeks have passed since the General Election was held on 4 July. It has been typical to wait between six and seven weeks for a name to be announced, although on occasion it has taken under two weeks.
The previous Commissioner, Andrew Selous, served as an MP for South West Bedfordshire from 2001 until 2024, when the constituency was abolished. He was unsuccessful in a bid for election in the new constituency of Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard.
A number of Labour Anglican MPs are already spoken for: the new Labour Cabinet contains the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves; the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy; the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting; and the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Jonathan Reynolds (News, 10 July).
While data on the religious identity of MPs is not available, data on the voting population — from which MPs are drawn — highlights that the self-professed Anglicans tend to vote Conservative. YouGov data analysed by Exeter University suggests that 45 per cent of professed Anglicans voted Conservative in the last General Election, while 12 per cent voted for Labour.
The Second Church Estates Commissioner has typically been a more senior member of the House of Commons, with MPs taking on the role as a final responsibility before retirement. Mr Selous had served as an MP for 19 years upon his appointment. In 1974, however, Terence Walker was appointed just nine months after becoming the Labour MP for Kingswood. He was just 39 at the time; the average age of the person taking up the post is 53.