AMID the pain of the Makin review and the unprecedented resignation of an Archbishop of Canterbury, readers could be forgiven for missing a moment of recent good fortune for the Established Church. The former Conservative cabinet minister Gavin Williamson brought an amendment to the Government Bill to remove the remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords, and to sweep away the bishops, too; but it was roundly defeated (News, 15 November).

Mr Williamson seems to have been motivated by the Lords Spirituals’ frequent criticisms of the previous government, but he was not supported by a majority even of fellow Tories. The Bill is now awaiting its Committee Stage in the Lords, where there are also opponents of the bishops who may table amendments against them. Although these are unlikely to overturn the decision of the Commons, the clumsy manner of Archbishop Welby’s departure from among them will at least afford further grounds for criticism (News, 13 December).

THE likely survival of the bishops’ seats in the Lords affords the Church an opportunity to seize the initiative to reform and justify their presence there, while there is yet time. It is also a chance, when the Church’s national reputation is understandably low, to display humility by reducing their numbers and inviting Parliament explicitly to include other denominations and faiths.

This has been considered in previous reports and debates, as in the General Synod in 2012, when Lords reform was last before Parliament. I accept the often made arguments about how the bishops contribute politically neutral service with a distinct rootedness in local community, but I find a fresh argument from my experience, until recently, on the Dioceses Commission: that service in Parliament is a duty that the Church needs to plan for more carefully.

The main regular duty of the Commission is to review requests from dioceses to agree the appointment of new suffragan or area bishops. Each time, the diocese in question presents a rationale, always showing how many people the new bishop would serve, and how many important parts the bishop is needed to play in the diocesan structure. But the planning can never really cope with the fact that the diocesan bishop may or may not be in the Lords, with the potential for that to take up significant time.

And it is more time if it is “her”; for new female diocesans go to the front of the queue for spaces, in what was intended to be a temporary provision until the numbers evened out. Anecdotally, this has been used as an argument why a diocese might prefer a man, because, at least to start with, he will be able to devote himself to the diocese rather than be drawn immediately into national concerns. This cannot be reasonable; nor can the traditional idea that the call to the Lords comes as relief to a bishop who is getting bored with the diocese, or whose diocese is wearying of the bishop’s initiatives.

It may be argued that duty in the Lords is quite light, organised by rota. But, if our bishops are to contribute well, as some do — such the Bishop of St Albans, Dr Alan Smith, on gambling reform (Comment, 12 May 2023) — they need to be there often, to build the relationships as well as to understand the detail of the work. The Archbishops’ Council has an excellent Parliamentary Unit that provides first-class briefings to bishops in the Lords, but this feels to me like a remedy for limited capacity when all diocesan bishops are too busy.

MY SUGGESTION is that the number of bishops in the Lords should be reduced, and the seats tied to specific sees. That way, the need to enable the diocesan to serve in the Lords can be taken into account fully, both on the appointment of a new bishop and in the arrangements for episcopacy in the diocese. It means that the dioceses chosen will probably retain their full current complement of other bishops, whereas, given falling clergy numbers overall, most other dioceses should probably lose at least one suffragan.

Both the number and the sees are open for discussion, but let us say 16: the Archbishops, and the three existing senior sees (London, Durham, and Winchester); certain large dioceses that have well-formed area systems, which help their bishop to play a national part: Oxford, Chelmsford, Leeds, and Lichfield; some compact sees covering large cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Bristol; a couple of large rural dioceses with two suffragans: Norwich and Exeter; and, finally, sentiment from 20 years’ service there leads me to suggest the smallest and most rural see for balance: Hereford.

Some may think that this creates a “two-tier” diocesan episcopate, but that is already true of the senior sees and the very varied scales of diocese. It might also be that important national posts, such as sitting on whatever succeeds the Archbishops’ Council, or steering the National Ministry Team in the challenging reform of theological education, would tend to fall to non-parliamentary bishops. And the Lords Spiritual might again, as was said of John Habgood, become parliamentarians whom others would flock to hear.

Canon Neil Patterson is the Vice-Dean of Bristol Cathedral.