PROJECT SPIRE, the plan to set aside £100 million from the Church Commissioners’ funds for investment to address the legacy of the slave trade, came under renewed attack in the General Synod on Monday evening.

During Questions, members of the Synod, meeting in Church House, Westminster, closely scrutinised the proposals — which would require the Commissioners to register a new charity, then apply for permission from the Charity Commission to transfer £100 million to it — and raised legal, financial, and historical concerns.

But the Bishop of Salisbury, the Rt Revd Stephen Lake, who is the deputy chair of the Commissioners, offered a robust defence of Project Spire, insisting that it was being pursued appropriately.

All the money that had so far been spent on developing the plan had taken place in consultation with the regulator and after first taking legal advice, Bishop Lake said. He rebutted requests to publish this advice to the Synod.

“The Commissioners remain committed to establishing a new charitable fund to be an agent of change focused on achieving healing, repair, and justice for all,” he said. “We are progressing this work in a responsible, lawful, and diligent manner.”

Criticism of the proposals came thick and fast, however. The first 16 of the written questions submitted to these Synod sessions all related to Project Spire, and all but one came from opponents of the scheme.

Richard Brown (Chelmsford) noted the aspiration of the project’s oversight group to grow the £100 million to more than one billion in total, and asked whether any other organisations had yet committed finances to the new fund.

Bishop Lake said that the Commissioners were in private discussions with many, both at home and abroad, but he could not announce any names yet.

When Mr Brown followed up by raising concerns that the Commissioners might make up the £900-million shortfall with their own funds, Bishop Lake swiftly replied: “Not on my watch.”

Other members probed at the source of Project Spire: research commissioned by the Commissioners which concluded that its predecessor fund in the 18th century had benefited financially from investments in companies involved in slave-trading. Several members asked whether the Commissioners had tendered for this research or used professional historians.

Bishop Lake insisted that the Commissioners believed that they had “proven the case”, and urged those who were concerned about the project to conduct their own research into what had been published online and to “inform themselves” — rather than take the lead from “those with a particular view”.

The Bishop continued to say that the vociferous opposition to Project Spire had weighed so heavily that the Commissioners had had to put support in place to protect the “well-being” of the staff working on the Project. The public debate, which had spilled over into Parliament and the national media in recent months, and the hostility from some had become “deeply personal”, he said.

He also sought to correct other questioners who presumed that the £100-million investment must, by default, mean cuts to the Commissioners’ funding for everyday ministry in the Church. “There will be no reductions for parishes because of Project Spire,” the Bishop told one member who asked about this.

Facing questions about the precise legal means by which the Project Spire fund would be established, Bishop Lake said that the Commissioners were not yet ready to apply formally to the Charity Commission for the new charity, but that he had every confidence in the staff to complete this work to a high standard.

It was possible that the regulator might reject the application and prevent the £100- million transfer, he said, but, even if this did happen and the Commissioners had to reconsider, “the reasons why we engage in Project Spire won’t change.”

The Synod was not unanimously critical of the proposals; several members asked what they and their parishes could do to push forward the project.

Canon Andrew Dotchin (St Edmundsbury & Ipswich) said that justice delayed was justice denied, and asked how the Synod could assist the Commissioners to address the legacy of slavery with “humble penitence”.

Bishop Lake reiterated his call to churchgoers to familiarise themselves with Project Spire’s website and research, and said that the backlash on the floor of the Synod did not match what he and his colleagues had found in parishes, week by week, during consultation.

Ultimately, Bishop Lake warned, as a “responsible Christian investor”, the Church could not ignore its links with a “fundamental historic wrong” without torpedoing its “moral leadership in the present or the future”.