General Synod – Report of Proceedings July 2023
on Friday, 20 October 2023 at 11.04 am by Peter Owen
categorised as Church of England, General Synod
The General Synod Report of Proceedings July 2023 is now available.
In addition to the usual verbatim transcript of the proceedings, there is an appendix containing several supplementary questions with answers that were provided after the meeting. These include
- the Serious Incident Report submitted to the Charity Commission on 26 June and the closing letter received from the Charity Commission on 3 August (Questions 8 & 9),
- an explanation of why and how Martin Sewell’s Questions got changed without him knowing (Questions 40-41).
Martin Sewell is a kind and gracious man and no doubt he would wish to keep ‘onside’ those people in the central institutions with whom he may need to work in the future. But had it been me who was traduced in the way he has been, I very much doubt that I could have been half as gracious as he has been in this case. As I recall from the debate in these pages at the time of Synod, it was not just the detail of the wording that had been changed but the entire sense of the questions… Read more »
Thank you for your kind words: I was greatly assisted both practically and pastorally by my friend and experienced General Synod watcher David Lamming: we reached a conclusion that we should prioritise a form of words that all involved could agree – which we did.
We lawyers have a phrase “Res ipsa loquitur” – “the thing speaks for itself”. By offering the agreed facts we have allowed folk to figure out the outstanding questions for themselves.
You Malcolm, have not missed much.
One would hope so, Malcolm. The whole affair stinks, and shows a level of corrupt practice that in any other organisation would merit dismissal. Darren Oliver is the Registrar in Oxford, for Canterbury Province, adviser to +Welby, and a senior partner in Winckworth Sherwood, who are alleged to have been fully party to perpetration in the deliberate weaponisation of safeguarding against Martyn Percy. Yet Mr. Oliver gets to ambush and alter the meaning of Mr. Sewell’s question without any consultation. How did this happen? Was Mr. Oliver acting for his law firm, or some other interests? I daresay the deliberate… Read more »
Can I clarify that I only engage on TA using my full name.
While it is 540 odd pages in I read the serious incident report to the Charity Commission and their response. I’m sure other TA readers will be interested to read that the employee compiling the report considers that the effect of disbanding the ISB was a ‘short term effect upon the reputation of the charity’ because of unfavourable media coverage- but they still felt it was the right thing to have done. The Charity Commission is happy to do nothing because of Professor Jay’s impending work. What a total demonstration of lack of understanding or remorse from the Archbishops’ Council,… Read more »
The problem wasn’t ‘unfavourable media coverage’. The problem was (to quote a member of the AC who addressed us as a group of survivors a few days after the ISB was shut down): “We messed up.” To gloss over the way the survivors who were in process with the ISB were stranded, or the way the ISB’s own terms of reference were flouted by the AC, and the refusal to engage in mediation, as ‘unfavourable media coverage’ is risible and an insult to the survivors who were treated disgracefully.