On 4th December 2017 the House of Lords heard a Government statement repeated on the Social Mobility Commission chaired by Alan Milburn, whose board had announced their resignations that day. The Bishop of Salisbury, Rt Revd Nicholas Holtam, asked a follow up question:
The Lord Bishop of Salisbury: My Lords, I very much welcome the work of the commission and of the outgoing commissioners. We live in a very divided and polarised time. After a period of low economic growth and austerity, and with Brexit, it feels as if the divisions in society are very great. This piece of work has the potential to be cross-party, and indeed it has been. How will the Government ensure that it continues to be cross-party as a process of building the common good and mending some of the divisions, as well as paying serious attention to the growing inequalities in society to which the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has drawn attention? Continue reading “Bishop of Salisbury calls for Social Mobility Commission to focus on common good”
The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: My Lords, one of the duties in which I take particular pleasure is chairing the governors at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, just outside Oxford, a theological college at which men and women are prepared for ministry. It is known by those associated with it more colloquially as a vicar factory. Notices around the college remind the residents that, after night prayer or Compline, they are expected to abide by what is known as the great silence. It is not, I suspect, adhered to with the same severity as in years past. Indeed, one has a sense that the silence masks all kinds of feverish activity, all of it associated with theology, of course.
This week in the House of Lords bishops spoke in debates on lifelong learning and improving mental health services for people from black and ethnic minority communities, and asked questions about Donald Trump’s sharing of material about Islam, domestic violence, mental health, waste reduction and interpretation services. In the House of Commons the Second Church Estates Commissioner answered a question on religious freedom. 
On November 30th 2017 the House of Lords heard repeated a Government statement about online hate speech, following the sharing by the United States President Donald Trump of material about Muslims produced by the far-right organisation ‘Britain First’. The Bishop of Worcester, Rt Revd John Inge, asked a follow up question:
On 30th November 2017 the Bishop of St Albans, Rt Revd Alan Smith, received a written answer to a question on the uprating on welfare benefits with inflation:
On 29th November 2017 Baroness Coussins asked Her Majesty’s Government “whether they have revised their target for annual budget savings on the cost of providing interpretation and translation services in criminal proceedings, following the allocation of the latest contract for those services to thebigword; and if so, what is their new target.” The Bishop of Leeds, Rt Revd Nick Baines, asked a follow up question:
The Lord Bishop of Worcester: My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, for securing this debate and, like the noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, pay tribute not only to his eloquent introduction but to all he has done in this area. We owe him a great debt of gratitude.
On 28th November 2017 the Bishop of St Albans, Rt Revd Alan Smith, asked a question he had tabled to Government about its plans to reduce waste. The exchange with the Minister and subsequent questions from other Members are below:
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