Tag: communities

Bishop of Newcastle leads debate on impact of rural bank closures

The Bishop of Newcastle led a debate on the impact of bank closures on rural communities on 13th February 2025, raising issues of financial exclusion:

The Lord Bishop of Newcastle: To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the number of bank closures in the past decade and the impact on people in rural communities.

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who are taking part in this short debate and look forward to listening to each of the contributions that they will bring. While this debate has its focus on diverse rural communities, I know that the issue before us is not solely rural.

Last month, Lloyds Banking Group announced that it will be close 136 bank branches across the country. The Tyne valley in Northumberland will see another three branches close their doors—two in Hexham and one in Prudhoe—meaning that customers in Hexham will need to travel over 15 miles to Consett to visit their nearest Lloyds branch.

Lloyds’ announcement comes after a decade of decline in the number of high street banks. Figures from Which? show that 6,266 bank branches have closed across the UK over the past 10 years, representing 63% of branches open at the start of 2015. If bank branches continue closing at such a rate, we face living in a society where those unable to bank digitally are financially excluded.

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Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill: Bishop of Manchester speaks in support of amendments on community and voluntary groups

On 12th February 2025, the House of Lords debated amendments to the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill. The Bishop of Manchester spoke in support of amendments to the bill tabled by Lord Murray of Blidworth aiming to provide further support for community and voluntary organisations under the bill:

The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, I support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, in this group. As the Bishop of Manchester, I have got something like 400 churches and church halls in my diocese, but these amendments go rather wider than that. For places of worship, there are already some grant schemes for protecting against terrorism, given the particular threat that places of worship, especially Muslim and Jewish places of worship, have traditionally faced.

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Bishop of St Albans asks about community relations

The Bishop of St Albans received the following written answer on 12th February 2025:

The Lord Bishop of St Albans asked His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to engage positively with Muslim communities, including the Muslim Council of Britain.

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Bishop of Manchester urges re-funding of the Inter Faith Network

The Bishop of Manchester urged the government to consider re-funding the Inter Faith Network on 22nd January 2025, during a discussion on extremism and community engagement:

The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, a decision under the previous Government about a particular Islamic organisation being characterised as extremist led to the defunding and collapse of the national Inter Faith Network. I wonder if the Minister agrees that the Inter Faith Network provided a vital role in co-ordinating interfaith work at a national level. We do great things at local level, but we need some national work as well. Will he urge His Majesty’s Government to commit to refunding the Inter Faith Network?

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Bishop of Manchester asks about warm welcome campaign

The Bishop of Manchester asked about the role of places of worship in taking part in the warm welcome campaign on 21st January 2025, following a government statement on health and social care in winter:

The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, the nurse who was attacked and injured at work recently and who has been kindly mentioned several times already today is a member of one of our Oldham congregations. I assure your Lordships’ House that she and her family remain very much in our prayers in Manchester.

Research by the National Churches Trust published last year shows that the ministry of the UK’s church buildings saves the NHS £8.4 billion every year. Church projects help keep many people out of hospital; they support others when discharged. Other faith communities do similar work and many of them do it in partnership with us.

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Bishop of Lichfield speaks on impact of community tensions and the importance of interfaith work

On 6th December 2024, the Bishop of Lichfield spoke in the Archbishop of York’s debate on social cohesion, highlighting the impact of community tensions, exacerbated by global events, on faith communities and particularly Jewish and Muslim communities in the UK:

The Lord Bishop of Lichfield: My Lords, I am sure that on these Benches and more widely, all of us as Bishops will register and take to heart the searching and challenging words of the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, and I thank her for them. We recognise the urgency and centrality of independent scrutiny in the life of our Church.

The UK is home to communities that are richly diverse and in which people of different cultures, beliefs and faiths live alongside one another. Social cohesion acts as the bridge between those differences. It enables us to live well together, providing resilience to communities when faced with adversity and enabling us to coexist peacefully, but as demonstrated by the riots this summer, this kind of social cohesion can no longer be taken for granted. The consequences of growing divisions should not be underestimated, and we must not ignore the increasing threat of erosion that the social cohesion binding us together faces.

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Bishop of Bristol highlights importance of community and interfaith relations in promoting social cohesion

The Bishop of Bristol spoke in the Archbishop of York’s debate on social cohesion on 6th December 2024, raising local examples from the city of Bristol and the importance of community and interfaith outreach:

The Lord Bishop of Bristol: My Lords, I too am grateful to the most reverend Primate for securing this debate and setting its tone. I am also very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sharma, for his impressive speech, and look forward to many more contributions from him in this Chamber. I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, and realise that there is more that unites us than divides us. Indeed, there are overlaps with many of the contributions from the Benches opposite in what I am about to say, because I want to speak of a particular place and of particular people.

I begin with Liverpool, as the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, mentioned. It was David Sheppard who, as Bishop of Liverpool, ordained me deaconess in Liverpool Cathedral and helped me to understand the stresses that port cities experience as global trade and human migration patterns shift. Port cities absorb, endure or thrive on the consequent change. Bishop David and his Archbishop and Free Church colleagues were well aware that social unrest was a symptom of the impact of felt injustice and a stimulus to work to create justice and peace. “Better together” was their theme and their motto in a city divided on economic, racial and religious grounds.

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Bishop of London raises impact of COVID-19 pandemic and health inequalities on during debate on social cohesion

The Bishop of London spoke in the Archbishop of York’s debate on social cohesion on 6th December 2024, speaking on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of widespread health inequalities in the UK:

The Lord Bishop of London: My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register, particularly as a commissioner on the National Preparedness Commission. I am glad to be taking part in this debate today. It is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, and I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sharma, who has much to offer this House. I have the privilege of being Bishop of London, and I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, that London is full of great diversity of political views. I extend an invitation to him to come and see where we wrestle with some of our Christian faith and politics.

The riots over the summer were a wake-up call to us all to prioritise community cohesion. There is much to be said about this, and I echo much of what my friend the most reverend Primate has already said. I am going to focus my remarks on two issues which are central to this topic but are particularly related to health, although they have a much wider application, and those two topics are trust and partnership.

First, on trust, as the most reverend Primate indicated, we have much to do to improve trust within the Church of England. Not least, we must ensure we have a greater survivor focus and introduce independent safeguarding and mandatory reporting. I join my friend the most reverend Primate in apologising for the shocking failures that the Makin report highlighted.

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Archbishop of York leads debate on social cohesion

The Archbishop of York led a debate on Social Cohesion and Community during Periods of Change on 6th December 2024:

The Lord Archbishop of York: That this House takes note of the importance of social cohesion and strong, supportive community life during periods of change and global uncertainty.

My Lords, on Monday 29 July this year, just before 11.50 am, police officers were called to a property in Southport, where children attending a dance school had been appallingly and ferociously attacked by a man with a knife. Three of the children—Elsie Dot Stancombe, Alice Dasilva Aguiar and Bebe King —died. Many others sustained terrible injuries, and a whole community and many families were devastated and traumatised.

Understandably, horror and anguish convulsed not just Southport but the whole country. Rumours quickly circulated on the internet that the man to blame for this attack was an asylum seeker who had arrived in the UK illegally and was on the MI6 watch-list. This was not true. As a reporter put it a few days later, once lit, the torch paper of disinformation burned quickly. Although this rumour was quickly debunked, in the days that followed, as we know, riots broke out all over our country.

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Bishop of Manchester asks about support for civil society organisations

The Bishop of Manchester asked a question on ongoing support for voluntary civil society organisations providing stress support for communities on 3rd December 2024, following a government statement on anti-social behaviour:

The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, I declare my interest as the co-chair of the national ethics committee of the National Police Chiefs’ Council. However, it is more in my role as Bishop of Manchester that I am speaking now. I get to go out from time to time at night with Street Angels or Street Pastors groups, as they are sometimes called. Many of these originated in the churches, but they are not exclusively church-based organisations. They provide gentle support on the streets, often late at night in city and town centres, helping to keep the peace. They help to deal with people who have become distressed—perhaps somebody who has had too much to drink and is either not safe themselves or cannot keep those around them safe.

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