Jess Phillips

First, I thank everybody who has spoken in the debate. I give special mention to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) for the passionate and detailed manner in which he took the House through the issues. The stories of victims that we have heard today are harrowing, not just in the facts of their abuse, but in the ignorance and the shutdown described by my hon. Friend and by Mr X’s constituency MP, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett), which I suppose is the issue that compounds it. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Jonathan Davies) talked about this being an issue faced in many institutions. The Church of England or any other religious institution is not alone in having faced safeguarding issues and problems over the years, but it is how we react to that safeguarding challenge and what we put in place that matters. It is not for the Government to tell the Church of England how to have its processes—the Synod is there to do that. When my hon. Friend was listing institutions that had faced safeguarding issues, one that was not listed was this institution. I recall—many of the people here today were here then—that one of the things we did here, which people like me fought for, was to put in an independent process to oversee issues of sexual abuse and violence within this institution. Safeguarding is rightly the responsibility of all, and I am grateful for the important contributions made today. I welcome the opportunity to talk about the Government’s approach to safeguarding. Let me be clear that I cannot tell the Synod what it has to do, but I condemn the acts of psychological, emotional and physical and sexual abuse against both adults and children, including where those occur in religious settings or contexts. As with every case of abuse, my thoughts are first and foremost with the victims and survivors.