Commons paves way for priest MPs

The Bill has now cleared the Commons

MPs have voted in favour of a Bill that will allow priests to sit in the House of Commons.

The Removal of Clergy Disqualification Bill aims to reverse a 200-year-old law that prevents some serving and former ministers of religion from becoming MPs.

This Bill is being brought forward - to enable a particular Labour candidate to take his seat in this House should he be successful

Ann Widdecombe

The Bill was passed by 196 votes to 15 and will now go to the House of Lords for a final hearing.

The vote will be a relief to one Labour Party candidate in the next election.

David Cairns has been selected to stand in Greenock and Inverclyde but because he was a priest he would have been prevented from entering the Commons even if he won the seat.

Despite overwhelming support for the Bill, there was some criticism of it during Thursday's debate.

'God and Caesar'

Shadow home secretary Ann Widdecombe said it was wrong for serving ministers of religion to become MPs as this would cause a conflict of interest between "God and Caesar".

She said: "We all know why this Bill is being brought forward - to enable a particular Labour candidate to take his seat in this House should he be successful. It is not about grand issues of principle."

The Bill repeals the Commons (Clergy Disqualification) Act of 1801 which debars some ministers of religion from being MPs, but continues the disqualification of any bishops sitting in the Lords.

Labour backbencher Andrew Mackinlay disputed Miss Widdecombe's claims.

"We are told it is perfectly proper and desirable that people can fulfil the office of members of the House of Commons and diligently pursue other offices - unless you are a priest of the Roman Catholic [Church] or practising priest of the Church of England.

"It is illogical to suggest that there is somehow an incompatibility."

Candlestick makers

He added: "The right to be a representative of this place should come from the people, and the people alone.

"If the people wish to put up the candlestick maker, the clock maker, the good, the bad and the ugly, the malevolent, the eccentric ... the National Front, a minister of one religion, a pastor of another, that is their right."

Former Conservative minister Eric Forth said he was broadly in favour of the Bill.

Speaking, he said, as someone who was genuinely impartial, having no involvement with any church or religion, he agreed that it had to be a matter for the voters to choose who became an MP.

It was time to sweep away archaic discrimination, he said, but expressed concern that the wording of the Bill might only apply to Christian faiths.

"Our society is now made up of many different faiths," he said.

Former minister John Gummer added that the issue was problematic because MPs would be making a statement in English law about what he described as an ecclesiastical matter.

Mr O'Brien said the Bill would help a Labour candidate

Being a priest was the "highest demand" and to do something other than that like becoming an MP was "odd".

Andrew Stunell, for the Liberal Democrats, said the folly of the current restrictions on clergy entering politics was that it was "keeping good people out of the House".

"It ought to be an offence to us that in this day and age we do have religious discrimination built into our legislation," he said.

Junior Home Office Minister Mike O'Brien, winding up for the government, conceded it was the case of Labour candidate David Cairns that had inspired the Bill.

He said it was "patently obvious" that an injustice would be done if Mr Cairns won the Greenock and Inverclyde seat but was barred from taking it.