HAVE had my differences with the Bishop of Leicester, Martyn Snow, but he deserves credit for raising concerns about the threat to freedom of religion from the Labour Government’s draconian Conversion Practices Bill.

Following the publication of the draft Bill on June 25 to outlaw LGBT conversion therapy, Snow said in the House of Lords last week: ‘I have a number of concerns about the drafting of this Bill and indeed particular concerns about the lack of clarity on the difference between harmful conversion practices and perfectly acceptable practices of pastoral care and indeed prayer.

‘If this difference is not crystal-clear within the legislation, it will potentially have a very significant negative impact on what I believe is legitimate spiritual care offered by faith groups.’

He is an unlikely episcopal dissenter. Speaking to the press before the July meeting of the Church of England’s parliament, the General Synod, in York, he sounded just like any other left-wing politician. I raised the recent attempt by the Bishop of Oxford, Steven Croft, to get Tommy Robinson cancelled from a debate at the Oxford Union on June 17 when he proposed the motion that ‘The West is right to be suspicious of Islam’. I pointed out that Robinson had been invited not to give a monologue but to take part in a debate where he was open to challenge. Bishops who will not defend free speech are no different from other left-wing politicians.

In a joint letter to the Oxford Union in May, Croft and Imam Monawar Hussain, co-chairs of the Oxfordshire and Thames Valley Faith and Civic Leaders Forums, said the invitation to Robinson was ‘untimely and divisive’ and that Oxford was ‘a city in which there is no room for hatred’.

They wrote: ‘Those who have issued this invitation need to be mindful not only of the University of Oxford but of the city in which they live and study as students – a city which has a long tradition of hospitality to migrants and the poorest sections of society.

‘We make a strong appeal in these weeks and months of global tension that this invitation should be reconsidered and withdrawn for the sake of this city and its peace.’

As chair of the Bishops’ Working Group on Promoting Unity in our Nation, Snow is due to lead a discussion about this subject at Synod. So, I asked him how the move by a left-wing bishop to suppress open debate promoted national unity. Snow said he could not comment on the individual case.

Why not? A bishop is allowed to express disagreement with another bishop. Snow could have expressed his disapproval of Tommy Robinson but defended his right to engage in lawful debate.

But instead Snow wheeled out the ‘we believe in free speech but’ routine before launching into a disquisition about the limits to free speech. He cited ‘incitement to violence’, which is rightly unlawful, and ‘incitement to hatred’, which is a more subjective concept. He then declared that the House of Lords was looking into these issues.

So I was surprised that Snow stuck his head above the parapet over the Conversion Practices Bill.

His intervention showed some courage because soon after the Bill was published the Bishop of Manchester, David Walker, a prominent supporter of the LGBT agenda in Parliament, fired a warning shot across the bows of any fellow bishop feeling lukewarm about the draft Bill.

Walker told the Church Times that conversion practices ‘have harmed LGBT+ people over many years, leaving many with lifelong trauma. This work is long overdue and comes after the General Synod of the Church of England voted, by a very large majority, in favour of the Government bringing forward a ban in 2017. I am pleased that this will bring an opportunity for consultation and scrutiny, so that substantial progress can at last be made’.

Walker was being political in his reminder about the overwhelming General Synod vote for a legal ban on conversion therapy. Any bishop in the Lords who opposes the ban therefore risks being isolated among his episcopal peers as a loose cannon on the Bishops’ Bench.

According to strict political logic, the 26 Lords Spiritual who are in the Upper House because of their offices and not by the Prime Minister’s appointment should have been thrown out with the hereditary peers. But in recent years the bishops have been so reliably left-wing that Labour let them keep their places.

It is a credit to Martyn Snow that he has broken ranks. It remains to be seen whether he will sustain his opposition and vote against this anti-family and anti-Christian Bill. One suspects he would be one of the very few Lords Spiritual to do so in the largely left-wing cohort of C of E bishops.

Footnote: The Oxford Union debate went ahead as planned, though many would-be attendees were unable to get into the building because of the number of protesters outside.

Read it all in The Conservative Woman