In my last piece I spoke about conflicts of interest (COIs) occurring in the situation of Core Groups. Somebody very helpfully pinned up on Thinking Anglicans a government definition of what a conflict of interest involves in the world of business. It is worth quoting in full.
A conflict of interest occurs when a board member has multiple interests which may influence the way in which they act or vote on a board. The specific risk inherent in conflicts of interest is that the professional judgement or actions of a board member in relation to the company they represent are influenced by a secondary interest, such as a personal financial interest, the financial interests of family and friends, or the desire for personal advancement. As with all risks, there are ways of mitigating the risk.
In the messy world of church politics, where the motives for actions on a committee may be more to do with advancing a personal or ‘party’ interest than with money, we need to think about these ‘secondary interests’ and what they might consist of. What are the things in church life that people value highly which might make them act or vote in such a way to further secondary interests?
Almost every example I can think of which involves a hidden motive for such behaviour involves a manifestation of power of some kind. Let us look at a number of potential examples. They vary in levels of seriousness.
- An advocate of a theological position is rejected because one or more members of the committee want to see a favoured party position strengthened. Affirming the power of being in the winning ‘party’ or tribe.
- A member of a committee votes for the candidate who attended the same college as they did. An example of favouritism and indirectly promoting your own brand of training.
- A committee member will allow personal and historic animosities to affect their assessment of an individual for a post. Exercising power over a disliked individual
- The bias caused by a preference for PLU (people like us). Closet racism or misogyny
- One party in the group has professional links or obligations to another party not in the room. As an example, a member of a law firm or reputation management company may continue to want to curry favour with an existing client like the Church of England, regardless of the topic under discussion.
- Fear that something shameful from the past may be revealed if particular course of action is taken.
- Decisions taken help to supress secrets that are kept for reputational or financial reasons.
If you gather a committee or group of church people together for any decision-making process, there will almost invariably be somewhere a link or personal connections that join them together. You need in this situation to import outsiders to question the process from a truly independent standpoint. I very seldom meet a Church of England clergyperson who does not know at least one person that I have known or worked with. Total independence in terms of knowing nothing about an individual prior to a meeting to make a judgement about them is probably impossible. Some conflicts of interest or secondary interests need not be a problem if they are out in the open and not hidden away. How do we avoid this issue becoming a real problem especially when we are dealing with decisions which potentially affect a person’s life, health and well-being?
The first thing that needs to happen is that the Chair of an interview committee, Core Group or a similar body possesses a clear understanding of all the issues around COIs. There is a professional judgement to be made about the point at which a past link or personal contact becomes a COI which would require an individual to withdraw from membership. In practice, in a properly run process, this should seldom be necessary. What does not inspire confidence is when, as with the Percy case, there appeared to be no awareness of several obvious conflicts right at the beginning of the process. Any naivety over such COIs does not encourage confidence that any part of the process is going to be sound or even legal. Recusal or removal, when required, should normally happen long before the main process gets under way. The grey areas of slight acquaintance or interest should be declared at the beginning so that all the other members are aware of them. One would like to think that the Church, of all places, was cultivating a culture of openness. It is a serious matter when undisclosed or hitherto ignored information subsequently becomes available. Having to remove members from a group suggests, at the very least, some incompetence on the part of the conveners. Deciding when such conflicts amount to sufficient procedural irregularity as to invalidate decisions requires honesty, courage and integrity. If in doubt, start again. This would seem the safest approach to most people.
I believe it was the Bishop of London who recently referred to the definition of culture as ‘the way we do things round here’. The current culture of the Church of England apparently does not seem to appreciate the importance of insisting on uncovering COIs in its efforts to promote fairness and justice. Whenever COIs exist within an institution unacknowledged, then the institution can quickly become corrupt and untrustworthy. The recent removal of two complainant dons from the Dean Percy Core Group may sound like a minor adjustment in the enactment of the Church’s disciplinary process. In fact, it is telling us far more than this. It is declaring that every single individual involved in initiating the Core Group process – the NST and the officials in Church House – were apparently blind to a simple requirement that fairness in such a group was essential to their proper (and legal) functioning. The inability to recognise one COI allows me to suggest that the conveners were also blind to a second more fateful COI. Here we are following the insights of Martin Sewell who has laid out the case for seeing the Core Group attack on Dean Percy as a struggle by a Church establishment faction to destroy a challenger to their power. Dean Percy, in short, represents a threat to vested interests at the heart of the Church of England. I leave my readers to consult the article for themselves. https://archbishopcranmer.com/martyn-percy-cultural-mindset-establishment-privilege/ While I cannot summarise the complex issues to which Martin draws attention, I can say that any just struggle against unaccountable factions of power has my attention. When the forces of oppression and power are exercised by Church leaders in the name of church discipline, that becomes a matter of the gravest concern.
Conflicts of Interest are an inevitable part of any functioning institution. To repeat the point, it is not their existence that is the problem. It is their deliberate suppression in the hope that people will not notice, so that decisions of integrity are prevented. The Martyn Percy case has become a test case for the Church. Will it continue down the path of dishonest dealing by using the power of undeclared interests, lawyers and money to enforce its will? Safeguarding protocols and confusions over their proper enforcement may be the issue being looked at currently. If there are serious doubts and questions about the ability of the Church to get things right in this area, what about other areas of its life that we know nothing of? The Church powers that be have not earned our trust for fair dealing in this area. Without earning the trust of their members on this matter, how can they expect to be given the benefit of the doubt in other areas of the Church’s life?
There were, and are, specific requirements in the House of Bishops’ Guidelines 2017 about conflicts of interest. It’s sufficient to say that those requirements were not observed, and that in at least one case the conflict was obvious, if not blatant.
Lord Carlile has now commented – from the sidelines – about this, as reported in today’s Church Times.
Have people noticed the allegations of bullying and harassment coming out of Sheffield Cathedral?
As someone with first hand experience of clergy/musician disputes – as both cleric and musician – I urge caution before opining.
“Conflicts of Interest are an inevitable part of any functioning institution. To repeat the point, it is not their existence that is the problem. It is their deliberate suppression in the hope that people will not notice, so that decisions of integrity are prevented.”
That is expressed quite beautifully, Stephen. However, I have come across a slightly different view in an article in by Daylian Cain, George Loewenstein and Don Moore, ‘The Dirt on Coming Clean: Perverse Effects of Disclosing Conflicts of Interest’ in The Journal of Legal Studies, v. 34, no. 1 (January 2005), pp. 1-25, at 22. They conclude, in the course of an analysis of the finance sector:
“…disclosure cannot be assumed to protect recipients of advice from the dangers posed by conflicts of interest. Disclosure can fail because it (1) gives advisors strategic reason and moral license to further exaggerate their advice and (2) it may not lead to sufficient discounting to counteract this effect. The evidence presented here casts doubt on the effectiveness of disclosure as a solution to the problems created by conflicts of interest. When possible, the more lasting solution to these problems is to eliminate the conflicts of interest. As [James] Surowiecki commented in an article in the New Yorker that dealt specifically with conflicts of interest in finance, “[T]ransparency is well and good, but accuracy and objectivity are even better. Wall Street doesn’t have to keep confessing its sins. It just has to stop committing them.” [‘The Talking Cure’ New Yorker, 9 December 2002 at 38].”
In other words, the conflicts of interest within the Church are so pervasive and profound that, even if disclosure might eliminate some of the more egregious injustices, actual disclosure might give the authorities ‘cover’ to get their way so that the final outcome is almost as unjust as if the disclosure had never been made. This is because of the presumption frequently made by Church leaders that their actions are always inherently moral (no matter how deplorable they might actually be) and that, though they may trim their morals in pursuit of certain ends, those ends are so intrinsically virtuous that dubious means can be applied for the purpose of their attainment.
Therefore, as the authors of the article note, it is better simply to eliminate the conflicts of interest. Ergo, it is better to take safeguarding and the process of investigating wrongdoing away from the hands of the Church and to vest it in a completely independent body which can never be susceptible to ecclesiastical control or to ‘regulatory capture’ by Church officials.
When I was looking for my second curacy in 1988, I approached the church society who had curacies to let, as it were. There was a form to fill in which asked me to select which of nine shades of evangelicalism reflected my views. I was fazed. I had never heard of any shades of evangelicalism before. I selected one at random and mailed back the form, expecting to hear nothing more, and so it turned out. One in nine is not a gambler’s wish.
Contrast the young Winston Churchill, whose book My Early Life tells the story of an impending Geography exam he had to take. There were to be detailed questions on one out of thirty-six countries. He put the 36 names into a hat the evening before the test, drew out New Zealand, and spent the time he had mugging it up. Hey presto, New Zealand came up next day in the paper. Some people have all the luck!
David As someone interested in the question of Anglican Identity, and concerned by +Ebor’s comment that we are tribal and divided, can you remember what these 9 “shades” were.? As its rather off topic here, my e mail is holmado@aol.com Perry Butler
I think it is relevant to discussion here, since advocates or proponents of the various ‘shades’ of evangelicalism will have had an interest in decisions made. Otherwise why would Church Society ask the question?
I once had a job interview where it became clear that two of the panel had no intention of appointing someone who had trained at my college (Wycliffe). It seems an odd attitude to me, as people at any college vary and Wycliffe was more diverse than most; also, some of us change our views considerably after leaving. They appointed a much less qualified man instead. Of course, gender may also have been a factor.
Sorry, Perry, I barely glanced at them, as I thought the notion was ridiculous. So I can’t help.
Chris Smart who the Church Times says is the ‘independent’ investigator for Dean Percy’s case is the ‘independent’ chair for Southwark diocese Safeguarding Reference Group so has connections with the NST and I do not feel can be termed ‘independent,’ as in knowing nothing of either party. If the learning review into Jonathan Fletcher shows serious failures on the part of Southwark diocese then his competence to chair any investigation is surely called into question.
Huge sympathy for Dean Percy having been assigned this particular investigator – questions keep needing to be asked.
The learning review will only be of value if it really is completely independent of all those connected to the Fletcher case and not just the Southwark diocese. I have been hopeful the Thirtyoneeight review would be just that but now have my doubts, as their chief executive will be speaking at a ReNew conference in September.
http://anglican.ink/2020/07/21/renew-conference-credibility-on-safeguarding-questioned/
Even if Thirtyoneeight remains completely independent, sharing a platform with those connected to Fletcher is a serious error of judgement.
Completely agree Maurice I think it will be difficult for Fletcher survivors to have confidence in the process if Justin Humphreys takes the decision to speak at ReNew and it is surely not rocket science for him to understand that, particularly given the fact that he has co-authored a book with one of the reviewers, Lisa Oakley, entitled Escaping the Maze of Spiritual Abuse!
Just to add that I am not a Fletcher survivor but am a survivor from this diocese and for various reasons wish to see a transparent, independent review as much as anyone.
All the best
Stephen, You comment: “It is a serious matter when undisclosed or hitherto ignored information subsequently becomes available. Having to remove members from a group suggests, at the very least, some incompetence on the part of the conveners. Deciding when such conflicts amount to sufficient procedural irregularity as to invalidate decisions requires honesty, courage and integrity. If in doubt, start again. This would seem the safest approach to most people.”
It is worth noting that ‘start again’ with a completely new panel was the decision of the House of Lords in 1998 on a petition by Senator Pinochet to set aside its earlier decision by a 3:2 majority ([1998] 3 WLR 1456) holding that Pinochet had no immunity from extradition in respect of criminal proceedings brought against him in Chile for crimes against humanity (torture, hostage taking and murder): R v Bow Street Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate, ex parte Pinochet Ugarte (No. 2) [1999] 2 WLR 272. The ground of the setting-aside application was the undisclosed links between Lord Hoffmann (one of the majority, albeit only expressing his agreement with Lord Nicholls and Lord Steyn) and Amnesty International (which had been given leave to intervene in the original hearing ) on the basis that such links gave “the appearance that he might have been biased against [Pinochet].” Lord Hope concluded his judgment with these words: “[Lord Hoffmann’s] relationship with Amnesty International was such that he was, in effect, acting as a judge in his own cause. I consider that his failure to disclose these connections leads inevitably to the conclusion that the decision to which he was a party must be set aside.” ([1999] 2 WLR at page 291C.)
None of the five law lords who heard the impugned decision sat on the re-hearing, which was before a new panel of seven law lords: R v Bow Street Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate, ex parte Pinochet Ugarte (No. 3)[1999] 2 WLR 827.
By parity of reasoning, the decision of the flawed Percy core group on 13 March 2020 (at which no conflicts of interest appear to have been disclosed) to instruct an investigator and to set his terms of reference should be set aside.
“By parity of reasoning, the decision of the flawed Percy core group on 13 March 2020 (at which no conflicts of interest appear to have been disclosed) to instruct an investigator and to set his terms of reference should be set aside.”
Is this likely to happen, or how is it to be achieved? The Church seems to have missed the point entirely, and has said that it will not comment publicly until the investigation has concluded.
Thank you David L for your learned response to my piece. I take the line in these matters that law and common sense should overlap but I am always a bit nervous in case that is not true. I hope that the powers that be recognise that most of the public who witness the present train-crash that is the Ch Ch Core Group will belong to to the non-professional lawyer common sense group like me. We expect to see common sense, fairness and justice prevail and that it needs to be spelt out clearly in ways that we can understand. The Church of England depends for it long-term well-being on the good-will of the public in and out of the Church. There is only so much good will capital available and the central Church authorities are using it up very fast!