THE TABLET

THE INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY FOUNDED IN 1840

CONSERVATIVES AND IMMIGRATION

A PARTY THAT HAS LOST ITS SOUL

F rom the furious row about boat people on the one hand to the sharp rise in net migration – the number entering the UK minus those leaving – on the other, government policy on immigration is a mess. There is no coherent philosophy, and no agreement as to its ultimate aims. Contradictory assertions are made on all sides of the Conservative Party and would-be leaders start to jockey for position as if the next general election, due in 12 to 18 months, is already lost. This is not an environment where a sensible debate about moral principles can take place. Yet such a debate has never been more necessary.

The Social Market Foundation reported last December that, in the year ending June 2022, long-term immigration into the UK was estimated at around 1.1 million – though the exact figure depends on how you measure it. Similar figures are being predicted for the current year. Given that the Brexit slogan “Take Back Control” was largely interpreted as an intention to curb net immigration to the level of “tens of thousands”, a promise first made when David Cameron was Prime Minister, this is widely seen in pro-Brexit Tory circles as catastrophic. But that is not the whole picture. High levels of immigration are regarded by other Tories as acceptable and desirable in order to grow the UK’s gross domestic product. These two positions are irreconcilable.

The Illegal Migration Bill now before Parliament is ostensibly designed to make crossing the English Channel in small boats so unattractive that refugees are deterred from trying it. This is highly questionable. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, objected to the bill in the House of Lords, calling it “morally unacceptable and politically impractical”. The numbers concerned, though substantial, are insignificant compared with existing levels of legal migration.

In any event, it is widely suspected that what is really happening is buck-passing. The government knows the bill may not clear Parliament in its present form or, if it does, it will be stopped in the courts; or if it ever reaches the point where it is in operation, the rate of small-boat arrivals will still remain high. A few planeloads of refugees reluctantly flown to Rwanda will have had no deterrent effect. So the government, still entangled in its own Brexit slogan, can claim it did its best but was thwarted. That will not win the moral argument. In order for refugees to be deported to Rwanda or anywhere else, they have first to be deprived of their rights – their right to have their claim to asylum considered, their right to appeal and their right not to be deprived of their liberty without due process and a fair trial.

The position represented by Archbishop Welby and others is similar to that set out in the United States Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It goes on to declare that the duty of the State is to secure those rights. Key words here are “endowed by their Creator” and “unalienable”. The 55 signatories of the declaration were, at the time, British subjects, and 52 were Christians. It is as such that “these truths” were to them “self-evident”.

But not, it seems, to the present Conservative government. Has it stopped believing in the existence of an objective moral order? Is its only moral compass self-interest, the desire to hold on to power for its own sake? The Conservative Party is frequently said by its own supporters to be in an existential crisis, searching for its soul. How, then, has that been so seriously mislaid?

HEXHAM INVESTIGATION

CHURCH MUST RECOGNISE PEOPLE’S RIGHT TO KNOW

Serious questions are still outstanding in the matter of Hexham & Newcastle diocese, only some of which may be cleared up by further investigations. Archbishop Malcolm McMahon, Archbishop of Liverpool and Metropolitan of the province that includes Hexham and Newcastle, was asked by the Vatican to look into the events leading to the resignation of Bishop Robert Byrne, who stood down because he had recognised his own unsuitability for the role. This was after the dean of St Mary’s Cathedral, Canon Michael McCoy, whom Bishop Byrne had appointed, took his own life when he learned that police were investigating him over historic child abuse allegations. This is a sad, tragic and scandalous affair.

The archbishop has sent his report to Rome and published a summary last week, explaining that he was “not at liberty to put the full details of the investigation into the public domain”. A vital issue not touched on by Archbishop McMahon concerns how Bishop Byrne came to be appointed. What due diligence was done and why did it fail? Why was a man so unsuitable given such an important job? That opens the

bigger question of what rights Catholics have to be consulted over the appointment of their bishops, to which the answer appears at present to be virtually none. They are simply presented with a fait accompli.

Archbishop McMahon says he will not discuss other matters “which are internal to the Diocese of Hexham & Newcastle and are not directly of public interest”. The last thing he wants or the Church needs is to be accused of a cover-up, which that phrase could imply. Publishing a summary of his report was welcome recognition of the public’s legitimate “right to know”. Will the still unfinished safeguarding inquiry into Hexham & Newcastle complete the picture? The archbishop has said he will publish the results of a consultation he conducted in the diocese and look into Bishop Byrne’s policy of making Catholic schools academies. That is of direct public interest.

The Catholic Church is still a heavily top-down organisation, with accountability upwards, so that bishops are answerable to Rome, and not downwards, to the People of God. If the spirit of synodality is to be meaningful, that must change – in the interests of the people and of the bishops.