SNP MP in bid to have bishops removed from the House of Lords
dailyrecord.co.ukAn SNP MP has said that bishops should have their “privileged” reserved position in the House of Lords removed. Edinburgh East MP Tommy Sheppard will lead a debate calling for Anglican bishops to no longer be granted guaranteed seats in the upper house of Parliament.
There are currently 26 seats in the House of Lords reserved for Church of England bishops. Sheppard believes it is unfair that the Church of England has a guaranteed role in Parliament, and will lead a Westminster Hall debate on Thursday about Bishops’ place in the House of Lords.He said: “I don’t think people should be represented in the Lords on the basis of their religious beliefs at all.
We should have a secular legislature where people are either elected, or if they are appointed, they are appointed because of their expertise in general.“That is not to say that people of faith can’t be in the legislature, either in the House of Commons or the House of Lords.
Of course they could and they should.“But it is to say they get no special fast track to that seat, there is no reserved place for them in the House of Lords, as there are at the moment for 26 Bishops.”The 2021 census was the first time less than half the population of England and Wales described themselves as Christian, with a growing number claiming they had no religion at all.Edinburgh East MP Sheppard, who has been a “firm atheist” since he was a teenager, said Parliament needed to be aware of this change in public sentiment.
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