Full Speech: Address by the Nazir Afzal, Chair of the National Safeguarding Panel
(As delivered at the Safeguarding Officers Network Day)
Good morning. Before I say anything else, I want to do something that conferences rarely do at the outset. I want to pause, and I want us to remember why we are all here. Not for the agenda. Not for the workshops. Not even, with respect, for each other.
We are here because somewhere, right now, there is a child who does not feel safe. There is an adult who has been harmed by someone they trusted — perhaps someone who wore the same collar, the same vestments, the same institutional authority that this Church carries. And we are here because we have made a promise — to them and to one another — that we will not look away.
That is why you do this work. And I want you to know, from the very first moment of this address, that I see you. I see the weight you carry. I see what it costs you. And I am profoundly grateful.
The Case for Independent Scrutiny
Let me begin with a question that may feel uncomfortable, but which I believe is essential.
Why does the National Safeguarding Panel exist?
The Church of England is one of the largest institutions in this country. It touches millions of lives — in schools, hospitals, food banks, prisons, at births and deaths and every significant moment in between. It holds extraordinary trust. And trust, when it is violated — especially when it is violated by people of faith, in sacred spaces, against the most vulnerable — causes a damage that is not merely personal. It fractures something in the very fabric of how people understand goodness in the world.
We know this. We have learned it — at terrible cost — through inquiry after inquiry, report after report. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. The Alexis Jay Report. The Goddard Inquiry before it. The Makin Review, published last year, which looked specifically at this Church, and which was — I will be direct — deeply uncomfortable reading.
"The Church cannot mark its own homework."
This is not an attack. It is a statement of how institutions work — how all institutions work. When an organisation investigates itself, it does so with the best of intentions and the worst of blind spots. Power protects power. Reputation protects reputation. And the people who are harmed — quietly, persistently, systematically — are the ones who get left out of the picture.
Independent scrutiny is not an indulgence. It is not a bureaucratic imposition. It is a structural necessity. It is the mechanism by which an institution says: we are fallible, we have failed before, and we are serious enough about never failing again that we will invite people with no stake in our reputation to hold a light up to our practice.
The Panel exists to ask the questions that are too difficult to ask from the inside. To evaluate national policy not as insiders bound by institutional loyalty, but as independent voices bound only by the wellbeing of survivors and the safety of the vulnerable. To commend what is working — and there is much that is working — and to name, without flinching, what is not.
That independence is precious. And it must never be allowed to become merely symbolic.
Holding the Line: What Scrutiny Looks Like in Practice
What does effective independent scrutiny actually mean for you — the people in this room?
It means that when national policy is developed, there is a credible external voice asking whether survivors were genuinely consulted, or whether their voices were used to give legitimacy to decisions already made. It means asking whether consistency across dioceses is being achieved or merely aspired to. It means reviewing whether the standards that are published are the standards that are lived — not just in Lambeth and Church House, but in Exeter and Carlisle, in Bradford and Bath.
And it means something else, which I think is perhaps the most important and the most distressing thing I will say today.
Independent scrutiny must be willing to be unpopular.
It is easy to produce a report that says things are broadly going in the right direction, that progress is being made, that there are green shoots. Those reports make everyone feel better. They are often substantially true. But if they are used to close down accountability rather than deepen it, they become instruments of harm.
The Panel's credibility — and your credibility as Diocesan Safeguarding Officers — depends entirely on your willingness to say the uncomfortable thing. To flag the structural weakness. To name the diocese that is not meeting the standard. To escalate the case that is not being handled appropriately. To challenge the decision-maker who believes their seniority exempts them from scrutiny.
That is what independence looks like when it is real, rather than ceremonial.
The Continuing Challenges
I want to turn now to the landscape we face — because it is not getting simpler, and you deserve honesty about that.
The first and most enduring challenge is culture. Policy can be changed in an afternoon. Culture changes in a generation, if you're lucky and you work very hard. We still operate in a Church where, in some settings, the instinct when allegations emerge is to protect the institution first and the survivor second. Where seniority is sometimes confused with trustworthiness. Where pastoral care for an accused person — which is right and appropriate — can shade, imperceptibly, into a form of advocacy that leaves complainants feeling abandoned.
We have to keep naming that. We have to keep training against it. And we must accept that every new generation of clergy and volunteers needs to learn these lessons afresh, because the culture will not maintain itself. T
he second challenge is consistency. You know this better than anyone. There are 42 dioceses, and the quality of safeguarding practice across those 42 dioceses remains I say this carefully but plainly — uneven. Some dioceses are doing exceptional work. They have strong, experienced safeguarding officers who are genuinely empowered. They have leadership that takes this seriously not as a reputational issue but as a moral imperative. And there are dioceses where that is not yet the case.
The national framework exists precisely to drive up that floor. But frameworks only work if there is the will to enforce them — and the structures to monitor whether they are being implemented.
The third challenge is resourcing. I am aware that many of you carry caseloads that are too large. That you are doing the work of two people, or three. That you receive referrals late, with insufficient information, with inadequate management support. That you are sometimes the only person in a room willing to say the difficult thing, and the personal cost of that is real and cumulative.
This is not sustainable. A Church that is serious about safeguarding must be serious about resourcing the people who do safeguarding work. And the Panel will continue to make that argument wherever it has the opportunity to do so.
New and Emerging Challenges
But I also want to look forward — because there are challenges emerging that will demand new thinking, new skills, and new forms of collaboration.
Online harm is perhaps the most urgent. The abuse facilitated through digital networks, through social media, through gaming platforms and private messaging — it does not stop at the church door. It finds its way into our congregations, our youth groups, our schools. It reaches children through devices that are in their pockets during every service, every confirmation class, every pastoral encounter. We need safeguarding frameworks that understand the online world not as a separate domain but as a continuous part of the world our children inhabit.
We also need to grapple with spiritual abuse as a distinct and serious category of harm. The misuse of religious authority — of scripture, of confession, of the profound intimacy that pastoral relationships create — leaves wounds that are often invisible to conventional safeguarding frameworks but can be devastating and lasting. The power differential in spiritual relationships is uniquely potent. Our training, our frameworks, and our assessment tools must be sophisticated enough to recognise and respond to it.
And we must continue to strengthen our response to adult safeguarding — because this remains the area where our frameworks are least developed, where the intersection of mental health, coercion, domestic abuse and religious community creates some of the most complex and emotionally demanding cases any of you will ever manage.
These are not distant threats. They are present realities, sitting in your inboxes and your case files right now.
What the Survivors Ask of Us
I have had the privilege of spending time with survivors. Not as statistics. Not as case studies. As human beings who lived through things that should never have happened, in places that should have been safe, with people who should have protected them.
They are extraordinarily varied — in their faith, in their anger, in their hope, in what they need from institutions and what they have given up hoping the institutions will ever provide.
But when I ask what they most want from us — not from the inquiry process, not from formal mechanisms, but from the people doing this work day to day — the answers converge on a few things.
They want to be believed, quickly and without qualification.
They want to be kept informed — genuinely, not just technically. Not a letter acknowledging receipt and then silence for eight months. Real information, given by someone who knows their name.
They want the Church to change — not to issue a statement about change, not to commission a review of change, but to actually, demonstrably, irreversibly change. And they want to know that there are people in this institution whose entire job is to make sure that happens.
That is you. You are the living, working embodiment of this institution's commitment to those people. What you do every day is not administrative. It is redemptive.
A Vision Worth Working Towards National Safeguarding Panel
Let me end by trying to articulate a vision. Not because the road ahead is short or easy, but because I believe we need to know what we are walking towards, not just what we are walking away from.
I want to see a Church where a child, young person, or vulnerable adult who experiences harm can come forward with absolute confidence that they will be taken seriously — swiftly, compassionately, and competently. Where the culture of every parish, every school, every institution bears no resemblance to the culture that enabled decades of abuse to go unchallenged.
I want to see a Church where Diocesan Safeguarding Officers are not fighting for a seat at the table, but are recognised as among the most important people in the room — where their expertise is sought, their concerns are acted upon, and their wellbeing is protected.
I want to see national policy that is continuously tested against the lived reality of survivors and practitioners — shaped not by what sounds good in a report, but by what actually makes people safer.
And I want to see an independent scrutiny function that has the confidence of survivors, the respect of the institution, and the courage to be honest even when honesty is unwelcome.
"We are not here to make the Church look good. We are here to make the Church be good."
That distinction matters. Every day. In every case. In every decision you take.
Closing
You have chosen, in your professional lives, to stand watch. To be present in the space between harm and healing. To ask the difficult questions, to carry the heavy files, to sit across from people in their worst moments and say: I am here, and I will not look away.
That is not a job. It is a vocation. And it is one of the most important vocations in this Church. I want to close with a commitment, rather than just a call to action. The National Safeguarding Panel will continue to exercise its scrutiny function with rigour and independence. We will continue to advocate for you, for the people you serve, and for the standards that must be achieved. We will name what is not working. We will commend what is. And we will never lose sight of the faces behind the case numbers.
Because that is what they deserve. And so do you.
Thank you
