Bishop urges compassion amid spending cuts

A bishop has urged the British Government not to cut compassion from society amid swingeing public spending cuts.

The Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, said the Church of England would not be silent on the issue as he called for compassion to become a feature of political debate.

He said Prime Minister David Cameron’s ’Big Society’ may be a good idea but it must not act as a camouflage for not supporting the weak.

Speaking to the Manchester Diocesan Synod yesterday, he said: “The Government has chosen to use the word ’fairness’ in promoting many of its policies and has sought to advance a quasi-moral and ethical debate on that basis.

“But fair can be a weasel word. For although it means just and equitable, it is also used in the sense of being mediocre and middling.”

He continued: “I have to say that in all the talk about fairness, I have not heard the words cuts and compassion in the same sentence at all.

“As a Church, we have a duty to speak up for the voiceless, to protect the vulnerable. For every individual who, through no fault of their own, is weaker, poorer, increasingly unaided, requires our compassion and support.

“The ’Big Society’ may be a good idea, but it must not become a camouflage and nor must the churches, other faiths and voluntary societies – themselves hit by cuts – become a department of government.

“Our calling as a church, in the communities we serve and the nation to which we belong, is to make sure, by the appropriateness of our words and our actions, that compassion is not cut from our society. For without compassion this land will be a mean, selfish and impoverished place. May God save us from that.”

The bishop said the Church of England was not an arm of the opposition or a wing of the Government but offered an “authentic” public critique on public affairs based on Christian values.

Highlighting plans to remove free bus fares for pupils travelling to faith schools, he said: “The truth is that compassion is not always fair – it may mean paying the bus ride for a child to go to school, it may mean providing more support for the weak.

“It must mean recognising that while clearly rigorous cuts must be made those who are especially vulnerable merit exception.

“Of course this is difficult, and of course there are those who play the system in a manner that is wholly unacceptable and needs to be stopped.”

He added: “Political use of the word ’fairness’ can encourage envy and in its facile implication of the desirability of equal treatment can make worse the lot of the already disadvantaged.

“From a Christian perspective, the litmus test for a society or nation is how the weakest members are treated. If the Church’s message is ’don’t cut compassion from society’ then that is a message that is indisputably and credibly Christian.”