Last Friday, in a surprising and unfair attack, Roy Hattersley accused me of demanding disestablishment if the Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs) became law. That I had not done anything of the sort did not seem to deter him. What, in fact, I am concerned about is the way that a liberal democracy is increasing becoming totalitarian.

Let me explain. A terse notice on the website of the Privy Council informs visitors that the functions of this, the oldest department of State, will from next month be merged with both the Cabinet Office and the Department for Constitutional Affairs.

The downgrading of the Privy Council Office amounts to its virtual abolition in response to a “machinery of Government review”. This has happened with little or no public debate — a cavalier attitude to our constitution that has a familiar ring. New Labour’s preference for the novel and ephemeral over the tried and tested has always been worrying.

In the first term we were told that we were entering an ambitious programme of constitutional reform. For the House of Lords this resulted in no more than the abolition of the hereditary peerage. In its third term, the Government seems no nearer to completing its reform of the House of Lords, although matters may have been taken out of its hands by the recent House of Commons vote showing overwhelming support for a fully elected second chamber.

Such a chamber would no longer be a House of Lords, and would have to be something more than a revising body. In contrast, the Government’s own preference seems to be for a largely elected chamber with 20 per cent of members appointed.

So confusion reigns and more largely unforeseen consequences lie in wait. Any substantial reduction or abolition of the role of bishops in the House of Lords will result in the unravelling of the Establishment of the Church of England. The Government continues to this day to play a part in the appointment of bishops only because many of them will sit in the House of Lords during the course of their ministry.

Opponents of the Establishment of the Church will be ready to pounce on any weakness in the relationship between Church and State. Indeed, the delicate relations between the two are already becoming chilly as a result of the imposition of SORs.

Tony Blair, who used to promise a new era of cooperation between religious believers and the State, now seems prepared to squander that goodwill in pursuit of policies and regulations that must alienate many believers, and banish Roman Catholic adoption agencies. I don’t believe that the Prime Minister intends to damage the Church-State link but he is playing into the hands of intolerant secularists whose aim seems to be division, not unity.

Lord Carey of Clifton was Archbishop of Canterbury 1991-2002

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