ADVICE to help the Church of England spin its way out of the crisis over the issue of homosexuality has been drawn up by a close aide to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Jeremy Harris, a former BBC journalist and now Dr Williams’s secretary for public affairs, wrote a three-page document in June outlining how the Church could manipulate the media. Titled “Notes Towards a Handling Strategy on Gay Issues” and marked “strictly confidential”, the paper suggested the Church find “attractive alternative stories involving ABC (the Archbishop of Canterbury)”.

Mr Harris suggested “ABC as a poet — do a reading, make a high-profile Lords intervention, announce a theology prize.”

The document also touched on the furore over the appointment of Dr Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading. Dr John eventually stood down.

An insider admitted last night that the paper had been prepared but said it had never been an official Lambeth document. “It was never really discussed and it was never adopted as a strategy,” he said.

“This was a way to look at a strategy in the round. It was some private guidance.”

The memorandum illustrates the concern among church officials at the dominance of the gay issue in news coverage of church affairs.

It states: “The Church is committed to continuing dialogue, so the issue cannot be closed or rapidly resolved. It therefore has to be managed in media terms by seeking to take the sting out of it and displacing it in the public mind.”

Mr Harris, 52, was a BBC reporter until 1998 before becoming the Archbishop’s most senior lay adviser.

He has great influence at Lambeth Palace and has become a close confidant of the Archbishop, even though he was appointed by his predecessor, now Lord Carey of Clifton.

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