THE Archbishop of Canterbury is to criticise politicians for failing to give a moral lead, and urge them to emulate William Wilberforce to rebuild the battered reputation of parliament.

In a major speech this week Rowan Williams will argue that the MP behind the abolition of the slave trade 200 years ago can serve as the model for restoring parliament as a moral forum for the nation.

The archbishop, giving the William Wilberforce lecture in Hull, is expected to deplore the reluctance of MPs to take up big moral causes, saying: “The old idea of political virtue is getting more and more remote.”

Speaking in the city that was once the constituency of Wilberforce, Williams will blame the “decayed liberal society” of today for the decline in idealistic campaigns and argue that politics is increasingly becoming “a form of management rather than an engine of positive and morally desirable change”.

Williams, who is due to take a two-month “study leave” this summer, partly at Georgetown University, Washington, makes a strong defence of religious representation in the House of Lords.

He says this is vital to provide a degree of “moral independence”.

The most recent vote in the Commons for a fully elected second chamber would remove the Church of England bishops who currently sit in the lords.

He will warn that the current proposals for reforming the lords will shut out voices that are “not constrained by elec-toral anxiety”.

In one recent success for the bishops in the Lords, Williams fronted opposition which led to the voting down of the government’s order allowing the opening of a “super-casino” in Man-chester.

Williams believes that, in addition to politicians, citizens can draw lessons from Wilberforce’s moral campaigning. They should accept that they too bear some responsibility for government and that disagreement or the statement “not in my name” does not absolve them.

For this reason, he believes the citizen must where possible challenge the state on moral grounds.

“This challenging will be a matter of mobilising and motivating the public at large to bring pressure on public authority,” he will say.

He cites the success of the campaign to cancel Third World debt as proof that a direct campaign on moral grounds can succeed outside parliament. “It is significant that in the last few years, one of the most widely supported political campaigns was the movement for the remission of unpayable debt,” Williams will say.

“Outside the parliamentary process, many hundreds of thousands lobbied for a change. What is interesting is how it seemed to be assumed that parliamentary campaigning would not deliver the same results as a well-organised process of lobbying ministers directly.”

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