Bishop Graham Tomlin wrote in the Sunday Times, ‘Prayer reminds me that my opponents are people too, that they deserve respect even if I think they are profoundly wrong. We need our politicians to pray because we need them to know that they are not God, that whatever power they have is borrowed. They need to treat each other well, debate wisely and carefully, and know they are accountable not just to us and our passing fads, but to something bigger, deeper and more final - a God whose Kingdom will last long after Brexit is a footnote in the books of history.’ We can pray for all struggling to break the Brexit deadlock to find time to attend Parliament church services this term. See

‘The changing nature of organised crime is undermining the UK’s economy, integrity, infrastructure and institutions,’ says the National Crime Agency. ‘Britain risks losing the fight against crime unless the police receive significant new resources to tackle chronic and corrosive threats from criminal groups.’ In a chilling assessment, it says the threat from organised crime groups is at unprecedented levels and kills more citizens every year than terrorism, war and natural disasters combined. This rare political intervention reopened the debate on police funding: without significant investment the UK’s forces will fall further behind the criminals exploiting encrypted communications technology and dark web anonymity. Last year Whitehall’s spending watchdog revealed that the jobs of 44,000 police officers and staff had been lost since 2010. In 2019 transnational criminal networks, the exploitation of technological improvements and ‘old-style violence’ is allowing serious crime gangs to dominate communities.

An Iranian woman has been sentenced to ten years in prison in Iran for spying for the UK. A spokesman, Gholam Hossein Esmaili, said the woman had been ‘in charge of the Iran desk’ of the British Council. The British Council seeks to foster cultural relations and educational opportunities in many countries worldwide, but does not have offices or representatives in Iran. It knew that one of its staff had been detained while making a private family visit. Mr Esmaili said she ‘confessed’ to ‘co-operating’ with British intelligence. She is accused of ‘acting against national security’ - a charge laid against a range of activists, journalists, dual citizens and foreign nationals detained in recent years. A London-based British Council employee and art student, Aras Amiri, who was detained in March 2018, is thought to be the jailed person.

The Alabama senate has passed a law that says abortions should not be allowed in any circumstances apart from ‘risk to the mother's life’. A British Christian researcher, Katie Brookfield, disagreed with Alabama’s ruling. ‘The reality is that making abortion illegal does not end abortion, it drives it underground where it's extremely dangerous.’ Meanwhile, a pro-life campaigner said, ‘The Alabama ruling is a fantastic step in the right direction. But you can't celebrate it without taking a long hard look at our own situation. The UK government is pushing to decriminalise abortion totally up to 24 weeks, not recognising there are two people in the case of abortion. This is happening because the UK church, like the priest and the Levi, is choosing to look the other way, walk on the other side of the road and not see the truth. These little human beings are being disposed of and denied burial through every single abortion procedure.’