The Church of England does not know how many children have been subjected to ‘exorcisms’ under its auspices. Last month, the National Secular Society worked with Labour MP Sam Carling to table a parliamentary question asking how many “rites of deliverance” have been carried out by the CofE in the last ten years and, of those, how many were performed on children. The Church’s House of Commons representative Marsha de Cordova MP has now responded: “no data or records on numbers or type of deliverance ministry cases are held centrally.” She added that how deliverance ministry teams operate within dioceses is “the responsibility of each individual diocesan bishop”. When contacted previously, the dioceses of London, Southwark and Canterbury have not responded to requests for the same information. A report on church safeguarding last year highlighted how “poor data collection” undermined safeguarding efforts. “Laying on of hands” and ‘casting out of demons’ CofE ‘deliverance ministry’ guidance allows parents to consent to “formal rites of deliverance” for their children, “including those involving touch”. It may involve the …