The background to the passing of the Immigration Act is generally well known and it is recognised that the present Government has had concerns – either of its own or pressed upon it – about levels of immigration in this country. It is clear that all political parties are under some pressure to respond to public concerns over this area, which will clearly be one of the major issues in the campaigns leading up to the forthcoming general election.

Exactly 80 years has passed since the completion of the United States Supreme Court building. This comment is not another paper about the importance or historical influence of the greatest of all American institutions, nor about dramatic cases which shaped America, nor about justices and their approaches, nor about characters or world views. It is about architecture and the messages which are sent from the facade of this strong institution to which legal scholars and practitioners from around the world look.

As noted in the report for June–September 2014, in the wake of the ‘No’ vote in the Scottish independence referendum the Prime Minister appointed Lord Smith of Kelvin to lead a commission to put together an agreed package for further devolution. In October the Westminster Government issued The parties' published proposals on further devolution for Scotland (Cm 8946) and in January followed this with the necessary draft legislation: Scotland in the United Kingdom: An enduring settlement. Perhaps the most important outcome for the Churches of the inter-party settlement is that the Equality Act 2010 will remain a matter reserved to Westminster.

Events during the period under consideration were overshadowed by the result of the General Election in May, in which the Conservatives secured an overall majority and the Scottish National Party won 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland. What this will mean for issues of particular concern to readers of this Journal is unclear: but at the very least, there is already pressure for devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament over and above those in the agreed package put forward by the all-party commission under the chairmanship of Lord Smith of Kelvin. The Scotland Bill was introduced into the Commons on 28 May and is likely to be a matter of some controversy.

The most significant business – legislative or otherwise – conducted at these three groups of sessions was without doubt that relating to the consecration of women to the episcopate. The report on the Synod's proceedings published in the January 2014 edition of this Journal recounted the Synod's decision in July 2013 to call for draft legislation to be introduced giving effect to one of the options which had been identified by the working group established by the House of Bishops in 2012, immediately following the defeat of the previous legislation.

The Church of Scotland met in General Assembly with the Rt Revd John P Chalmers as Moderator. Owing to the number of wide-ranging issues and topics covered, only a selection of matters discussed and passed are touched on in this report.

In his April Presidential Address the Archbishop noted a number of important current issues – gender, same-sex relationships, assisted dying and ecumenism – and said that he could not recall a Governing Body where so many important topics were all under discussion at the same time. Perhaps the most critical, however, was the Bishops' Code of Practice, published in advance of the Bill that was to come into effect in September to make it possible for women to be ordained as bishops. What followed would be a listening exercise, since no decision on the matter was required of the Governing Body. What all the issues highlighted, however, was that there was genuine principled disagreement among Christians about moral, doctrinal and ecumenical issues. Moreover, no-one approached those matters neutrally; all had been shaped one way or another by upbringing, education and life experiences to see things in certain ways.

In this, the final year of the current triennium, the General Synod met again in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. Whether it will return to this venue, and if so how often, is open to doubt since the Synod directed that efforts be made to find a more satisfactory meeting place in Dublin having regard to the comparative costs of its regular meetings at the alternative venue in Armagh.