England’s longest-serving Bishop blocked a lifetime Church ban for a paedophile priest, a government inquiry has heard.

The Bishop of Chester, Rt Rev Dr Peter Forster, argued that rather than impose a lifetime ban on the Reverend Ian Hughes - a disgraced vicar who was jailed for harbouring thousands of pictures of child pornography - he instead fought to make him subject to a 20-year ban.

Giving evidence to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) yesterday [WEDS] the Bishop said that he had made the decision at the time "because I knew Mr Hughes".

He told the panel that, aside from the thousands of indecent images "in every other respect he has had a good ministry and has been very well regarded by his parishioners” and added that given Hughes’ “relative youth”, “his excellent previous record” and that the fact he was “entirely penitent” he thought he would argue against the lifetime ban from the Church.

“The problem with a lifetime ban is there’s no way of revisiting that unless new evidence arises and it seemed to me that while he would never return to being in a position of responsibility, if for 20 years had lived with penitence” then he thought it a fair decision. “After 20 years at least, the door could be left open for others down the line to review the situation and that could not have happened if the life penalty had been imposed,” he added. I think he [Hughes] got drawn into a very sick and unsatisfactory situation.”