The Church of England may have overlooked abuse by paedophile bishop Peter Ball because he was gay, a former Archbishop of Canterbury has suggested.

Baron Rowan Williams told the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse that "overcompensation" by colleagues who felt "awkward about the traditional closeted attitude" of the Church of England might have allowed Ball "second chances".

Asked by Fiona Scolding QC, lead counsel to the Anglican investigation, whether attitudes towards homosexuality affected the way Ball was treated, he said that church figures didn't want to be "seen to be judgmental about people's sexual activities".

He said Ball's colleagues felt that while "we may formally in a disciplinary way disapprove, we may treat them according to the protocols, but we mustn't be seen to be, or we mustn't be judgmental, we must therefore give people second chances and understand the pressures and so on.

"So I think there's an element of that coming in, a rather paradoxical consequence of the traditional view of homosexuality within the church, you want to overcompensate for it."