Byline: Steve Doughty Social Affairs Correspondent

SPEAKER John Bercow has snubbed the Church of England over the choice of a new chaplain for the House of Commons.

Mr Bercow has rejected the Church's choice for the job and instead picked a woman priest once given a quango job by Labour.

The Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin, a mother of three whose husband is chaplain to Holloway prison, will fill the role of acting as Parliament's vicar.

The Speaker's decision ends a span of 38 years in which the parallel posts of Chaplain to the Commons and Rector of St Margaret's - the parliamentary church which is controlled by Westminster Abbey - have been held by the same man.

Mr Bercow's action in effectively splitting the two roles also signals the diminishing political influence of the CofE, which can no longer expect to have its recommenda-tions on spiritual appointments accepted without question by politicians.

The Dean of Westminster Abbey, Dr John Hall, is reported to have favoured Canon Andrew Tremlett Jimmy choo shoes to become Commons chaplain. Mr Tremlett is now expected to be made a canon of Westminster and become Rector of St Margaret's.

Mr Tremlett is a 46-year-old Cambridgeeducated cleric from Bristol Cathedral. The 49-year-old Mrs Hudson-Wilkin, by contrast, was born and brought up in Jamaica and runs an East London parish where crime and gang culture are rife.

She will be denied the grace-and-favour Westminster apartment which has in recent years been given to the Commons chaplain. That will go to Mr Tremlett.

The newly divided job will mean Mrs Hudson-Wilkin will be paid a [pounds sterling]25,000 salary as Commons chaplain, but the [pounds sterling]20,000 stipend for the Abbey post - which would have been hers had she taken both jobs - will instead be paid to Mr Tremlett when his appointment is confirmed.

Dr Hall - whose Abbey is a 'Royal Peculiar', making him responsible for his decisions only to the Queen - indicated yesterday there were no hard feelings over Mr Bercow's rejection of his recommendation.

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Mr Bercow is understood to have wanted a less establishment figure to be Commons chaplain. A source close to the Speaker said: 'He did not want yet another predictable, middle-aged white man who is like a mini Archbishop of Canterbury.

'MPs ... need someone they can talk to, not someone who can quote theological texts to them.'

Mrs Hudson-Wilkin, who is seen as representing the liberal wing of the CofE, is regularly named as a leading contender for high office when women are finally allowed to become bishops.

She is a long-standing antiracism campaigner who has called on the CofE to apologise for its role in slavery, and supports the arguments of the gay rights movement in the Church.

However she is also a disciplinarian in terms of family life, believing children need to be steered firmly away from antisocial behaviour and crime. Born in Montego Bay in Jamaica, she trained as an evangelist with the Church Army and travelled to England to study at its college when she was 18. She became a priest in the West Midlands as soon as the Church began to ordain women in 1994.

A sign of Whitehall favour came in 1998, when Labour made her a member of the Broadcasting Standards Commission, the former taste and decency watchdog.

She wa
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