Carey emphasises shared values Church urges return to values

BRITAIN must recover its sense of shared values in the wake of the James Bulger tragedy, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, said yesterday.

'We are in danger of being a privatised, fragmented group of people. Somehow we need to recover a sense of belonging to one society.

'Let us move away from the DIY morality that has been going on, with everyone doing what is right or wrong in their own eyes,' Dr Carey said in Singapore, where he is on a tour of the Far East.

'Each one of us as a parent must address the question of what moral guidelines we are giving to our youngsters today through our homes, through the Church and through schools,' he said.

It is his first comment on the debate since David Maclean, a Home Office minister, said the Church had been 'strangely silent' about right and wrong, and was denounced by senior Anglicans.

'Maclean did the Church a considerable service,' one official said yesterday. 'He provided an occasion for people to notice that actually the Church is going on about right and wrong all the bloody time . . But people who don't want to notice, don't'

Dr Carey said the danger was that the Bulger case would be forgotten and people would move on to the next problem that confronts them.

'We need to go back to fundamentals. This is actually a judgement on all of us in the country, even though a crime of this nature is very rare indeed.

'Be that as it may, it comes back to us. Are we providing moral guidance for young people today?' he said.