The Revd Michael J Davies, FCIS, who served the Presbyterian Church of England at Rustington and Wallasey, the United Reformed Church (URC) as its first Youth Secretary and Moderator of Thames North Province (now known as a Synod), and the World Council of Churches as Assistant General Secretary and as its representative to Britain and Ireland for 20 years, has died aged 87.

After training at Westminster College Cambridge, Michael was called to St Andrew’s, Rustington, on the Sussex coast, in 1959.

A campaign calling for debt cancellation for people who have been swept into unavoidable debt in recent months launched on 4 October by a group of four denominations representing two-thirds of a million Christians and ecumenical charity, Church Action on Poverty.

The United Reformed Church, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, Church Action on Poverty, the Church of Scotland, and the Methodist Church urge the government to create a Jubilee Fund to provide grants to pay off and cancel unavoidable debt accrued by the poorest households during the lockdown period, giving them a more stable platform from which to face the difficult winter ahead.

A petition signed by 300,000 people was delivered to Nestle’s UK KitKat factory in York on 1 October.

The event was in protest at Nestle’s move to stop using Fairtrade cocoa and sugar in KitKats.

The delivery, organised by Joanna Pollard of Fairtrade Yorkshire, coincided with the start of the annual cocoa harvest in the Ivory Coast and was applauded by the Revd Dr Kevin Snyman, Coordinator for Commitment for Life, the United Reformed Church’s (URC) global justice programme.