Equality Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 180:"Page 30, line 20, leave out subsection (2)." The noble Lord said: Clause 52(2) creates further exceptions that allow harassment or discrimination in connection with the content of a school curriculum or religious worship. The British Humanist Association has said that this would allow a girl in a Church of England school to be ridiculed by a teacher for not believing in God. The Joint Committee on Human Rights considers that this may engage Articles 9, 8 and 3 of the European convention and be contrary to the Human Rights Act. It states:"““There is a risk that Clause 52(2) would be found by the courts to be incapable of interpretation in accordance with Convention rights””." Our amendment would remove Clause 52(2) as an exemption on the ground that allowing the harassment of school children is repugnant. We welcome the Government’s Amendments Nos. 179, 182 and 183, which, as I have said, add the necessity threshold to discrimination and harassment, but they do not go as far as our amendment. Part of my concern is whether the use of the term ““religious worship”” in Clause 52(2) and Clause 54(4)(h)(iii) is precise enough or whether it might be open to the wrong interpretation. I hope that the Government’s intention is that the exemptions for religious worship should apply to the daily act of collective religious worship. An exemption for collective worship I find easier to understand because, unless it is exempted, a non-Christian child at a Christian assembly could claim that he or she was being discriminated against because there was no equivalent act of a broadly Hindu, Muslim or Jewish character being provided by the school; or even harassed because she or he felt that the daily act created a hostile or offensive environment for her or him as a non-Christian child. However, on the face of the Bill the wording ““religious worship”” could be used to defend an act of harassment against a pupil because of his or her religious worship. For example, a devout Muslim boy might be taunted because he persisted in praying in school several times a day. Would the Minister consider amending the Bill to refer specifically to ““collective worship”” to make that distinction clear? I could go on but I shall not. I beg to move.