Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007

My Lords, before turning to the question of education, about which there is more to be said this evening, I want to make four brief observations. Noble Lords must forgive my voice; there is a cold around. First, it is importantthat the House notes what the noble Lord, Lord Pilkington, said earlier, part of which was picked up at the beginning of the speech by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York. It may be best summarised by a sentence spoken by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury from 24 January this year: "““I think that we’ve reached a point where certain things need to be clarified about the rights, liberties and dignities of independent bodies within the state””." I hope that the House can come back to that question as an issue for a major debate. Secondly, it has been said once or twice in the debate that what X or Y has said could not be said if it were being said to somebody who was black or of a particular gender. It may be helpful for me to remind those who say that that there are a number of us, not only from within the faiths and including to my knowledge a number of gay people—I know because I have read their work—who would be quick to say that sexual orientation was not an absolute characteristic in the same way that ethnicity and gender are. Thirdly, it is not for me to speak for my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, but at the heart of the Roman Catholic Church’s position is something that it would put alongside the question of the welfare of children. It should not be asked or, indeed, forced to collude with what it, I and many others perceiveas the Government’s programme to equate other relations with marriage. That may be the answer to what the noble Lord, Lord Alli, in his impressive speech, said about an inconsistency in the cardinal’s position. Fourthly, the equally impressive speech by the noble Lord, Lord Smith, had a set of echoing theses, but I want to put another echoing thesis alongside them. It is that discrimination is discrimination, against whomsoever it is directed. Part of the difficulty that many of us have with the regulations—not with their main thrust, but with the particular form of certain parts of them—is that the Government seem to have fallen away from the necessity to work with the tension between competing rights. I turn to education, because there is more to be said. I warmly welcome, as others do on these Benches and, I anticipate, in all parts of the House, Regulation 7(1)(a) and (b), as there must be no discrimination in admissions, whether of gay young people or those parented by gay people. Still more important, there must be no bullying of people in that position, and there is manifestly the same duty of care for the welfare of every pupil. However, the four subdivisions of Regulation 7(1)(c) urgently require the kind of line-by-line scrutiny to establish their range of meaning, intended or not, that a Bill receives in your Lordships' House. As they stand, the scope of their application appears very wide. That is especially so when the Government have explicitly refused—I have seen the correspondence and submissions asking them to consider their inclusion—to include any reference at all in the regulations to the legal position and responsibilities of faith schools, let alone the kind of exemption that appears in Part 2 of the Equality Act itself in relation to discrimination on grounds of religion or belief. Nor is there any reference in the regulations to a document that the Minister referred to—the DfES’s Sex and Relationship Education Guidance of 2000—passed, if I remember rightly, in the context of the debates on Section 28. Paragraphs 1.7 and 2.14 of it specifically allow faith schools to teach sex education in a manner consistent with the school’s ““religious ethos””. The noble Baroness’s assurances that the regulations would not touch the curriculum or collective worship would be stronger if they referred to those important points. The Joint Committee on Human Rights report of 28 February has been referred to. Some of its authors are in their places this evening, I am glad to say. Its paragraphs 65 and 67 explicitly and, in my mind, illiberally advise that the regulations should be firmly applied to the curriculum in every kind of school, and that there should be no teaching of a, "““particular religion’s doctrinal beliefs as if they were objectively true””." So what are Her Majesty's Government—I use the language advisedly—saying and doing through the regulations to a Church of England school, to a teacher who is a member of the Church of England teaching at any kind of school, or to one of the many Church of England clergy, bishops among them, who are regularly in the schools? We should remember that the House of Bishops of the Church of England’s 1999 paper, Marriage: A Teaching Document—simply restating, as has been noted this evening, the teaching of every Christian church—said on page 8: "““Sexual intercourse, as an expression of faithful intimacy, properly belongs within marriage exclusively””." The Government could have found ways and in my view the JCHR would have been wise to advise them to find ways of respecting the human rights of all concerned. Respecting the human rights of gay people is critical, as is the importance of seeking to respect the human rights of others and to find ways in which, I am advised by distinguished lawyers, it could have been possible to hold the intention of these rights. I greatly regret the fact that the Government chose not to do so, but, rather, chose to legislate to coerce the churches and others to accept as the norm for this society—the regulations ask us to accept this and to collude in the Government’s promotion—alternative patterns of living and of family life that many people conscientiously believe are less than the best, less than the most healthy, and less than God’s will for humankind. For those reasons, which I have limited to the sections of the regulations that I have mentioned, I shall vote with the noble Baroness.