Equality Bill

I will do so in a moment; I want to deal with this point, and then make sure that I finish very quickly. If the Government are right that they need to restrict the provision in schedule 9 to comply with article 4.2 of the European directive, it is clear that the faith school provisions in sections 58 and 60 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 have a total exemption from the Bill. Amendments 14 and 15 would deal with that. The Bill says that, regardless of the Bill, schools can do anything under sections 58 and 60 in terms of discriminating against people on the grounds of their religion—or, indeed, their lifestyle—as schools think they can. That is clearly outside the scope of the directive, and I think that the Government know that it is challengeable on those grounds. It is wrong that that exemption should be specified in the Bill. Why do the Government not remove the exemption in schedule 22 and just ensure that faith schools operate under schedule 9, and have to make that case? That is why we propose amendments 14 and 15. I think that time will show that when a teacher is sacked for being of the wrong religion, or no religion, by the local state school employer that happens to be a faith school, the school will lose and we will be back to square one in needing to amend the legislation.