Equality Bill

I, of course, share many of the sentiments of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about some of the ludicrous examples that he has given. I very much hope, as does Shami Chakrabarti, that the appeal be won in relation to British Airways—it is sub judice, but I think I can say that. Having said all that, and although I am not a Christian, I say "Happy Christmas" all the time—when it is Christmas time—and I totally deplore the political incorrectness of the ignorant who say "winter lights" instead of Christmas, and so on. To come back to the law, we are talking about the exception to Clause 29, which deals with religious discrimination, among others, general discrimination in the provision of services to the public and religious discrimination. I assume, however much we may support the established church, that most of us believe that those who adhere to other religions are also entitled to be treated as individuals on the basis of their religious beliefs and not to be discriminated against. What kind of exception is appropriate to a law which creates a right not to be discriminated against, among other things, on the grounds of religion. The exception which the noble Lord’s amendment seeks to widen is to be found in paragraph 11 of Schedule 3 on page 137, and it is extraordinarily wide. In fact, it is too wide. It says: ""Section 29, so far as relating to religious or belief-related discrimination, does not apply in relation to anything done in connection with—""(a) the curriculum of a school;""(b) admission to a school which has a religious ethos;""(c) acts of worship or other religious observance organised by or on behalf of a school (whether or not forming part of the curriculum);""(d) the responsible body of a school which has a religious ethos;""(e) transport to or from a school;""(f) the establishment, alteration or closure of schools"." All those provisions are there to deal with the kind of points that the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Waddington, have made. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which, until recently, I was a member, produced a vast and comprehensive report on the Bill. I will not take time now in boring or detaining noble Lords by reading paragraphs 215 to 220 on pages 72 and 73, which I commend to the Committee. In those parts of the joint committee’s unanimous report, attention was drawn to what it had said about the previous sexual orientation regulations. Concern was expressed at the risk of the exemption for the content of the curriculum leading to unjustifiable discrimination being even greater under the broader exemption contained in the Bill—in other words, the one I have just read out. To make it short, the committee expressed understanding and sympathy for, ""the Government's reasons for exempting the content of the curriculum from the duty not to discriminate"." It said, as does the noble Lord, Lord Alton: ""We agree that schools ought not to be distracted by having to justify in legal proceedings the inclusion in the curriculum of particular works of literature, for example. However, we continue to have the concerns we expressed in our report on the Sexual Orientation Regulations, that exempting the content of the curriculum from the duty not to discriminate means, for example, that gay pupils will be subjected to teaching that their sexual orientation is sinful or morally wrong"." The committee continued: ""It is the content of the curriculum (the teaching that homosexuality is wrong), not its presentation, that is discriminatory. We therefore recommend that the exemption for the content of the curriculum be confined to the scope of the existing exemption, and not extended to other protected characteristics"." It was arguing not to go any further than one would here. I apologise for taking so long, but against that background, I turn to the amendment tabled in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Waddington. I do not want to get into even deeper waters, but "religion" and "religious" are, quite properly, not defined. The Church of Scientology, which I have professionally represented, would say that it is a religion, has prayers and is a religious organisation, as would many other new religions or cults. The widening of the exemption beyond its already great width would be completely unnecessary, create more ambiguity and give rise to the very problems that the Joint Committee on Human Rights worried about so far as, for example, gay people are concerned. I hope that the Government will oppose this amendment as strongly as we do.