Equality Bill

My Lords, I support my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay in his Amendment 125A. Between us we just about represent the two ends of Christian practice in these islands, as indeed we live at their opposite ends geographically. It is a strange irony that my noble and learned friend should be leaping to the defence of the Roman Catholic Church, something I shall draw to the attention of the Archbishop of Westminster, who I am sure will be suitably grateful. We need help from whichever quarter we can get it. That said, my noble and learned friend and I also represent between us a determination to try to protect reasonable and centuries-old established religious freedoms rather than wishing to come up with some brand spanking new right or another. Indeed, the attacks by the present Government on historic religious freedoms that Amendment 125A seeks to correct have become so severe that in a new Parliament, I think that the pressure for an Act to protect religious freedoms will grow and grow. It will also be an issue in the forthcoming general election for individual candidates breaking this way and that. There will also be pressure to resist the present trends encouraged by the European Convention on Human Rights which surely was never meant to entrench that in all cases, and without exception, the individual automatically trumps the group or community. Surely there must be some continuing recognition, as Amendment 125A seeks to establish, that in a truly tolerant and pluralistic society, there is not simply a collective of individuals, for therein, in that attitude, lies totalitarianism. This was summed up very well by my noble friend Lord Bates speaking, as it were, ex cathedra from the Conservative Front Benches in his winding-up speech on 14 January in the debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, on toleration. My noble friend said, ""there is growing intolerance towards people of faith … they are being victimised. That cannot be right. I am sure that the pendulum has swung, but we need to remember that legislation and the pendulum were meant to correct something that was wrong".—[Official Report, 14/1/10; col. 687.]" Amendment 125A seeks to recalibrate the pendulum’s swing in the interests of religious tolerance, and in it my noble and learned friend has taken a very measured and careful approach. One reason that the pendulum may have gone a bit haywire, as pendulums do, is probably constitutional. As my noble friend Lord Elton just pointed out in his brief but telling intervention, when another place debated back in 2006-07 issues concerning not only religious adoption services but also the state of residential homes, the record shows that precisely four minutes was allowed for the debate on religious adoption agencies before the guillotine fell. My noble and learned friend speculated that guillotines fall with a click, but I think they come down with a clunk and a thud. But what is entirely wrong is that no time at all was allowed for debate on the position of those providing services in residential homes where there is a religious ethos. I understand from reports in the press that the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, who is not in his place today, and other great members of the upper reaches of our mandarinate are producing a report for publication on Wednesday that will highlight a number of ways in which governments, in particular this Government, have failed to govern well. I understand that it is going to say that one of the worst things that has happened is that so much legislation has gone through another place with no scrutiny whatsoever. I believe that to be totally wrong and for it to have been done in such a prejudicial way as to try to attack historic freedoms and religious faiths of all sorts, not just Christian, in this country. I think it is on constitutional as well as on the other grounds that it is necessary to take a fresh look at the issue, and that is what Amendment 125A seeks to do. There are important human rights concerns here, but not just for service providers. As my noble friend Lord Elton has just so rightly pointed out, there are human rights that the legislation to which I have referred have trampled on. Let us take adoption services and the right of the child who needs a family and the rights of a family that wishes to adopt a child: what about those rights? I refer also to the rights of the providers of adoption services who sometimes are not so much concerned with their own personal and private lives but wish to provide services in response to faith beliefs and are moved to do so as an expression of their faith and their vocation—something which I believe this Government have treated with contempt, and I choose the c-word "contempt" with great care. Already, as the right reverend Prelate said in his speech, agencies run by, for example, various Catholic children’s societies have stopped providing services for children and would-be adopters who need their help. For example, the Catholic Children’s Rescue Society in Salford and the Catholic Children’s Society in Westminster have been forced to cease their adoption work. What a triumph for the equality project that is. The recently retired CEO of the Westminster Catholic Children’s Society said in giving the reason why the service has had to cease: ""We would not be able to state within the context of adoption, that it is our belief that a married couple is better for children"." I respectfully and admiringly agree with Mr Jim Richards—just for the record, once a Labour councillor and now in his happy retirement a deacon in the Roman Catholic Church. I would like to ask the Minister this: how many children does she think have suffered so far because of this legislation? How can the Government really claim to be in favour of diversity and choice? Do they not recognise that religious charities and trusts which contribute to the provision of adoption for the young or provide residential homes within a faith ethos for the elderly, the disabled or those with learning difficulties have their own ethos which should be respected? In logic there can be no case under any circumstances for insisting that religious groups operate against their beliefs unless they are the unique monopoly supplier. I have never known of such a unique monopoly supplier of any service for which public funds are provided. Surely, when we see equality laws to help one group—which I do not necessarily object to—are so constructed that they turn out to damage another group—which I object to very much—however worthy in their original aims, it seems that the whole equality agenda has lost its balance and begun to promote inequality, thus becoming an inadvertent tool for intolerance and the oppression of religion in these islands. So I hope that the Minister will contemplate carefully what my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, my noble friend Lord Elton and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester have said and agree to take away these issues to consider them before Report.