Education Bill

Noble Lords will not be surprised to know that I take it for granted, somewhat cynically, that religious schools will be biased in favour of appointing and promoting people of the same religion. That is part of human nature and it is how people carry on. I do not need to remind noble Lords that I am not qualified in the law. However, I am absolutely horrified to hear what both my noble friend Lady Turner and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, have said about the legal advice they have been given from lawyers, who are certainly well qualified to give such advice. I have a couple of points for the Minister. First, do we have any data on what actually goes on in these religious schools? They are financed using public money but do we have data on the religious mix of their staff and of who gets promoted and who does not? Are there any facts at all that could guide us? Secondly, if the law is being broken, I am not clear who is breaking it. I would have guessed that it was the schools that were breaking the law but the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, seemed to suggest that it was the Government, so I am a bit lost on that. I wonder if the Minister could tell us something about that as well. I assume that for one lawyer who you could buy to give you one opinion, the Government could buy another one to give them a different one. That adds to my cynicism. Finally, I hope that the Minister is not going to go through a legal document sentence by sentence, otherwise we will be here past 10 pm.