Yes, but one can create a prayer that does not incite people to hatred but which nevertheless remains anathema to the people listening to it. Let me give the hon. Gentleman another example, in a Christian context. What happens if the prayers call on God to grant enlightenment to those who support gay marriage? That might be anathema to some of the councillors who do support gay marriage. What should one do as a councillor in those circumstances? Should one heckle the priest or the imam? Should one walk out, even though, as a councillor, it is one’s right and indeed one’s duty to be in the council meeting, preferably for the whole time.
So the National Secular Society, which I would like to thank for drawing some of these issues to my attention—I am not a member of the NSS and I doubt I ever will be—has a point when it says:
“The absence of prayers from the formal business of local authority meetings does not impede the religious freedoms of believers or deny anybody the right to pray.”
If local authorities want to hold a moment of reflection at the beginning of a meeting, they can do so. If councillors wish to meet for prayers before the meeting, they can do so, and no change in the law is needed to achieve it. So it is the principle of the Bill that is of concern to me, but the proposal tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough highlights some of the concerns that undermine the value of the principle of the Bill.
My amendment 4 is about the public sector equality duty, whose effect is similar to the first amendment to the US constitution, which states:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.
That has been interpreted in the United States by a majority opinion of the Supreme Court in the case of Town of Greece v. Galloway, which was decided in May of last year, to require that prayer said before local authority meetings should not discriminate against minority faiths in determining who may offer a prayer.
The rather odd effect of that decision was that at a meeting of Lake Worth city commission last month the invocation was given by an atheist called Preston Smith, who began it with the words:
“May the efforts of this council blend the righteousness of Allah with the all-knowing wisdom of Satan.”
The fact that the effect of the public sector equality duty on this Bill is that local authorities choosing to hold religious observance in their meetings will not then be able lawfully to discriminate against the observances of the religion of Satanism might surprise my hon. Friends, but it seems to me to be a clear and unavoidable interpretation of the effect of the two statutes.