If it is the will of the Committee I will move on to Amendment 24. Yes, the Front Bench is nodding.
Amendment 24 stands in my name as well and I will try to be fairly brief; I can certainly be briefer than I was before. Because of their religious or other convictions, many parents will not want their children to learn about same-sex marriage before a certain age, fearing that they will find it confusing. Others may be concerned that teaching on the subject will not be balanced or might not respect their own convictions on the matter.
Parents, as we all know, have the right to withdraw their children from sex education. However, same-sex marriage could be included in a range of other subjects, across the curriculum, to which the right of withdrawal does not apply. For example, there is no right of withdrawal from history lessons and there has been a growth of schools taking part in LGBT History Month lessons within the last few months.
Stonewall, the leading gay rights group, promotes an extensive list of materials on same-sex marriage for use in primary schools. These resources cover subjects much wider than just sex education. A teacher training guide, also produced by Stonewall, suggests that primary school children could perform some of Stonewall’s recommended story books as school plays. An accompanying teacher training DVD, which was produced with the support of the Training and Development Agency for Schools, suggests that pupils must become “resilient”—and that word is lifted directly from its
literature—to the values of their parents and grandparents. This is quite clearly an indirect reference to some parents and grandparents who may have objections to issues such as gay marriage.
There is a danger that without an extension of the right of withdrawal, the deeply held beliefs of parents will be undermined, as will their ability to have their children educated in accordance with their own convictions. Article 2, as some of us know, of the first protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights will be weakened. I could give a number of examples where this sort of thing has happened—I am conscious of the time and of the fact that the House wants to progress—but suffice it to say that there are already examples in this country, and abroad, where children have sought to be removed from school because of this sort of thing, and the council have told the parents that action would be taken against them unless the children were returned to school. It has happened in Waltham Forest in east London and it has happened abroad in Massachusetts.
I am galloping through very fast, and I would have liked to develop the argument to greater effect, but Amendment 24 gives a parent the right to withdraw a child from any lesson that includes teaching about same-sex marriage. It also requires the school to notify the parent a week in advance of those lessons, because being informed in that way is obviously crucial to the effective operation of the right of withdrawal.