Charities Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 1: Page 2, line 10, at end insert ““or belief”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 1 I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 2 and 5. I hope that the outflux from the House does not signify the lack of their importance because their purpose is simply to protect European convention Article 9 rights in such a way that religious and non-religious belief is on an equal basis, to reflect the wording on international instruments and all our recent relevant legislation—the Communications Act, the Employment Equality Regulations and the Equality Bill—and implement the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Amendment No. 2 is simply a more felicitous phrasing of the clause to capture the same point. Amendment No. 5 is there to respond to my noble friend’s concern in Committee that the wording then proposed linked charity law too definitely to any future evolution of the convention. In Committee, my noble friend said that the Bill conformed to the Human Rights Act. But putting non-religious belief under the catch-all heading is not only technically discriminatory, but implies that non-religious ethical belief is not equivalent in value to religious belief. It will inevitably lead to the development of different tests for religious and non-religious charities doing similar work and will reinforce the prevalent view that, for instance, humanism—I ought to declare my interest as a vice-president of the British Humanist Association—is not an ethical system on a par with religion but a set of opinions on a par with a political policy. All those are inconsistent with the Human Rights Act. Of course, one way to resolve this issue, if my noble friend is really claiming that non-religious beliefs do not need explicit inclusion, is to delete religion as well on the ground that it too is covered by Clause 2(2)(l). But surely we need not be so drastic. I beg to move.