Equality Bill [Lords]

I congratulate my hon. Friend; he is looking very well on it. Why is it that, prior to that date, membership of a religious charity can be confined lawfully on the basis of adherence to a particular religion, whereas that is not the case thereafter? What is the Minister saying about religious charities? Why should no such charities be able to discriminate in respect of their membership on the ground of religion in the future, if they were able to do so in the past? We are already aware of the politically correct march towards an increasingly barmy Britain. Every day we see in the papers examples of organisations refusing to use the term ““BC””, or ““before Christ””, and substituting ““BP””, meaning ““before the present””. We see examples of Christmas lights having to be called ““celebrity lights””, of councils wanting to refer to Christmas as ““the workers’ winter festival””, and of libraries refusing to advertise the local nativity play. The most worrying example relates to social partnerships. We hear of religious organisations that undertake a social function and are paid accordingly to provide services such as a hostel or a soup run, being bullied with regard to the religious aspects of their organisations. We have the absurdity of an organisation providing a hostel being told that if it continues to say grace before meals, its public funding will be withdrawn. The perfectly proper concern of those of us who are worried about such developments is that part 2 of the Bill, in designating such organisations as public bodies, will provide an increasingly whip hand to the zealots who wish to see these developments march forward, or indeed just to the timid in local authorities who want to avoid litigation of any kind. My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) was right when he said earlier in our proceedings that there is a very great danger that we will become free from religion rather than free to practise religion.