Education Bill

No one is suggesting that there should be any restriction on the right of parents to choose whatever school they think is best for their children. The noble Lord’s remarks are based on a total misunderstanding of the amendment and what the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, said. But perhaps I may move on to the remarks of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, who I thought said that these amendments were fine but unnecessary. I am hoping that he is in support of the amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, because surely there may be teachers who are not entirely opposed to the faith basis of a school who belong to other religions or none but have a particular aptitude for mathematics, say, or geography, and are therefore suitable for those subjects in the school, although it has a religious ethos. He said, rightly, that the schools would want to choose persons who were best capable of teaching the non-religious subjects and that they would not wish to discriminate in making choices when appointing those persons. I am afraid that we have made no more progress on the issues covered by the noble Baroness on religious discrimination than we did on collective worship since Committee, although, with the noble Baroness, I was grateful to the Minister for writing to us and entering into a detailed discussion with us in the interval between Committee and Report. The Minister will remember that he was handed a dossier of legal opinions, which the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, mentioned, including one commissioned by the Equality and Human Rights Commission that challenged the compatibility of the Schools Standards and Framework Act 1998 with the European Union employment directive. The focus of these opinions was Section 60(5). Looking back at the passage of this subsection through this House in 1998, I see that the original wording of the equivalent part of the Bill, then Clause 58(4), was entirely benign and unobjectionable. It provided that in a voluntary aided school of a religious character, no teacher of subjects other than religion would receive any less remuneration or be deprived of, or disqualified for, any promotion or other advantage by reason of his religious opinions or of his attending religious worship. The amendments to that clause, to which we are now objecting, turned the original words on their head by saying that preference may be given, in connection with the appointment, remuneration or promotion of teachers at a voluntary aided school which has a religious character, to persons whose religious opinions are in accordance with the tenets of the religion or religious denomination of the school. Those amendments were drafted following a delegation to the Home Secretary led by the then right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, who acknowledged in the House that the amendments had been, "““prepared in consultation with the Churches””.—[Official Report, 4/6/1998; col. 576.]" He understandably expressed his delight that the churches were ““completely satisfied”” with the amendments then inserted. No other amendments were made by any other noble Lord. Those proposals were made by the Church of England and accepted by the Government at the same time as the employment directive was being drafted in Europe to combat precisely that sort of unfair discrimination. They are the basis of the formal complaint lodged by the National Secular Society earlier this year to the European Commission, which I understand is still under consideration. If Section 60(5) is left alone, they may yet be the subject of litigation by teachers who consider that they have been treated less favourably than others in terms of their appointment, remuneration or promotion to posts involving the teaching of history, English or mathematics, for example, because they do not subscribe to the particular religion or denomination which gives the school its religious character. I suppose that the same would apply not only to Christian but also to Muslim schools, where a teacher might be discriminated against in the same way because he belongs to the wrong brand of Islam. The then Government compounded the offence of undermining the directive by insisting, at the 11th hour, as a condition of their acceptance of the directive, that previous legislation, including in particular the School Standards and Framework Act, should be regarded as being in effect exempt from the new directive. The Government were so desperate for unanimous agreement, as was required, that they were able to force the Council of Ministers to accept their demands. The noble Baroness, Lady Turner, has, on the grounds of pragmatism, gone only a modest way today to reverse these discriminatory 1998 amendments. I therefore appeal to the Government to recognise that these privileges granted to religious bodies create, as do all privileges, victims—those who would otherwise not have been disadvantaged. The innocent and undeserving victims of Section 60(5), which the noble Baroness seeks to replace in her Amendment 86, are teachers—there may be thousands of them—who are not of the faith of the publicly-funded school or academy where they teach or apply to teach subjects other than religious education.