---

Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, if I may say so, that is the whole point of the amendment. The point is: will it be legal for people to change from that position? Why would anyone want to? That is what I do not understand: where is this coming from? Why was the Bill changed to move in this direction? When I was at school, I was taught maths by a Communist. We knew that he was a Communist because he had a hammer and sickle lapel button—this was during the war. It was legitimate to do that sort of thing in those days. I do not recall any of our maths teaching being distorted by the fact that we were being taught by someone wearing a hammer and sickle and I cannot understand why the teaching of the main subjects in the school should have any relevance to the religion of the teacher. It may well be that I am being ultra-sensitive here and that my noble friend will say that that cannot possibly happen. One of the great ways in which we have moved forward in this country—very much under new Labour, let me say—is that people are meant to get jobs according to their merits and being the best candidate for the job. The old-boy system, which many of us, when we were young, knew dominated what went on in the world—that should now include the old-girl system—has, at least to some extent, gone. It is certainly not acceptable to make it explicit. I remember when I was starting as an academic that there were certain professors whom, if you could not get them to support you, you could not get an academic job at all. Those days have now gone. I am merely asking the Minister to assure us that that is the case. For example, I would honestly expect that the head teacher of the Catholic school would be a Catholic. I follow my noble friend in being in favour of religious freedom and that would not offend me at all. However, let us assume that the best possible person for the job was not a Catholic. Are we absolutely certain that person should never be considered for the job? I am just not sure. But certainly for the ordinary teachers, let alone the people who do the other work, this should not run. My last point in asking where this is coming from is that, to my pretty certain knowledge, the one religion for which this has never been a problem over a long period has been the Church of England. The Church of England, on the whole, has tried to appoint the best possible teachers for its schools, just as—and we were discussing this earlier—it has been much more welcoming and much less concerned about whether all of the pupils are Church of England believers. I repeat: who is driving the desire to do this sort of thing? My hope is that the Minister will be able to say to us that there is no problem here and that none of the existing legislation which is meant to stop sexual discrimination and other forms of discrimination is now, in some sense, removed. I am hoping he will tell us that and I wait to hear his answer.