---

Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I have to say that I have found this debate quite distressing. I never thought that I would sit here, in this House, looking at the expansion of faith-based schools. I was part of the Swann committee, which some noble Lords may know about. It looked at the education of children from ethnic minority groups. In our report we took the bold step of saying that it was perhaps time to have no faith-based schools. Now we sit here today, constantly extending faith-based schools. The next lot might be Rastafarian schools. Why should they not have schools? Why should anybody not have schools? I was brought up a Hindu. As such, I do not come from a revealed religious base. We are taught to respect everybody’s faith, everybody’s belief and everybody’s way of worshipping God, if they so wish to do. Abrahamic religions do not do that. Muslims say that they are the true faith; Catholics say that they are the true faith; Anglicans say that they are the true faith; and Jews say that they are the true faith. There are so many true faiths. Do they all have their own separate gods? If you believe in God, there can be only one. The more we separate systems of belief, the more divergence we will create in our society. It is logical and obvious that this will happen. No matter: we are at this point; we are not starting today. We are debating a particular amendment. Whether it is workable or not, I shall be voting for it, because it at least sets down a marker towards trying to create some kind of commitment to bringing children from other faiths into a school. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has talked about his mother and father. I am very happy that my noble friend Lord Waddington mentioned race, because there is a double whammy here. We have, until now, been dealing mainly with white faith-based schools. This is the first time for us to look at non-white faith-based schools. Please do not let us minimise the impact of that fact. It will not be as easy for a girl educated in a Muslim school to find someone totally different from somewhere else and get married to that person. I do not think that it will be that easy. A young white man recently asked me, ““Why are you so fussed about faith-based schools? I come home, I play with my friends and I have friends from all over the place””. Will a Muslim child, girl or boy—and first of all, the girls and boys will not mix together; we know that—be in the happy position of meeting friends and going to each other’s houses? I know of many Muslim families who will not let their children go to anyone’s house if they are not Muslim. All this will exacerbate these divisions. Let us hope for the best, but I shall certainly vote for my noble friend Lord Baker’s amendment, just to make the point. I think we are at a crucial stage and our young people will live to see the results of all this and will regret it.