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British Humanist Association: Reports

I am extremely glad that my noble friend should have intervened. Indeed, one of the two or three points that I shall make in my speech addresses exactly that perspective. My noble friend and I share those views and I agree with him. The two documents that we are debating this morning represent, to me, a pretty wacky, hardcore, highly illiberal, campaigning sort of humanism. They point the way towards a society dominated by majoritarianism and not a more tolerant view of society, which I always thought that the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, in whose highly thought-provoking debates I have taken part before, really shares. I trust that he does not want to replace what he might see as any reactionary illiberalism with a new overwhelming, overbearing, liberal intolerance, any more than would, I suspect, the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, whose remarks on this subject I have listened to with respect in past debates. When we talk about these issues in your Lordships’ House, it has become the fashion to declare faith, or lack of faith. I can date it exactly to 2 March, when during the proceedings on the Equality Bill, in moving an amendment of high importance on adoption society matters, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, crisply declared for Anglicanism. There and then, the floodgates opened and people were popping up and coming out all over the Chamber about their faith, or lack of it. For example, in a marvellous short speech declaring against the imposition of majoritarian views, the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, said that he was "not a religious person". There was one wonderful moment for the real connoisseur, the best declaration of all—again of Anglicanism—from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bradford. Some of us had suspected for some time, as he rose from the Bishops’ Bench, gorgeously attired in full episcopal choir dress, all billowing sleeves secured with black cuffs to match his black tippet, that he might indeed be an Anglican. We had taken the hint. So the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, whose speech I look forward to greatly, can accept that we have taken the hint in respect of him. For the avoidance of doubt, I had better come out and declare Roman Catholicism, while at the same time recognising, as the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, does, that people of faith have no monopoly of spiritual values, probity, morality or goodness. Indeed, I have a friend who is a model possessor of all of these virtues while being what I can only term a high church atheist in his manifest disbelief, and I admire him greatly for his strength of character. Now I move to the point that my noble friend Lord Mawhinney raised in his welcome intervention. As the state moves from being a universal service provider to becoming more and more a service commissioner, it would be wrong to try to exclude religious bodies from being commissioned to provide services, as the British Humanist Association seeks to do, for the following three reasons. First, it would be rank, outright discrimination, plain and simple. Secondly, it is philosophically bankrupt and inept, for it assumes automatically that, while faith-based projects are not value-neutral, by definition secular projects are inherently value-neutral. That is nonsense. All bodies are rooted in a particular place or places and have a set of values. Indeed, the whole purpose of seeking to tap into the energy of civil society, as my noble friend wishes to do, as opposed to the impersonal state, arises from its rootedness in different narratives, traditions and identities, all of which are value-laden. At this time when all political parties, I thought, were seeking to promote diversity and choice, it would make absolutely no sense to prevent faith-based welfare providers from accessing government money, because some people like using services given in a faith ethos or by faiths. Some recent words from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference are worth a quick ponder. Its document Choosing the Common Good, which was published earlier this month, states: ""The right to religious freedom means the right to live by faith, within the reasonableness of the common good, and to act by faith in the public forum"." It goes on: ""Partnerships between Government and faith communities should be mutually respectful and permit these communities to act with integrity in the provision of public services for the common good. This has long been the case in the provision of education and the benefits brought by that partnership are substantial and clear"." The one thing that I would like to hear from the Minister is a clear reaffirmation of the value, in the mind of the present Administration, of religious education provided by Muslims, Jews and Roman Catholics. I trust that the Government will not waver in giving a clear message of support for religious education from these and other groups, such as Hindus, Sikhs and whoever else chooses to set up a school. So I say a "Hear, hear!" to the sentiment that we just heard from the Roman Catholic bishops, which I am sure is shared by people of all faiths and people of no faith. I will end by saying that I totally disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, much as I welcome his debate and respect him personally, that in the past five years religious groups have somehow advanced in their influence. To me it is the exact and total opposite: you cannot wear a crucifix to work, offering to pray for someone gets you suspended and Catholic adoption societies are getting closed down. Rampant secularism is what we face, of the most intolerant and illiberal sort.