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British Humanist Association: Reports

My Lords, I, too, am glad to have the opportunity to participate in this debate, which I thank my noble friend Lord Harrison for introducing. I am a supporter of the British Humanist Association. I believe that secularism is the best system in a multicultural society in which we want everyone to feel that there is equality and justice for all. We have recently been discussing the Government’s Equality Bill, which seeks to legislate for some of these aims. It should not be thought that secularism is anti-religious. I am not myself a believer in any of the main religions, but I know many to whom faith is important. They have a right under the Bill, and as part of our belief in human rights, to practise their faith without discrimination and, indeed, to proselytise if they wish to. However, religious and philosophical differences should not become divisive, which can happen when religious fundamentalism seeks to impose its beliefs and way of life on people who do not share those beliefs. I emphasise that I am talking about fundamentalism, as some mainstream religions have become more tolerant and have come to terms with a less traditional and more modern outlook. I do not much like faith schools. I believe that they are divisive and have that effect on communities. However, they exist and they receive state funding, but they should not be permitted to discriminate against those who may not share their faith and should certainly not discriminate as far as concerns employees. They should not be able to insist that employees, except those specifically involved with instruction relative to the faith, should be bound by the precepts of a faith that they may not share. Employees have rights that must be honoured and which are provided by our legislation. According to the press, the Pope, who is due to visit the country later this year, has been critical of our newly emerging equality legislation. Of course, he has the right to express his opinion. However, the many who feel as I do also have a right to insist to our Government that his views on our legislation should be entirely disregarded. The British Humanist Association has produced a report on human rights in public services and religious organisations. The issue has arisen because of the apparent desire of the Government to contract out the provision of some public services to religious organisations. The BHA report concluded that there was little evidence to support the view that religious organisations offer any particular benefits to the supply and provision of public services. In the view of the BHA, there are no good reasons why public services should not be provided on a secular basis. Otherwise, there could be problems for users and employees, with a risk of discrimination and of infringements of human rights. There has been some discussion of these issues during the passage of the Equality Bill. I am still not content that the issue has been resolved. We still need legislative provision to ensure that a religious organisation providing a public service cannot discriminate between service users on religious grounds or, indeed, on any other grounds, that it must respect the human rights of users and that it must have equality-based employment policies. It is very necessary that parallel public services for various religions should not be allowed to develop, as has sometimes been suggested by the more fundamentalist religious publicists. That would be unacceptably divisive in a multicultural society. It must be made clear that the Equality Bill rightly establishes protected categories, which include sexual orientation. Discrimination against individuals on that basis, either as service users or as employees, cannot be allowed under our own or EU legislation. There has been a long and largely successful campaign in the past few years against discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender people. We cannot have those gains that that campaign has elicited endangered by discrimination. That is why the Equality Bill is so important. The BHA report makes it clear that secularism does not pose a threat to anyone—quite the contrary. It enables religions and beliefs to exist and flourish. It seeks only to protect against discrimination those categories of people who generally are in a minority and whose vulnerability is deemed to require legislative support. That is what secularism is all about and we should all support it.