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Equality Bill

My Lords, in line with what the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, has said, I think that these words are so slippery that trying to add other words simply makes the whole thing even more slippery. The way in which the words are used means that this is one of those irregular verbs: "I have a faith, you have a religion, he or she is in a cult". One person’s use of a particular term may be pejorative, flattering or whatever. I regard the original clauses as extremely odd. A reference to "religion" includes a reference to a lack of religion, "belief" means any belief and a reference to "belief" includes a reference to a lack of belief. When I studied philosophy, if you started saying that "P equals not P", you had to go back to the drawing board and begin again. If we want to regulate some religions/cults or others, this sort of Bill is not the way to do it. By adding extra words here and there, as yet undefined whether in Europe or elsewhere, we will merely make confusion worse confounded.