Clause 59 - Membership requirement
Equality Bill [Lords]
6:15 pm
Evan Harris (Science, Non-Departmental & Cross Departmental Responsibilities; Oxford West and Abingdon, Liberal Democrat)
I tabled an amendment to omit the clause to remind myself that I wished to have a stand part debate, and it worked, so I am learning. It is taken eight years.
The clause was added in the House of Lords—I read the debates with interest—to allow scouts and guides to continue discriminating against atheists by requiring a promise professing adherence to God or gods. That practice not only excludes the non-religious, such as humanists, but also Jains, most Buddhists and all those belonging to non-theistic religions. It would appear that children with those beliefs are to be welcomed by these organisations if they are willing to pretend that they have a theistic religious faith. We have all done that, to a certain extent, if we consider our past behaviour. I speak for myself. In order not to get beaten up there are a number of things that people do at school. However, children who consciously adopt a non-religious or humanistic life-stance are rejected and turned away. The same rule applies to scout leaders. Atheists are automatically rejected, as are, with somewhat more reason, people such as sex offenders.
It is offensive and unjustified—although there is no right not to be offended—for the organisations in question to reject people who would otherwise do a good job on the basis of their lack of belief in God. They are not religious organisations in the strictest sense; they just have a membership test that requires, for historical reasons, this so-called promise to be made.
The Minister will be aware of the case read out in the House of Lords, which I will not repeat. I have had representations along those lines from someone who was rejected as a scout leader because he refused to lie when encouraged by the leadership to say, ''Just say it and then we'll forget about it and it'll never come up again.'' When he said that he was unwilling to state that he believed in God, he was told that he could not be a scout leader, because it was appropriate that the spiritual dimension of the scouts was looked after by this particular person.
The Bill as it originally stood would have addressed that long-standing injustice, but it has been removed by a Government amendment that was carefully worded to embrace what the British Humanist Association called hypocrisy encouraged by scouts and guides, in that under the clause organisations do not require their members to have religious faith, but only to make a statement asserting or implying membership or acceptance. Hypocrisy is a hard word, but one can see the British Humanist Association's point.
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
On resuming—