Clause 59 - Membership requirement
Equality Bill [Lords]
6:43 pm
Evan Harris (Science, Non-Departmental & Cross Departmental Responsibilities; Oxford West and Abingdon, Liberal Democrat)
I was just explaining that the British Humanist Association felt that by allowing the promise to continue to be required, the clause encourages people just to say the words when they do not mean them. Hypocrisy is a hard word, but people who are excluded because of the promise, or whose children are excluded, feel strongly. I have some sympathy with them when they point out that if the organisations or the Government want such an approach to continue, it is not an admirable moral education for young people.
The Scout Association and Guide Association profess to be for everyone. I have great admiration for those organisations. I did that sort of thing when I was even younger than I am now, and I thoroughly enjoyed it and know many people who do so and who make a valuable contribution to the community. However, even if they are excellent organisations, it is important to ensure that they are as inclusive as possible. The Scout Association, in its annual report this year
''underlined our commitment to make Scouting available to those of different faiths and beliefs.''
The vision of the Guide Association, which uses the heading ''Guiding is for everyone'', is
''to have sufficient volunteer leaders to enable every girl and young woman to have the opportunity to join Girlguiding UK.''
Should not a law against religious discrimination force those organisations to recant a policy that is greatly at odds with their own professions of universality? Were they to restrict membership to believers, they would, arguably, rule out the 65 per cent. of 12 to 19 year-olds who answered no when asked if they regarded themselves as belonging to any particular religion in a recent survey sponsored by the Department for Education and Skills, titled ''Young People in Britain: The Attitudes and Experiences of 12 to 19 Year Olds''.
In some areas, scouts and guides are the only provider of youth activities apart from churches and other religious organisations. We often debate the need for more youth activities, but permitting scouts and guides to continue to discriminate against the non-religious and those who are not prepared to say something that they do not mean would deprive significant numbers of young people of the benefits of organised youth activities, leaving them with few alternatives to simply hanging out with their friends, which can, we know, lead to antisocial behaviour. The time limitation in subsection (2) is an implicit admission by the Government that the exception is not justified by some great principle. They have simply conceded the amendment to two powerful organisations.
My final point is that the scouts and guides are not simply private membership organisations; they receive public money for their work. When people receive public money, there has to be good justification for their not being inclusive. For example, the Scout Association receives an annual capitation grant from the Ministry of Defence to fund the sea scouts. The guides also received a Government grant in 2004, and local groups receive significant funding from local authorities every year. In 2004–05, scouts and guides groups received local authority funding in Shetland, Hertsmere, Stratford, east Dorset, Hampshire, Bromley, Midlothian, Surrey and north Somerset to name but a few places. That information, says the British Humanist Association, can be found by a simple search on the internet.
The fundamental point is that the Government were right to resist the proposal when it was made in the Lords. It is regrettable that an alternative way was not found to persuade valuable organisations that do good work against having a faith promise limited to monotheism or theism, not just religion generally, or against any such discrimination, given that the organisations say that people do not really have to believe, but just have to say the words to go with the flow.
That sort of thing is inappropriate, and one would have hoped that the Bill would deal with it rather than providing a loophole that spoils the whole thrust behind what it seeks to achieve. The clause is not necessary. The Scouts and Guides would not crumble if they did not have the ability to discriminate on the basis of a religious pledge. I hope that the Minister can find some justification for the clause that is based on principle, not expediency.