Clause 59 - Membership requirement
Equality Bill [Lords]
6:43 pm
Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, (Assist the Home Affairs Team); Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I disagree completely. Organisations exist because people are happy to conform to their ways. The hon. Gentleman will find that in France the scout movement—I am not sure about the guides—is split in two. One part is religiously based and the other based on secular principles. That is presumably a response to the desires of people in France. If people want to set up a youth organisation on secular principles, it is open to them to do so. It would be quite wrong if a charity that fulfilled all the criteria for a charitable purpose were to be subject to a restriction eliminating a pledge to God as an element of its membership. That would turn it into a nationalised organisation, which it is not.