Schedule 11
Equality Bill
7:45 pm
David Drew (Stroud, Labour)
I am aware of the hour, but I can take only so much from the hon. Gentleman. The notion of a faith school to which people of that faith are effectively the only people who cannot go is a complete contradiction. There need not be a discriminatory process because, from all the evidence I have seen, faith schools tend to want to take children of different faiths. Certainly, they want to take children of different classes, but they are too often prevented from doing so because of numbers.
The hon. Gentleman’s argument is illusory if not delusional. Some of us hold faith as important and it is wrong to segregate and marginalise it. If people do not want to go to a school, they are not forced to go there. There are ifs, buts and maybes, but I am dealing with the reality on the ground. Of course, people have a perfect choice to vote for people who want to increase the secular provision, as they do to vote for those of a religious faith, be that Christian, Muslim, Jewish or whatever.