Part of Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill - Committee (11th Day) – in the House of Lords at 11:30 pm on 16 September 2025.
Baroness Thornton
Labour
11:30,
16 September 2025
My Lords, the naivety that the noble Lord referred to is actually his own naivety. Because of the area in which it is, the primary school that I attended in Manningham—which is part of my title—in Bradford now has a population that is over 70% Muslim. The idea that, by law, that school has to have Christian services and assemblies is naive and possibly offensive to the parents of those children. Our society needs to recognise that it is not fair to impose these things upon those parents and children.
The UK is the only western democracy that legally imposes worship in publicly funded schools. We have been repeatedly asked by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child to repeal the collective worship Laws—a justifiable call that we should not dismiss in the way that the noble Lord suggests. The idea that, because we might want to change the way that our schools operate and collectively discuss issues and values, we are throwing out the values that created our society is also naive, because that is not at all what these amendments are proposing.
I expect that these amendments will not be acceptable at the moment, but it is very important to have this discussion, because we are a multiracial, multicultural society, with many different religions and, mostly, none at all.
As a bill passes through Parliament, MPs and peers may suggest amendments - or changes - which they believe will improve the quality of the legislation.
Many hundreds of amendments are proposed by members to major bills as they pass through committee stage, report stage and third reading in both Houses of Parliament.
In the end only a handful of amendments will be incorporated into any bill.
The Speaker - or the chairman in the case of standing committees - has the power to select which amendments should be debated.
Laws are the rules by which a country is governed. Britain has a long history of law making and the laws of this country can be divided into three types:- 1) Statute Laws are the laws that have been made by Parliament. 2) Case Law is law that has been established from cases tried in the courts - the laws arise from test cases. The result of the test case creates a precedent on which future cases are judged. 3) Common Law is a part of English Law, which has not come from Parliament. It consists of rules of law which have developed from customs or judgements made in courts over hundreds of years. For example until 1861 Parliament had never passed a law saying that murder was an offence. From the earliest times courts had judged that murder was a crime so there was no need to make a law.
