Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con): I will be brief, because the excellent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) has made most of what I was going to say unnecessary. The proposals are disproportionate and likely to be ineffective, and pose a real threat to freedom of speech, conscience and belief. They are also quite probably illegal, a point to which I will return in a moment.
Whatever reassurances the Minister may give us today that the proposals will not affect the salt of the earth organisations of which my hon. Friend spoke, we cannot be sure. The problem is that office holders change. Politicians change. Civil servants change. Once such regulations are in place, what guarantee do we have that they will not be interpreted differently in the future?
It will not do to say that we are being alarmist. We need only remember the plight of the Plymouth Brethren, which you will remember well, Mr Turner. They were threatened with the removal of their charitable status some three years ago over a difference of interpretation of the words “public benefit”. That came after reassurance had been given in the House during debates on the Charities Act 2006 that traditional religious charities need not fear the legislation. If I am correct, you were the shadow Minister at the time, Mr Turner, and you expressed grave disappointment in this very Chamber that, years after the passing of 2006 Act, an established charity with some 300 churches across the country was having its charitable status challenged following a different interpretation of the legislation. The reassurances that had been given were swept aside. The challenge cost the charity hundreds of thousands of pounds and was only averted after dozens of MPs stood up in this place and called for the outrageous attack to be stopped. That is why we are speaking out against the proposals today.
I now turn to the probable illegality of the proposals and the human rights issues. I thank Professor Julian Rivers, professor of jurisprudence at the University of Bristol and an expert on law and organised religion, for his advice. He describes the proposals as “astonishing”. He says that such a registration requirement, as it would apply to religious groups, would
“be straightforwardly in breach of the UK’s international human rights obligations.”
Let us have a look at articles 8, 9, 10, 11, 14 and 18 of the European convention on human rights. Hon. and right Hon. Members will be relieved that I will not quote them all. The Human Rights Act 1998, which refers to
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the convention, states that everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and expression, to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority. Requiring religious groups to register would breach that. Indeed, just last year, the European Court of Human Rights said that the European convention on human rights
“excludes any discretion on the part of the State to determine whether religious beliefs or the means used to express such beliefs are legitimate.”
It is therefore quite likely that, were Ofsted to identify and sanction undesirable teaching in a church youth group in the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough described, it would be in breach of the ECHR.
Much as I would like to, I will not go on. There is a great deal more I would like to say, but I will say in closing that the consultation has been rushed through and is of particular concern to faith organisations. At some 42 days, it was very short and the shortest of the Department for Education’s current consultations. I stood up in the House before Christmas and asked for an extension, bearing in mind that the consultation took place over Advent and Christmas, but it was refused. I pointed out later that one of the email addresses on the consultation’s website was wrong, so some of the consultees’ responses were never received. There was then confusion over the time of day on the final date when the consultation finished. Many consultees who put their responses in after around 5.30 pm found that they had missed the deadline. There needs to be a clearer understanding of what the deadline is.
Robert Flello: I appreciate the hon. Lady’s speech, but my one concern is that she is almost suggesting that the Government should rerun the consultation. May I suggest that she makes it clear in her closing remarks that the best thing that the Government could do is to bury the consultation once and for all?
Fiona Bruce: I absolutely agree. There is no other way that the proposals can be addressed other than to completely abandon them. That is what we are calling for today.
