Education Bill

Debate between Lord Avebury and Lord McAvoy

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, we certainly will have to return to this matter in a different context but we will have to do so on Report, because we are not going to resolve it here this afternoon. As your Lordships will understand, we cannot have a Division on it. However, there are certain things on which we can agree. First, all noble Lords who have spoken have said that an assembly is a good idea—that all the pupils should come together as one and partake of a proceeding that has a moral and ethical dimension. Even the noble Lord, Lord Peston, would go as far as that, although he might not wish to add the word “spiritual”.

I point out that some among us are atheists—that is, we do not believe in a supreme being who is directing our procedures and telling us how to behave—but we believe that there are moral and ethical codes that should be common to the whole of humanity and we want them to be taught in assembly. We want children to have, for example, the virtue of tolerance, which has been mentioned. How can we have tolerance when children are separated into different kinds of religions, even if, as the Minister has just said—

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Avebury]

I am in the middle of a sentence. I shall give way when I finish it. How can we have tolerance when children are separated into different kinds of religions, even if, as the Minister has just said, there can be a determination that allows the act of worship to be of a non-Christian character, which just means that it will presumably be of a Muslim or Hindu character, thus separating the children who belong to those schools even further from their contemporaries in the mainstream Church of England schools?

[Lord McAvoy]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Will his tolerance for other people’s points of view stretch to engaging with schools that have the type of collective activity to which he is objecting? Would he care to consult them and get some measure of how they feel before we get to Report?

[Lord Avebury]

I was going to come on to the question of who is entitled to make this decision. I do not believe that there can be, as I think the noble Lord said, a diktat from on top, which is what we have in the Education Act 1944. This should be a matter for the schools themselves, and they should consult the parents and the pupils. If you want localism, if you want the decision to be made freely by the people who are intimately concerned with it, the pupils and their parents, this is the right way to do it.