Religion and Belief: British Public Life

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for his debate. He may remember a debate about faith and public life many years ago. Then the debate was about economics, and how to divide up the cake, what faith told us about dividing up the cake and how it should be done. How times have changed. Now faith in public life asks us who we are, how we live together while celebrating our diversity, and how compatible our diverse faith is with Britishness—or is diversity a threat? Economics has given way to identity, and this is complicated by the possibility of individuals holding multiple identities; the change in family circumstances brought about by increasing physical mobility; the rise of “blended” families; and the rapid renewal through generational change.

The Institute for Jewish Policy Research, of which I am the honorary president, did a survey about Jewish identity and found how identity mainly begins at home and then at school. I join my noble friends Lady Massey and Lord Dubs in their concern about how we have allowed faith schools to celebrate diversity, which has in fact caused division by enabling communities to close in on themselves. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, and the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, showed how different faiths and schools set about curtailing contact with other faiths and the rest of the world outside their community. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blair. Intolerance arises from genuine ignorance and a lack of experience of the other. With identity playing such a crucial part in our lives, schools will have to reflect society. I think that the Woolf consultation will find that public opinion is moving towards reduced autonomy and faith schools will have to become a lot more mixed.

Digital faith communities are now an established part of public life. Religious leaders have their own active social media sites, with thousands, and in some cases millions, of followers. The Bible has its own Facebook page, and there are sites encouraging people in Britain to come together and pray for those less fortunate. Yet, because of perceived threats, public opinion on a free and open internet is changing. Tuesday’s proposed quick-passage Bill shows a hardening of attitudes here in Parliament.

That has happened because there are also extremist faith sites—I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, will note that I am careful not to use the word “radical”. Those sites preach intolerance and hatred. Their owners are difficult to trace, and may well be outside this country. Again, liberal values are under threat.

I support liberal values. Indeed, I belong to the liberal Jewish community—so I spoke to Rabbi Danny Rich, the senior rabbi and chief executive of Liberal Judaism. He agreed that faith-based organisations ought to be involved in social and political action, in accordance with adherent interpretations of their faith. Sensibly, he told me that he hoped that disagreements between and within faiths would be handled in accordance with Britain’s democratic values. Rabbinic decision-making is traditionally based on the view of a majority, after reasoned debate—but with the minority view being recorded, which means that we do not impose our views on others. Indeed, we try to be a blessing on others, as the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, has said.

Rabbi Danny Rich and I both felt that the current system of civil and criminal law in the UK is satisfactory in relation to issues of religion and belief. We would prefer that religious courts did not involve themselves in the civil law, and that religious communities did not seek to use the civil law to solve issues that their own religious authorities do not have the courage or the will to resolve. For example, Liberal Judaism accepts civil divorce, in the sense of not requiring people to undergo any further religious divorce procedure. In the same way it accepts same-sex marriage, because it is the law of the land—and that is the way it should be.