Education: British Values

Baroness Flather Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Flather (CB)]

My Lords, time is short and I will run through the thoughts that I have.

From the beginning to the middle of the 1980s, an inquiry into the education of children from ethnic minorities was set up. It was called the Swann Committee. Its report had some quite startling conclusions, although I am sorry to say that it has not been much used. First, there was the question of faith schools. At the time we had only Catholic, Anglican and Jewish schools. The Swann Committee suggested that even these should be phased out. The reason for Anglican schools was that they were the only ones that provided education for poor children. The reason for Jewish and Catholic schools was that many schools did not take Jews or Catholics. All that had changed and there was no longer a particular need for faith schools, so they should be phased out.

Learning from the example of Northern Ireland, everybody felt that it was not a good idea to separate children. But what are we doing now? We are separating them ad infinitum: between this faith and that faith. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, says that children should be taught faith values. They can be taught faith values, but at home. They should be taught faith values in their churches, temples and synagogues. This is not the schools’ job to teach faith. It is the schools’ job to teach non-faith values: values that are universal. That has been mentioned and it is the way forward.

For me, some of the things that the faiths have done are completely unacceptable. People might say that this is not written in the Koran or that something else is not written in the Bible, but you are doing it, either because you do not know it or because you do not care about it. Discrimination against women is rife in Muslim culture. This is not written in the Koran, but everyone is doing it. If that is going to happen in a faith school, girls and boys are going to be taught separately, which is already a negation of British values.

As for gays, are we going to “string them up”? That is also a total negation of British values. Many Muslim countries have brought in the death penalty against gays. We have to be extremely careful about faith-based teaching, and whether it is or can be acceptable. I am sorry to say that for me it is not.

Catholics do not believe in contraception. What kind of world are we living in? This is the 21st century, and girls cannot have contraception? In Africa, the Bishop of Kampala has told everybody that there cannot be contraception, that it is a sin and if you use it you will go to hell. All right, they are going to hell—but what about those children who are being born and have nothing to eat?

I am sorry. My time is up. I have a lot more to tell your Lordships, but I cannot.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, I fear that the attempts to define and perhaps codify British values will be as difficult, and ultimately as successful, as trying to nail jelly to a wall. If we are looking for a definition of values, it is important that it is inclusive and cohesive. I regret that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, did not seem to quite get the point that I was making earlier about the very title of this debate, which suggests that due consideration has not been given to the various constituent parts of what is currently the United Kingdom, and which I fervently hope will remain the United Kingdom on 19 September this year. I refer to the casual approach, which almost says that England is Britain and Britain is England, that antagonises a lot of people in other parts of the UK.

I will give an example that will perhaps seem rather trite to noble Lords: the World Cup. I am a Scot domiciled in England, married to an Englishwoman, with a son who is therefore half-English. I bear the English football team absolutely no ill will and indeed I hoped that they would do well in the World Cup. But then I sit down and watch the game. Just before the game, the players line up and what happens? I hear “God Save the Queen”. I am sorry, but “God Save the Queen” is not the national anthem of England. It is the national anthem of the UK—play it at a ceremony at the Olympic Games. But at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow next month, English athletes, who will probably win more medals than anybody else, will have their medals put round their necks after “Land of Hope and Glory” has been played, not “God Save the Queen”. There is an English national anthem. Whatever the English people want as a national anthem is up to them but I am sorry, it is not “God Save the Queen”, and that shows that greater thought has to be given, in this example and indeed others, to the inclusivity of the United Kingdom if we are really going to put together British values.

[Baroness Flather]

I am very interested in the national anthem. I am not sure that it relates exactly to the values in schools. If Scotland wants its own national anthem to be played on Scottish occasions, it is for Scotland to work for that, but it is not about values. Values in schools concern all of us, not just this country or that country.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

I always listen to the noble Baroness very carefully and I enjoyed her recent contribution but I am not talking particularly about schools. We are talking about British values; it does not relate just to what is or is not said in schools. The point I am making is that, if we are going to have British values, it has to be much wider than that.

In closing, I will comment about Magna Carta apparently being mentioned as the centrepiece of any attempt to put together British values. I think that is strange, not least because, to come back to my original point, Magna Carta was a very English—not British—document. I will simply quote from the commentator Owen Jones, who wrote very recently about Magna Carta, highlighting the fact that the values of many people in Britain are diverse, quite apart from whichever part of the country they originate from. Mr Jones said:

“Here was a charter imposed by powerful barons—hardly nascent democrats—on the weak King John to prevent him trampling on their rights: it didn't satisfy them, and they rose in revolt anyway. It meant diddly squat to average English subjects, most of whom were serfs”.

Yet this is on what we are proposing to base a discussion around fundamental British values. I end where I began: I think it will prove to be a fool’s errand.