Covid-19: Freedom of Religion or Belief

Debate between David Linden and Danny Kruger

Thursday 26th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I apologise to you and to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) for arriving after the start of her speech. I congratulate her and thank her for securing this important and timely debate.

I will not speak at length about persecuted minorities around the world, not having great experience on the topic, but I do have a powerful memory of visiting the Anglican church in Baghdad in 2003, just after the invasion of that country, with Canon Andrew White, who was the vicar of Baghdad and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s representative to the middle east. I tagged along with him on his first visit back to Baghdad after the invasion, and he reopened the church, which had been closed during the war, or during the invasion.

I remember the most joyful service. There were children running around and people from all walks of life, including American and British soldiers. I remember clearly the caretaker, who had looked after the church and kept it going through the invasion and the war. Within a couple of months of that visit, that man and his whole family were dead, and the whole church had been dispersed. That was the beginning of the persecution of Christians in Iraq, which led to pretty much the eradication of one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. That terrible scenario has been repeated across the world in all sorts of terrible ways, and not just affecting Christians, as we have been hearing.

The debate is about the pandemic and the role of faith groups, and I want to make two points in the light of that. The first is about how important faith groups are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton has said, in reaching the poorest and working through their networks to ensure that support, whether with healthcare or with economic assistance during the crisis, reaches them. Obviously I entirely endorse everything that my hon. Friend said about standing against discrimination on the basis of faith in the developing world.

I also want to observe how important faith groups will be, in the developing world and at home, in countering misinformation about the vaccination programme that is beginning soon. I suggest that we need some religious literacy in working with faith groups and ensuring that misinformation is properly countered. Too often in our debates—frankly, in those about development as well as those about vaccination and misinformation—mainstream opinion seems to be that religion is part of the problem, and that if only people could be disabused of their fanciful superstitions it would be possible to convince them of what the science tells us. That is not going to help.

My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton talked about forced conversion. It makes me think about what we are asking people of faith to do. We are asking people who are suspicious of secular Governments, big companies and non-governmental organisations to abandon, effectively, what their faith says about those things and to undergo a vaccination that they do not believe in. We have to be much more respectful of them. I would put this, Mr Rosindell—I hope you will forgive me—in spiritual terms. The devil is in the structures of the world. There is injustice. There are bad people doing bad things, and people are victims of injustice through no fault of their own; but I do not believe that the Government—this is the argument we need to make—and big pharma or the NGOs are more particularly evil than the rest of us.

I will quote from Ephesians: “Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of this dark age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Our battle is not against people or organisations, but against spiritual forces, and that is the reality that people of faith hold, recognise and believe in. We have to help them to understand where the real enemy is. I suggest that the devil gets into the resistance to secular globalised organisations as well as into those organisations themselves, sowing distrust and spreading deceit. That can be seen in some of the malign forces that are operating in the way that disinformation is spread through social media. It is a spiritual battle and we need to respect people who think that way and not just tell them they are stupid.

My second point—raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton—is about religious freedom at home. We closed churches through the lockdown, and I regret that. We effectively abolished the freedom of assembly throughout the country, and in all institutions. Okay, fair enough. We only overturned freedoms that were won 400 years ago, in that instance—but in closing churches we overturned the foundation of our constitution itself, which was laid 800 years ago. The first line of Magna Carta, as you will know, Mr Rosindell, is that the church in England shall be free. I suggest that it was unconstitutional for the Government to pass a law ordering the closure of churches for collective worship.

I note in passing that in answer to a written question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) earlier this month, the Government said that shutting churches was justified under article 2 of the European convention on human rights—that the right to life, interpreted as the right to health, justified the closure of churches. I am sorry that the ECHR has been held to trump Magna Carta.

I interpret what has happened differently. I think that churches shut voluntarily and were under no compulsion to do so. I respect the decision that they made to shut voluntarily, for the sake of closing down the pandemic. I am very pleased that the Prime Minister has said that churches can open for services after 2 December. Sadly, there will be no mixing outside people’s bubbles, which means no sign of the peace—a bit of a relief for some of us who do not like that bit of the service. But it is a shame that we cannot mix in churches. However, the principle that churches can remain open is vital—and I obviously extend that to all faith groups, and all communities of faith in this country.

[David Linden]

I am subject to similar regulations in Scotland. The hon. Gentleman has already quoted scripture from Ephesians, but it should be put on record as well that we are reminded that when two or more are gathered, he shall be present. The four walls of a church are just a building. When we come together in fellowship, whether that is by Zoom or on the telephone, we can still worship God.

[Danny Kruger]

I recognise that. The Holy Scripture was written for the age of Zoom. There is a sense that the church is the body of Christ, which is the people. However, it is established doctrine that the body consists of people gathering together. I appreciate that “two or three” gathered together is sufficient, according to the Bible, but I feel that the principle of collective worship being physical and the body of Christ being allowed to gather, in physical form, is part of our constitutional foundations.

I appreciate the opportunity we have had to discuss this subject and I endorse everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton has said.

Local Government Responsibilities: Public Services

Debate between David Linden and Danny Kruger

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I thank the Opposition for introducing this important debate, and the Minister for some very helpful information that he gave in his response.

Let me put on record my appreciation of the efforts of the ministerial team. This is an enormous crisis for everybody, but I want to congratulate them for the speed with which they are responding in ways large and small. Some of the information we have just heard is very helpful in small ways for councils, particularly as regards making it easier for councils to meet to do their business more flexibly given the crisis. That will be very welcome at local authority level.

I pay tribute to the spirit of the Opposition Front Benchers as well. It is absolutely tremendous to see how this House is coming together to address these issues. I want quickly to address two points. The first, which has been raised by other Members, is the amazing response of our communities to this crisis and to the impending demand for support from the elderly, in particular—it is absolutely wonderful to see.

I have some anxiety about how we will co-ordinate that effort in a way that does not stifle it. I was a community worker in north Kensington at the time of the Grenfell disaster. I saw a huge uprising and upsurge of voluntary support and effort—an outpouring of love and resources from the community—but there was a huge challenge of co-ordination. We are going to have to get that balance right in all our communities in the coming months. Today, I was speaking to council workers in my local authority of Wiltshire, where there is a good balance. Council staff are not attempting directly to co-ordinate the efforts of the volunteers and local community groups that are rising up. They are not trying to tell them what to do or how to do it. What they are doing is providing a hub for information exchange, and providing support when gaps do emerge.

[David Linden]

That has been one of my concerns throughout this process. Lots of organisations in my constituency are absolutely up for the challenge, but we need to ensure that there is no duplication, particularly when it comes to things such as food security. Does the hon. Member agree that although it is not necessarily for local authorities to do that co-ordination, it would be good if helpful tips and ideas were disseminated throughout the UK so that we avoided the issue of duplication?

[Danny Kruger]

I entirely agree. There is a huge role for social media in the sort of organic, spontaneous co-ordination that we are seeing, but there is also a role for the public sector, particularly local authorities. It would be very helpful for the public to hear a clear communication from the Government that we entirely support and encourage this sort of voluntary effort, but that anybody who wants to try to match volunteers with households and so on needs to plug into local government in parishes and towns, particularly in rural areas such as the one with which I am concerned.

Secondly, on local authorities’ lost income, I hear the points that have been made very powerfully about the additional burdens that will be placed on local authorities as a result of the demand that we are going to see, but councils are also going to endure lost income as a result of this crisis. In Wiltshire, we are worrying about up to £25 million-worth of income that is normally received through all sorts of activities such as leisure services, parking, council tax and so on. We are stepping in to support businesses with lost revenues, but we need to think about how to do that for councils as well—not just helping them to meet the additional demand for services, but compensating them for their losses.