Public Holidays on Religious Occasions

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main, and to take part in the debate. I strongly echo the support we have heard for public holidays on Diwali, Dussehra, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. I find myself agreeing with the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman)—a most unusual position for me—that the two most important days of the Jewish calendar are also very worthy of reference in a debate such as this.

I commend the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) and the Petitions Committee for initiating the debate, which is surely about the ambition of the Muslim and Hindu communities to recognise their most holy of days with public holidays and about their demanding that they are better valued, as communities and individuals, by the country in which they live. I strongly agree with the hon. Gentleman that it beggars belief that exams are allowed to take place on such important occasions. Just as with Brent Council, Harrow Council makes a point of not holding significant council meetings on days when important holidays are taking place within the communities that they serve.

I must confess that I have always supported increasing the number of public holidays and have always been sceptical of the claim that doing so would cost an arm and a leg. It is difficult to believe that the bank holiday granted for the diamond jubilee cost employers around £1.2 billion. I suspect that that is about as robust a statistic as one from the Vote Leave campaign during the Brexit referendum. I welcome that the Labour party is committed to making the national days of the home nations public holidays, but I ask Front-Bench Members, as I ask the Government, to go further.

The hon. Member for Harrow East alluded to the idea of a four-day week, which is no longer seen as a completely mad, hare-brained idea. There are progressive employers that have already introduced four-day weeks for their employees, or that are generous in giving employees time off to attend to matters of personal importance or to celebrate religious occasions. It really should not be beyond the wit of the greatest country on earth to find a way to grant public holidays for these hugely important days.

It is worth spelling it out that Islam and Hinduism are the second and third largest religions in the country. Islam represented almost 5% of the UK population as far back as 2011; I suspect that figure is higher now. Hinduism represents more than 1.5% of the English population, and I am pleased to say that many Hindus live in my constituency.

Let me start with Diwali and Dussehra, which are both major Hindu festivals. I intend to spend much of Diwali visiting some of the great temples that serve my constituency, be it the International Siddhashram Shakti centre, Stanmore temple—that is in the constituency of the hon. Member for Harrow East, but we think of it as in Harrow West—or, in Brent, Neasden temple, which is one of the great Hindu temples worldwide and which many of my constituents attend regularly, particularly during Diwali.

Diwali symbolises the spiritual victory of light over darkness, good over evil and knowledge over ignorance. During the celebration, temples, homes, shops and office buildings owned by the community are brightly illuminated. One of the great joys of Diwali is seeing such celebration and such light.

Other faiths celebrate their respective festivals alongside Diwali. The Jains—it has been an honour today to attend the Jitopreneurs event taking place in the House of Lords—observe their own Diwali, alongside the Hindu Diwali. There is a Jain temple in Kenton Road; that, too, is not quite in Harrow West, although we see it as in Harrow West. There is a temple in Hayes, which many of the Jains in my constituency attend. The most important Jain temple in the UK is at Potters Bar, and many of my constituents will go there to celebrate Diwali.

It is worth spelling it out that the festival of Diwali is already an official holiday in a number of countries around the world, many of which have hugely close links to the UK. If it can be achieved that Diwali is marked in other countries, why cannot it be marked in the UK?

Dussehra, too, is a major Hindu festival and it is celebrated at the end of Navratri every year. It is observed in different ways from Diwali and is to remember the goddess Durga’s victory over the buffalo demon Mahishasura to restore and protect dharma. It is equally, if not more, important.

The two Muslim events that the petitioners understandably think should be marked as public holidays are Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Eid al-Adha is arguably the most holy of days, coming as it does at the end of the annual Hajj to Mecca—arguably one of the most remarkable acts of pilgrimage of any faith worldwide. It honours the willingness of Ibrahim—Abraham—to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God’s command, so even those of us of a Christian faith can recognise the significance of that moment without, surely, too much thought or effort. Eid al-Fitr is also a hugely important religious holiday for many of my constituents. It celebrates the conclusion of the 29 or 30 days of dawn-to-sunset fasting during the month of Ramadan.

On those occasions, the Salaam centre in north Harrow in my constituency, Harrow central mosque and, indeed, Stanmore mosque in the constituency of the hon. Member for Harrow East, which many of my constituents attend, are hugely busy places as people from my constituency attend to mark days that are of huge spiritual significance to them.

I recognise that there has traditionally been a reluctance with regard to the change that is sought, so it is worth my pointing out, as others have, that England and Wales have the lowest number of public holidays. Germany, whose economy some would say is doing slightly better than ours at the moment, has almost 50% more public holidays than the UK and productivity that is significantly higher. If Germany can make its economy work well with a larger number of public holidays, why on earth should not England and Wales—and, indeed, Scotland and Northern Ireland—do so as well?

Given that I suspect that the Front Benchers will not immediately cave today and say that they will support this change, I shall briefly mention an initiative from the United States, where the most progressive employers have introduced paid personal days for staff members to enable them to observe religious occasions or to use them for other personal reasons. They are not written into law as such, but they are a concept widely recognised by employers. Perhaps with tax incentives to assist, even the most recalcitrant of employers’ organisations might be willing to recognise that that could be a route, initially, to help employers to adjust to their employees being able to take time off to, perfectly reasonably, celebrate those two hugely important sets of public holidays in the Hindu community and the Islamic calendar.

In a spirit of optimism but also of hard-nosed realism, I recognise that those of us on the Back Benches still have some way to go to push Ministers and Opposition Front Benchers to accept the case for further paid public holidays to recognise important religious occasions, but I hope that this debate will contribute to that process and reassure those of Hindu or of Islamic faith that there are Members of Parliament who are determined to make the case for the special and holy days of their religion to be recognised in the way they should be.