Eid and Diwali (Public Holidays)

Jenny Willott Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Jenny Willott (Cardiff Central) (LD)]

The subject of this debate is an important issue for us to discuss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for ensuring that we have the debate before the petition expires. The issue is important to a very large number of people throughout the country.

I cannot claim a constituency as diverse as that of my hon. Friend’s, but Cardiff Central is mixed. I have two gurdwaras, two synagogues, five mosques and goodness knows how many churches, of all denominations and both English language and Welsh speaking. There is a ring of temples around the edge of my constituency, although none are in the constituency, and I have a Quaker meeting house and a Buddhist centre. A broad range of different religions is therefore represented. That diversity and vibrancy are among the things that I love about my constituency and my city. I am sure that my hon. Friend feels the same about his area. In this country, we are lucky to have such a hugely diverse, mixed and vibrant community, which we all benefit and learn from. We can all see the benefits to the country of that diversity.

Faith groups play a hugely important role in our communities throughout the country. Wherever they are, people from different faiths are working hard in churches, mosques, temples, gurdwaras, synagogues and so on, as well as in charities and community groups, to address problems in their local communities. The faith groups of the country play a hugely important role in making life better for other people and in making our communities a better place to live. The Government want to support that, to develop friendly relationships between people of different faiths and to help those groups that are active, co-operating and working together for the benefit of all in our society.

We are talking about people from different backgrounds coming together, not only to sit down and share tea, samosas, pakoras or whatever, but to work together for the common good and to tackle shared social problems, regardless of faith background. That might be to deal with something that my hon. Friend mentioned, tackling extremism, but it might be about planning issues or protecting green spaces in our communities. Our faith communities should be working together on all such issues.

The Government have invested more than £8 million in the Near Neighbours programme, which is intended to build productive local relationships between people of different faiths in areas of high deprivation. Since the start of the programme in 2011, we have funded a number of Eid and Diwali-related projects, including many successful events, such as at the Quba mosque in Leicester or the Shree Krishna community centre in Bradford. Those events have been targeted at local residents and at local people of all faiths and of none.

The Shree Krishna centre in Bradford, for example, worked with a nearby Sikh temple, St Clement’s church and the Ahmadiyya mosque, as well as local schools, to put together a Diwali celebration for as many local people as possible. More than 2,000 people attended the event—hugely successful—where food, entertainment and a fireworks display were laid on for them to enjoy. Such events help to build relationships between communities and faith groups and make people in a local area feel more part of the community, more supportive of each other and stronger together.

The Quba mosque in Leicester supports the local Somali community and acts as a place of worship and a community centre. It held an Eid celebration for the local community, which was opened up to local residents of all faiths, with the intention of building relationships across the community. The mosque worked with Leicester city council and the St Philip’s centre to bring in a wider group of people to celebrate Eid.

The Government also funded the Oldham Interfaith Forum, which has hosted events to bring together different faith groups. It hosted a seasonal Festival of Lights to celebrate Hanukkah, Diwali, Eid and Christmas and to show the links between the different religions, bringing everyone together to celebrate each others’ religious festivals. Representatives of faith groups from the town had the opportunity to explain their festivals to other groups and to put on an artistic show involving music or dance. The Government funding ensured that many members of the local community were able to come together to share the event.

Together in Service is another Government programme to build on those relationships. It was launched last year to strengthen social action around the country. We are investing £300,000 in the programme over two years and 37 projects are already running. For example, the Dagenham Bangladeshi Women and Children’s Association runs a project to improve quality of life through participation in local community events, again bringing people together to have a better understanding of the different faiths in a community.

The Government are also funding a project called Remembering the Brave, which is particularly interesting. It works across faith groups, whether Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs or others, to remember those who died for our country. When I meet members of my local community and discuss remembering the first and second world wars, the role of different faith communities and their contribution is frequently raised with me, because it is often overlooked and not remembered in quite the way that it should be. Such projects can therefore make a big contribution to bringing people together and to making them feel that their contribution to the past as well as the present of the country is properly recognised.

We continue to fund the important work of the Inter Faith Network for the UK in linking and encouraging inter-faith dialogue throughout the country. As part of that, I am pleased to say that more than 409 events are known to have taken place across England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2013, which is an increase of nearly a third on the previous year. We are putting our money where our mouth is, and communities are coming together, which I am sure we all think is a good thing.

As we know, members of our Muslim communities are observing the month of Ramadan, so it is particularly appropriate to mention the Big Iftar, which I am not sure that people have heard about. In the past, many non-Muslims felt that they knew little about Ramadan and its meaning. In recent years, many have felt that they would like to learn more about it and to understand it more.

I was on holiday in Morocco a few years ago, when Ramadan began, and the owners of the apartment block in which we were staying invited us to break the fast with them and their family and to share the evening meal. It was a quite extraordinary experience. Not only was the food out of this world, but it showed what an important part of the celebration the coming together is. It is not only the food, but the fact that everyone is together and everyone shares the experience. I cherish the memory.

The Big Iftar initiative, which is supported by the Government, is designed to spread awareness and understanding of Ramadan, its implications and what it means throughout our communities. I am delighted that this year hundreds of multi-faith iftars have taken place. From Birmingham to Bradford, Leeds to London and Maidenhead to Manchester, a range of different events have taken place. Iftars have taken place in mosques, churches, synagogues, town squares and parks, and with the homeless. We have even seen World cup iftars—a real innovation.

My hon. Friend mentioned hate crime and the fact that ChildLine has reported a significant increase in the number of students who have said that they have suffered racial and Islamophobic bullying. An increase of 60% is clearly extremely worrying and something that we take very seriously. The Government have funded Tell MAMA—Monitoring Anti-Muslim Attacks—which is the first service to report such incidents specifically, as well as to offer support to victims. We also set up the first ever cross-Government working group on anti-Muslim hatred to tackle that dreadful crime. We all recognise it as a worrying trend, which needs to be tackled as soon as possible.

I have set all that out to show that the Government support all that work because we understand that strengthening relationships with our neighbours and within communities is critical to teaching future generations to respect each other and to building links between members of a community. The more people understand each other the better it is for all of us. It helps us to accept differences between people and to break down some of the barriers and misunderstandings there may otherwise be. It also makes a real difference to integration and the way that people feel about the communities in which they live.

As part of that, we welcome the celebration of Diwali, Eid and various other religious festivals, just as we have always enjoyed celebrating Easter and Christmas together as a country. All faiths have a home in this country and it is important that their members feel that their faiths are valued and recognised. The religious observances and celebrations of Eid and Diwali are clearly important to followers of the Islamic and Hindu faiths. As I have already said, wider communities are now getting involved in the celebrations, showing the many common values that we all share regardless of our own religious beliefs.

The Government regularly receive requests for additional bank and public holidays to celebrate a variety of occasions, both religious and non-religious. The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) spoke about requests to recognise St George’s day. I am the MP for a Welsh constituency, and there are always calls to recognise St David’s day as a bank holiday in Wales. I think there have even been requests for a Margaret Thatcher day as a recognised bank holiday, so a range of different suggestions has been put forward over the years. However, the current pattern of bank holidays is well established and accepted. The Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 provides the statutory basis for UK bank holidays and bank holidays designated since 1971 are appointed each year by royal proclamation.

Provisions in the legislation enable the dates of bank holidays to be changed or other holidays to be declared, as we saw with the diamond jubilee, but that has to be done by royal proclamation. Such holidays are for celebrating special occasions or for one-off events such as the millennium. Proposals for the declaration of special bank holidays are considered by a ministerial committee. Any final decision requires the approval of Her Majesty the Queen. It is the usual process to consult widely when considering new bank holidays or amending the date of an existing one, and an impact assessment is carried out as part of that.

As hon. Members will know, there are currently eight permanent bank and public holidays in England and Wales, nine in Scotland and 10 in Northern Ireland, including St Patrick’s day and Battle of the Boyne day. Those figures include Christmas day and Good Friday, which in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are common-law holidays—they are not specified by law as bank holidays but have become customary holidays because of common observance. The last change to the pattern of bank holidays was for the Queen’s diamond jubilee in 2012, which followed precedents for celebrating jubilees with an additional bank holiday.

Although bank holidays have become widely observed across the board, legislation does not give employees any right to time off or extra pay on bank holidays. Workers may use some of their annual leave entitlement for them. In the UK, that entitlement is 28 days, which is intended to reflect the combination of the eight bank holidays with EU minimum annual leave of 20 days. Those eight days of leave do not need not be taken on the bank holidays themselves, giving flexibility to workers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East talked about international comparisons. The hon. Member for Chesterfield took that one stage further and talked about total leave taken in different countries. The UK’s statutory leave entitlement is very generous when compared with countries outside the EU. The US has 10 public holidays, but there is no statutory entitlement to either annual leave or public holidays. Japan has 15 public holidays but employees are only eligible for 10 working days of annual leave, with one additional day’s leave for each year of tenure up to a total of 20 working days. There is also no guarantee of pay for public holidays there.

Our statutory entitlement is in line with that of other European countries. As I have said, providing an annual leave entitlement that does not distinguish between public holidays and annual leave gives employees greater freedom over how they use their leave entitlement, as they can choose when they wish to take it. Public holidays in Germany are paid, but the additional entitlement is 20 days of annual leave only for those who are over 18 years old and are working five days per week. Many other countries such as Denmark and Sweden offer only the European minimum of 20 days per year, with no additional public holiday entitlement. The UK entitlement is generous.

As the hon. Member for Chesterfield said, the Government’s policy is to encourage employers to respond flexibly and sympathetically to any requests for leave, including requests for religious holidays, bearing in mind business needs. The Equality Act 2010 also makes it unlawful for employers to treat staff from a particular religious group less favourably than those from other religions when considering requests for leave or requests to refrain from work on particular days. It is absolutely right that people should not suffer discrimination at work due to their religious beliefs. Under the Equality Act, employees can challenge their employers’ rules and practices if they unreasonably put people who have a particular religion or belief at a particular disadvantage and cannot be justified. We welcome any reasonable steps that employers can take themselves to accommodate the wishes of their religious employees. British employers are generally very good at being reasonable in accommodating people’s religious beliefs and there is often quite a lot of flexibility.

Although I appreciate a new public holiday may benefit some communities and sectors, both my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East and the hon. Member for Chesterfield raised the cost to the economy, which remains considerable. For example, the most recent assessment of the economic cost of the additional holiday for the diamond jubilee shows that bank holidays across the UK as a whole cost employers around £1.2 billion, despite there being no statutory right to time off or extra pay on the additional holiday. That estimated cost of £1.2 billion is calculated by considering different scenarios for the extent to which businesses will be shut on the bank holiday and the associated loss in output.

The costs are partially offset by increased revenues for businesses in the leisure and tourism sectors and a boost in retail spending, but it is not expected that additional bank holidays for Eid and Diwali will result in increased tourism. Taking that into account, the cost figure would be higher for each bank holiday. In addition to the business cost, there is the unquantified operational impact from staff absences in health, local authority and transport services.

It is important that as a country we celebrate all major religious festivals together. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said, the Government already take the lead in doing so—by hosting annual Eid and Diwali celebrations in Downing street, for example, which are extremely popular and always well attended. Ministers also take opportunities to go out to local communities to share in the celebrations marking major religious festivals. I am sure that all of us, as Members of Parliament, do the same in our own local communities.

The Government do not believe there should be a public holiday to mark these two particular occasions. I know that will disappoint some people, but I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the issue today. It is important that we should be able to discuss it and put on the record the value of the huge diversity and wide range of different faith groups represented in our communities, and the massive contribution they all make to our local communities and to society as a whole.

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the matter today and for his continuing dedication to and support for the work of those communities. I hope that people who have been listening to us are at least happy and satisfied that we have debated the matter at length and that all of us have put on the record our belief that the contribution made by faith communities in the UK is critical to the way our society functions.