Education (Assemblies) Bill [HL]

Lord Weir of Ballyholme Excerpts

Friday 7th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to be able to speak in this debate. In following the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, I assure her that she is not a lone voice in expressing concern over this Bill. I respectfully submit that the Bill in front of us is unnecessary, is overreaching in terms of its provisions and is potentially counterproductive.

I say “unnecessary” because, as the right reverend Prelate highlighted, there is already a high level of flexibility in our system. Indeed, there is a complete and sacrosanct opportunity for any pupil, via their parents or as sixth formers, to withdraw from any assembly. If a religious assembly goes against the religious views of a family, or if they wish to express a more secular point of view, there is that complete freedom to withdraw. This Bill does not remove compulsion from anyone; therefore, it is solving a problem that does not necessarily exist.

On the contrary, although there is at present the opportunity to withdraw if someone has a fundamental objection, I see no provision in this Bill that allows any parent to object to what they may believe to be a humanist assembly. It makes those assemblies completely compulsory, and reduces rights rather than enhancing them.

It is the case that this is a form of overreaching. It does not simply remove the requirement for an assembly with a religious character to it; it actually bans the school from holding any

“acts of worship or … religious observance”.

How do we interpret religious observance or acts of worship? Clearly, that would constitute a prayer or a hymn, for example, or telling a story from the Bible. In a practical sense, what will this mean in interpretation? It could mean that, if a school were holding its annual act of remembrance, there would be a ban on saying a prayer of thanks for the service of those who paid the supreme sacrifice. That would be outside the law under the Bill. If a school wanted to hold a service of remembrance for a pupil who had sadly died, again, there could be no religious overtones to that. Does it mean that an annual nativity play—which is clearly telling a biblical story—would constitute an act of worship? If there were a desire for the pupils to sing “Away in a Manger” or some such like, that would be banned.

Those may seem extreme examples, but let us remember that this is not simply an absolute ban; there is a provision within the Bill that makes it a legal duty on the principal to enforce it. What will happen throughout the country is that many principals will err on the side of excluding absolutely everything, and so religion and Christianity will be something that dare not speak its name.

I believe the Bill is counterproductive for a number of reasons. However much it may be unfashionable to acknowledge it now, we have a country that is based, as is western democracy, on Judeo-Christian values. We owe a great deal to those values and they are equally relevant today, perhaps more so than in the past; such values, as has been highlighted, include teaching the sanctity of human life, and love and compassion—and not simply love for your family and friends, or even community, but the Christian ethos of loving your enemy. It strikes me that a system that moves away from those values into something more nebulous is a retrograde step. There is a danger that that leads to greater segregation within our society. If we are to have entirely humanist assemblies, in which no religious element is allowed at all, we will move to a situation that will push a number of parents into a straight choice between a state school and one that is much more religiously based, and that will effectively segregate people even more.

There are many conflicts within our society, sadly, and at times our answer is to treat the symptoms of those problems within our community; worse still, there are some who will try to scapegoat communities for the problems that we face, which brings the difficulties of looking to pass blame on to outsiders within our society. It strikes me that we need much more inclusive, ethical values that we can all share. I believe those are provided by way of collective worship. We need a level of inclusion, and this measure would disaggregate people into different camps.

The proposer of the Bill has rightly indicated that a situation in which collective worship is abolished leaves a vacuum, and so has sought to provide provision for assemblies that would be spiritual, moral, social and cultural. However, as has been highlighted, we have seen unfortunately within this country over the last number of years a number of culture wars, where there are differences of opinion over issues around gender identification, the environment and socioeconomic matters. This is a recipe for further controversy, because there will be divergences of differences within schools and between parents and schools about the contents of those assemblies. This has a danger of dragging us into a level of controversy.

In conclusion, we need to see more cohesion rather than the division that would be brought about by this Bill. We need to ensure freedom of choice, rather than the compulsory attendance and intolerance that would be inadvertently produced by the Bill. We need to have greater shared values as a wider country, rather than controversy and conflict over the content of such assemblies. Whatever the intentions behind the Bill, I think it is ill-judged and that we would be taking a retrograde step if as a Parliament we ultimately endorsed this legislation, certainly in its current form.