Andrew Turner has welcomed the decision of the Government to abandon plans to force churches and religious groups to employ non-believers. Clauses in the Equalities Bill currently going through Parliament would have extended equalities legislation ‘to all public bodies’ with the effect that Churches would not have been able to discriminate in favour of believers in their recruitment practices. Harriet Harman the Equalities Minister had been widely expected to introduce a replacement amendment.

The climb-down announcement was made this week following a defeat in the House of Lords and comments made by Pope Benedict XVI who said that they amounted to “unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs”.

The Island’s MP said :

“I voted against this daft amendment when the Bill came before the Commons but the measure was still included when the Bill went to the House of Lords who thankfully had the good sense to throw it out. Harriet Harman wants to impose her trenchant view of equality on religious organisations, but she has finally backed down. This was a blatant attempt at social engineering using legislative powers. I’m sure she would protest if her Equalities Act was applied to political parties and the Labour Party was forced to select candidates that didn’t have any affiliation to the Party. The House of Lords may not be democratically perfect – but on this measure they have shown far more sense than the House of Commons.”

END Contact : Andrew Turner’s office 01983 530808