Out-of-school Education Settings

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) on securing the debate. I agree with a great deal of what he said, and I think there will be widespread agreement that the prospect of Government officials inspecting and supervising religious activity is not an attractive one.

We all understand—the hon. Gentleman set this out clearly—why the Government want to introduce the measure, but the way in which they go about doing so is very important. The Christian organisation CARE, in its briefing for the debate, rightly asks the question that he raised: what became of the big society? The approach being taken here is very different. It is the big state approach, which, as we have been reminded, the Conservative party’s election manifesto explicitly repudiated.

I am particularly uncomfortable about the idea that religious instruction should be placed under the authority of some vaguely defined British values administered by Government officials. Surely, in reality, it is the other way around. Admirable British values have been formed as a result of the practice of religious faith over hundreds of years. We need the practice of faith to renew and reinvigorate those values, and there is a good deal of that around the country at the moment—for example, in the extraordinary network of food banks that has developed over the past few years, a great majority of which are faith-based. That is where good values come from. Making religious instruction subject to a state-controlled version of values is deeply problematic.

There is a recurring theme in the Government’s efforts to address extremism. Of course, it is right that the Government address the problem, but that is a very difficult thing to do. Sometimes, one gets the feeling that the Government are coming up with ideas in order to be seen to be doing something. There is a worry that a view is emerging that a person who is deeply religious should be regarded in consequence as suspect. In reality, there is no correlation between those two things; it is not true for Christians, Muslims or others. Islamist extremists, on the whole, are people who are outside of regular mosque attendance because mosque attendance involves socialisation, which helps to protect against extremism. Therefore, in reality, the connection is mistaken.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

The right hon. Gentleman is touching on the nub of the problem. In society, there are groups of people who are deeply religious and hold devout religious views. Does he agree that any Government initiative or change in legislation must not assume that those groups are in some way suspect and treat them in a blanket way to isolate and deal with the very small number of people who use devout religious views as a means and mechanism to achieve a more devious and illegal aim?

[Stephen Timms]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I very much agree with the way he has expressed that danger, which we are heading into at the moment. If the Government are determined to make some changes in this area, I wonder whether there might be a less problematic way of doing so than the one proposed in the recent consultation. As was mentioned earlier, there is not a good fit between the task proposed and the institution—Ofsted—proposed to undertake it. I am an admirer of Ofsted and, in particular, of its current chief inspector. I admired him when, years ago, he was a headteacher in the borough that I represent in the House of Commons. However, inspecting and holding to account publicly funded schools is a very different task from monitoring occasional problems in wholly voluntary settings. As one commentator has observed, the measure would, in effect, make Ofsted the state regulator of religion. It is quite surprising to see this idea from a Conservative Government. Ministers have rightly called for religious freedom overseas. We need to be vigilant that we do not undermine it at home.

There are pragmatic considerations as well. Sensitivity and tact are not the hallmarks of Ofsted. Its job, on our behalf, includes a lot of heavy lifting. The task that the Government envisage here is a very different kind of task. I cannot see that it would be right to ask Ofsted to undertake it. Instead, what if the task of inspection— if it must be done—were given to one of a number of inspecting bodies, which could perhaps be set up for the purpose? Each setting could then choose the body by which it was inspected. They might be set up by the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Alliance or the Muslim Council of Britain. The bodies would be rigorously supervised and audited by Ofsted, but it would be their staff who did the inspecting, rather than Government inspectors.

Of course, there would need to be a limit on the number of bodies, and there would be a case on the ground of openness for an inspector from a different body to accompany an inspecting team on its visits. Sunday schools or after-school Koranic classes do not object to outside visitors. The problem is with the idea that they are answerable to Government officials for the religious instruction that they deliver.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend’s suggestion sounds interesting, but does it not fly in the face of what this Government have said for many a year, which is that they do not want to see state bodies and apparatus put in place? Whether they used the original proposals or my right hon. Friend’s interesting ideas, all of it suggests further layers of bureaucracy, which they keep saying that they do not want.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was attempting to propose a different way of doing things that might get around at least some of the serious difficulties in the Government’s proposals.

In conclusion, several of us received this morning an email from a man who writes:

“I’m a British born Muslim living in East London. I have a beard and pray five times a day and I can no longer walk down my street without being looked at strangely as a threat.”

In addressing the problem—a real problem, albeit one affecting only a tiny number of people—there is a danger of accidentally severely undermining the values that we are setting out to protect.

[Several hon. Members rose—]