Equality Bill - the Public Sector Equality Duty and Employment Exceptions for Churches and Christian Organisations

Andrea Williams

The Equality Bill aims to sweep all of the existing law on equality into one Act of Parliament and to eliminate more forms of discrimination than are currently covered.

While Christians believe in the innate worth of every human being, the Bill undermines basic Christian freedoms to adhere to biblical values in the area of employment. The Bill will affect Churches, who will not be able to discriminate on the basis of sexual practice that contravenes biblical values or gender reassignment when employing staff. Only roles that wholly or mainly involve, promoting or teaching religion or leading worship services will be exempt from the provisions of the Government's Equality Bill. Far from simplifying the law, which the Government promised the Equality Bill would do, the Bill introduces more complex requirements even above and beyond those already within the existing law and the explanatory notes to the Bill state that "the specific exception applies to a very narrow range of circumstances".

During the Report Stage in the House of Commons, John Mason, MP said:

Let us consider the definition: "wholly or mainly involves...leading or assisting...liturgical or ritualistic practices...or...promoting or explaining the doctrine of the religion".

Even a full-time priest, minister or pastor would not "mainly" be doing that, because much of their time is spent visiting the sick and perhaps with funerals and so on. In fact, therefore, the definition could exclude everybody.

Mark Harper, MP, Shadow Minister (Disabled People), Work and Pensions, explained this in more detail and added that "If the definition does not even include people who lead worship in their churches, it seems to me that it is a faulty one."

The Bill's intention was to ensure that posts such as Church Cleaner or Accountant to the Church would not be covered by the exception, but a Minister or Priest would be. There are other posts that this change would affect, including those which may have a pastoral or representative role such as a youth worker.

The current Bill's wording means that if passed, it would no longer be lawful to require a Minister/Vicar/Priest to be male, unmarried, not in a civil partnership, not homosexual or not transsexual, since virtually no such person would be able to show that their time was "wholly or mainly" spent either leading liturgy or promoting or explaining the doctrines of the religion.

The Equality Bill is due for its Second Reading in the House of Lords on 15th December, when it will be debated. It is provisionally timetabled for Committee Stage on 11th and 13th January 2010, but further days may be announced for Committee Stage. It is at Committee Stage and Report Stage that amendments to the Bill can be considered and voted upon. Now is the time to act. We need to be prepared, because the vote could be as early as the second week in January 2010.

We want to maintain the legal status quo regarding the exceptions that churches can use when deciding who they are prepared to employ. Please help us by writing to Peers to ask them to support amendments to the Equality Bill that will maintain churches' freedom to recruit suitable people to key positions in churches.

Act Now to Protect Employment Exceptions for Christian Organisations

We are also concerned that although the explanatory notes say that the current law regarding the freedom of Christian organisations to employ only Christians has not changed, the example given of how the new provisions would operate is arguably much more restrictive than the current law. For that reason we would like you to request that during debate in the House of Lords, Peers ask the Government to remove this example from the explanatory notes.

The Equality Bill is a direct assault on the Church's freedom to employ people who are committed to living with Christian integrity according to the Bible. It also makes it more difficult for Christian organisations to employ Christians and reject applicants who do not share our faith, or who refuse to live according to the Bible's teaching.

Please click here to see the information pack provided by the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship (LCF), to which you can refer for further information.

You will find suggested bullet points to assist with a letter to Peers on pages 9 to 11 of the LCF briefing, covering these two issues. If you know a Peer, or know he or she lives in your local area please write to them. Otherwise, choose a Peer whose surname begins with the same letter as yours.

Act Now to oppose a Public Sector Equality Duty for "Religion or Belief" and "Sexual Orientation"

We would also like you to consider asking Peers to oppose the application of the Public Sector Equality Duty in the Equality Bill to both "religion or belief" and "sexual orientation". This is because local Councils would be required by the PSED to promote all religions as equal and all lifestyles as equal in so many of their activities including core business planning.

Please click here for our supplementary briefing pack, which contains points that we suggest you could make in your letter to a Peer of your choice.