'interfaith' projects gobbling up taxpayers’ money

If you want to know how religion is gobbling up taxpayers’ money, take a look at this parliamentary question from last week in the House of Commons.

Mr. Parmjit Dhanda (Gloucester) (Lab):

What funds his Department has allocated to interfaith projects in the last five years; and if he will make a statement.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr. Shahid Malik):

Between 2004-05 and 2007-08, my Department granted more than £5 million to interfaith projects through the faith communities capacity building fund. In 2008, under the stewardship of my hon. Friend when he was Under-Secretary of State, we published "Face to Face and Side by Side". Developed with faith communities, the document set out for the first time a national strategic framework for promoting interfaith activity, supported by some £7.5 million.

Mr. Dhanda:

I welcome my hon. Friend's reply. Does he agree that although the fund for preventing violent extremism has over three years been about £70 million, the overall faith pot has been about £15 million? Some of the best anti-radicalisation projects are also interfaith projects. Does he agree that this might be a good time to move some of that PVE [Preventing Violent Extremism] funding and use it for more interfaith projects, which does not stigmatise any community?

Mr. Malik:

As ever, my hon. Friend makes a good point. A few months ago, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced that another £7.5 million would be put out there to ensure a multi-faith approach to implementing the Prevent strategy. Projects that are PVE-focused do not have to go down the community cohesion route. It is pretty obvious that they ought to go down the Prevent route.

Desmond Swayne, Conservative MP for the New Forest West asked the Government if it would bring forward proposals to restrict the circumstances under which schools may apply for an exemption from the requirement to hold a regular act of worship of a broadly Christian character

Vernon Coaker, the Minister for Schools and Learners replied “Schools can apply to their local standing advisory council on religious education for a determination under which their daily act of collective worship need not be of a broadly Christian character. We have no plans to change that arrangement which, while still requiring such an act, allows the backgrounds of pupils to be taken into account.”

But Mr Swayne was not prepared to leave it there. He asked: “What precisely are the criteria used by local authorities when deciding to grant a determination?” To which Mr Coaker replied: “I think that the criteria are fairly obvious. For example, if a school was virtually 100 per cent. Muslim or Hindu, notwithstanding the fact that we are a Christian country, the school’s head teacher, with the governing body, may think it appropriate to say to the standing advisory council on religious education that the school wished to have an act of daily worship, but that it would be more appropriate if that took account of the background, culture and religion of its pupils. I think that most people in this country would think that that was eminently sensible.”

Yet another religious enthusiast, Sir Nicholas Winterton, who is Conservative MP for Macclesfield claimed: “Faith schools are being harassed by a party leader who seeks to tell them what to teach and by the European Union, which tells them who they can employ. Is not the very raison d'être of faith schools to sustain a distinct religious identity? Will the Secretary of State safeguard faith schools?”

The Education Secretary, Ed Balls, replied: “Absolutely. Faith schools were in existence providing free education to often the most deprived children before the state started to do the same. I fully support faith schools. They have to abide by the law on fair admissions. I think that agreeing to calls for the admissions code to be dropped to allow faith schools to pick by interviewing parents would be the wrong thing to do. I also think it is right that faith schools promote community cohesion. Both the Church of England and the Catholic Education Service are supporting our changes to the rules on sex and relationship education. I have very strong and good relationships with the faith organisations, which are supporting the direction that we taking and are not supporting the proposal by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) to keep the opt-out age at 19.”

Pressing Harriet Harman on the Equality Bill, Andrew Rossindell, the Conservative MP for Romford asked if she intended to return the Bill to its original state after the mauling it had received on religious exemptions in the House of Lords. Ms Harman replied: “We will consider how to respond to that, but an official announcement will be made in due course, once these things have gone through the machinery, as it were. However, I would reassure hon. Members that the policy will remain as it is, and I would not want to lead them to anticipate that it will be brought forward again in this House.

It has subsequently emerged that Ms Harman has had to back down in the face of this religious pressure.