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11.2 pm

Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst): The process in which we are now engaged is irregular, and it gives me grounds for believing that this has almost certainly been a Government Bill right from the start, but in a practice that we have now become used to, it is being smuggled through in the guise of a private Member's Bill.

I am strengthened in that view when I read what the Leader of the House said last Thursday. She admitted that the Bill's position is unusual and said that

Governments do not usually find time for private Members' Bills.

She went on, with the casual arrogance that we have come to expect from the Government, to say:

However, the Bill is believed to be uncontroversial.

What right the Leader of the House has to say that such a Bill is uncontroversial is quite beyond me, as she had no means of knowing what were the views of Members of this House. We have become all too used to such attitudes; the Government simply glibly assume that a Bill such as this is uncontroversial.

The Leader of the House went on to claim that the Bill

went through the House of Lords without any difficulty.

As we have already heard, a significant amendment was made to the Bill in the House of Lords because many of the Members of the other place expressed disquiet about a fundamental aspect of it. For the Leader of the House to claim that the Bill is uncontroversial and went through the other place without any difficulty strikes me as not only extraordinary, but rather typical of the Government's attitude to the legislative process and to this House and the other House.

The Leader of the House also said of the Bill:

The issue it addresses was raised after the main census legislation had gone through.

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How careless--the Government had obviously taken their eye off the ball. She added that


there was no reason to anticipate that there would be a difficulty in the House of Commons.

I am generally an admirer of the right hon. Lady, but on this occasion her judgment of the House was inexplicably flawed. She should have known that such a Bill would be highly controversial in the House of Commons, as it has turned out to be, and I shall explain why.

Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire): Before my right hon. Friend gets into the main part of his argument, he referred to remarks made by the Leader of the House. Despite making those remarks, she said shortly after:

The matter is one in which there is considerable public interest--[Official Report, 15 June 2000; Vol. 351, c. 1106.]

Surely that is the case and surely it is perfectly reasonable to have a full debate on the matter tonight.

Mr. Forth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend because later I shall expand on the nature of that public interest, which I find sinister. First, during my preliminary remarks I want to refer to the explanatory notes which, apart from the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed), are all the guidance we have. The provenance of those notes might be interesting for the House to consider. Usually, explanatory notes are prepared by the Government to help us to understand a Government Bill, but here we have what look suspiciously like Government explanatory notes, except that they allegedly explain a private Member's Bill.

Perhaps my hon. Friend--were he to seek to catch your eye again, Mr. Deputy Speaker--or even the Minister might tell us exactly what is the relationship between the Bill, the Government and the Bill's promoters in the other place and in this House. Does not it seem odd that a private Member's Bill should be graced by explanatory notes that bear all the imprints of the civil service? However, let us simply take the explanatory notes at face value. Here we must look for the background to the Bill and what it seeks to achieve. Paragraph 3 says:

Central government, local and health authorities, commercial business and the professions need reliable information on the number and characteristics of people and households if they are to conduct many of their activities effectively.

That perfectly straightforward preamble lays the ground as to why we might want information of the sort that the census would provide. Paragraph 4 says:

The Government, in particular, needs this kind of information to form policy, to plan services for specific groups of people and to distribute resources effectively to local and health authorities to enable them to direct resources to where they are needed.

In a moment, we shall see that people's religious beliefs will be relevant to the formation of policy, the planning of services for specific groups and the distribution of resources. We are now deep into the real meaning behind the Bill, which appears to be that the Government intend taxpayers' money and Government planning to be directed to religious groups and to people's religious faith.

Mr. Fabricant: Would my right hon. Friend care to speculate on precisely how the Government will allocate resources on health? After all, was it not Shakespeare's character Shylock who said:

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

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Surely people are human beings whether they are Jewish, Hindu, Christian or anything else. In health terms, what, precisely, is the difference?

Mr. Forth: My hon. Friend asks a good question. Later, I shall want to consider the interesting matter of how the Government will distribute resources or make policy for people who write "None" when a census form asks their religion, but I am now considering the preliminaries because I want to help the House and myself to understand exactly what the Government think they are about with these measures.

Mr. Owen Paterson (North Shropshire): I am sure that my right hon. Friend is conversant with the Treasury document "The 2001 Census of Population", but the rest of the House may not be. There is a definite difference in emphasis in paragraph 26 on page 8, which says:

The topics proposed for the Census are those that have been shown to be most needed by central and local government, the health service, academics, businesses and professional organisations.

What interpretation does he put on that?

Mr. Forth: That raises a question similar to that which I am posing about the formation of Government policy. What those different bodies in their different ways would do were they given the information that would flow from those questions is a matter for speculation and one to which we must all turn our minds. However, I am even more worried to read in paragraph 8 of the explanatory notes that answers

to the question would help provide information which would supplement the output from the ethnic group question by identifying ethnic minority sub-groups, particularly those originating from the Indian sub-continent. In turn, this will provide baseline figures against which the Government can monitor possible racial disadvantage and social exclusion within particular minority groups.

That immediately leads to interesting speculation about the Government's perception--or that of the Bill's promoters--of the necessary connection between ethnicity and religious belief. Such an assumption is not only arrogant but dangerous.

Proposed question 10 on the census form will refer to Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh. Will it be assumed that Buddhists are from one ethnic group? Are not there white Buddhists and white Muslims? Those who devised the question show great arrogance in assuming that ethnicity and religious belief fall neatly into the same category. If they do not believe that, the aim that is set out in paragraph 8 is nonsense.

Mr. Edward Davey: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is a separate ethnicity question in the census?

Mr. Forth: That may well be, but unless one can cross-reference ethnicity and religion, the measure is meaningless because paragraph 8 makes an explicit connection between ethnicity and religious belief. I do not believe that policies should be formed or resources distributed on the basis of religious affiliation. I challenge that assumption, and I shall revert to it later.

For the moment, I simply stress that I reject the causal connection that paragraph 8 of the explanatory notes attempts to make. To make a connection between

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religious faith, based on information that people are prepared to reveal, and Government policy on the distribution of resources is not only dubious practice, but an intrusion into the most private of personal matters: religious faith.

Before we consider that, we must get to the bottom of whether answering the question is voluntary. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) asked that question, but failed to deal with it satisfactorily. Let us consider the general proposition that the census form makes it clear that it is compulsory to answer all questions. People will approach the census form on that basis, unless it includes a disclaimer such as that which the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton mentioned. His question remains valid and I hope that we shall receive a comprehensive and satisfactory answer from the Minister.

It is not enough to say that proposed new section (1A) states that

no person shall be liable to a penalty . . . for refusing or neglecting to state any particulars . . .

That simply means that the penalties that apply in relation to the rest of the census form would not apply to the question about religion.

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