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Mr. Edward Davey: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The questions to which the right hon. Gentleman refers were debated by a statutory instrument Committee of this House and passed without a vote.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman's point of order is timely, as I was beginning to feel that the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) was going wide of the Bill, which deals with one particular point. I suspect that it is outside the scope of the debate to put the questions that he has been putting to the Minister.
Mr. Maclean: I am grateful for your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is very helpful. I was approaching the matter cautiously as I did not want to stray from the subject of the debate. If the Minister can confirm the intervention by the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), that would be helpful. If all the other matters have been dealt with, we can focus purely on the one question before us tonight: the new question on religion--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am the one who, from the Chair, is trying to help the right hon. Gentleman to focus on this particular point.
Mr. Maclean: I am grateful for that help once again, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
The question that we must address tonight is whether we give a Second Reading to a Bill that includes, for the first time, an intrusive and offensive question asking people to state their religion. I shall not return to previously traced ground, but if other matters have already been added to the 2001 census, it helps us to consider whether this is one more straw that may break the camel's back.
It is indicative of the nature of this Government, and relevant to the point that I was making, which was that, like all Governments, they want to ask more questions. They want to collect more statistics, whether they can use them or not.
Mr. Bercow: They do not like answering, though.
When one reads the explanatory notes to the Bill, one gets the feeling that the Government are scratching around trying to find some general justifications for the offensive question on religion that they are asking. As has been alluded to by some of my right hon. and hon. Friends tonight, the answer is out there, plain for all to see. Various religious groups are quite clear about the purpose of the question, because they have been demanding that the Government ask it, certain in the knowledge that they will encourage all their religious adherents to answer it and that most of the more idle Christian population will not bother to answer it, or will find it offensive.
Many people fill in forms by stating that they are Church of England Christians. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) said, when, in the Army, one is asked to state one's religion, one picks the easiest answer. Those serving in Scotland pick Church of Scotland, and those serving in England pick Church of England. Many of those who are not strict religious adherents to a particular faith will find the question offensive and may not answer it. We shall therefore get distorted results.
Some of my hon. Friends have already suggested that the reason the Muslim community is so keen on this question is because it intends to ensure that all its religious adherents answer it faithfully and thoroughly, so that a maximum score will be marked down for some of those religions. On the other hand, a large number of members of the Christian religion may not answer the question--they may decline to answer it or not bother to answer it. We shall therefore get distorted results.
We can see from the explanatory notes to the Bill that, on the basis of those distorted results, the Government intend to allocate resources according to some of the answers that they get to the religious question. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) may have been right in the assertions that he made earlier--that the Bill has some dangerous precedents, that there is a danger that it will cause distortion, and that the Government will seek to move funding away from rural areas to inner-city areas, where they pronounce that they have identified a particular religious minority desperately in need of financial help. [Hon. Members: "Oh!"] It is no good Labour Members saying "Oh, oh." We have seen it time and again. The Government did that with police funding,
directing funding to inner-city areas. After conducting research that showed that there was a rural sparsity problem, they still refused to allocate proper funding to rural areas.
Mr. Forth: Can my right hon. Friend imagine any circumstances in which taxpayers' money is likely to be diverted by the Government to a Christian community as a result of answers that might be given to the census?
Mr. Maclean: Of course one cannot envisage that in the case of the present Government, but it would be wrong in any event. It would be entirely wrong to direct resources to an area containing a large Christian population, and away from any other area. That should not be a relevant consideration. When my Muslim constituents and my Christian constituents are waiting for cataract operations, and when the waiting list is constantly growing under this Government, their religion is irrelevant; it is the shortage of resources in the health service that matters. I would find it deeply offensive if I discovered that any of my constituents who were members of a minority faith had been given poorer treatment--or better treatment--because of their religion. Religion should be irrelevant to the determining of resources from either local authorities or central Government.
There is a smell here. It comes from what some Labour Members have said, from some of what has been written in the press, and from some of the pronouncements made by members of ethnic communities. There is a suggestion that the Bill, and the amendment that it proposes, are seen by them as yet another vehicle for the distortion of Government funding, and as a stick with which to beat the Government. When they get the figures that suit them--showing high populations of certain religious communities in certain parts of the country, in comparison with, perhaps, Christian communities or others--they will use it to extort funds from the Government. The Government know that. If that is their purpose--and we know that it is--they should come clean tonight and simply say so.
Let us not pretend that there is a vital need for the statistical information. Let the Government come clean and tell the House that they want the Bill to be given a Second Reading because they want to buy votes in certain parts of the country.
12.45 am
Mr. Owen Paterson (North Shropshire): Thank you for calling me, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We have plenty of time. Let me begin by saying what a pleasure it is to see here the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Bradley), the deputy Chief Whip. It is fascinating to note that he can be so upset by mention of the fact that he is a patron of Manchester grammar school. I think that he said "Cheap" 20 times; let us see how many times he says it now. However, it is nice to see him on the Front Bench, and it is nice to see him listening so carefully.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I recommend the hon. Gentleman to stick closely to the terms of the Bill. I do not think that gratuitous comments of that kind are helpful to the debate.
Mr. Paterson: Some factual errors were made by the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane), who, as a
Catholic, should know that he has the privilege of being a Member of Parliament thanks to a Conservative Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, whose Government passed the Catholic emancipation Act--the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829.Earlier, the hon. Gentleman made great play of the fact that this party, of which I am proud to be a member, had not spoken up, and had never made any progress, on the rights of religious minorities in this country. I think it important to get across that the first real breakthrough after the glorious revolution was the emancipation Act, which gave Catholics the right to be members of the armed forces and Members of this House.
The real history of this country lies in our ability to adopt wave after wave of immigrants from a kaleidoscopic variety of backgrounds and cultures, and to integrate them in our society without conflict. That is a record of which we should be extraordinarily proud. Several Members mentioned Jews. The last pogrom in this country took place in York in 1260; no other country can emulate that record. I am glad to see my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) nodding. I believe that he comes from a Jewish culture.
Mr. Paterson: As does my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow).
The history of Jewish immigrants symbolises--[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. This historical passage is going outside the scope of the Bill. The hon. Gentleman has not been able to relate it to this narrow measure. I must request him to talk about the Bill, and leave remoter issues.
Mr. Paterson: I am grateful for that. The point that I make is directly related to the Bill because the Bill seeks to carve the country up into ghettos. It is a recipe for this country's ghettoisation. The trick that we have learned over the centuries is to assimilate different cultures. The Huguenots, for example, came over after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. They kept their religion.
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