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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. May I say seriously to the hon. Gentleman that he would do well to take heed of the rulings that I am giving from the Chair. If he does not, I will require him to cease.
Mr. Paterson: I am most grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Brian H. Donohoe (Cunninghame, South): Just sit down.
Mr. Paterson: I will speak. We have plenty of time.
The real lesson is that the measure turns its back on our successful assimilations of previous centuries. What is worse, it is driven, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) said, by the power of attracting public funds to ethnic groups.
We already know that, since the war, the Welsh and the Scots have managed to paint themselves as afflicted minorities driven down by the English. As a result, they receive 25 per cent. more public funds than they raise in taxation.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. May I say to the House as a whole that we will have a properly conducted debate. Determining orderliness will continue to be the responsibility of the occupant of the Chair.
Mr. Paterson: Thank you again, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
The information that will be gleaned from the census will probably not be valid. We have the extraordinary subsection (1A), which says that
- no person shall be liable to a penalty under subsection (1) for refusing or neglecting to state any particulars in respect of religion.
Mr. Paterson: That is a pertinent point. It calls into question those who do not want to give their religious denomination and reply by stating, incorrectly, "None." That is a valid point.
I have listened carefully to contributions by Members on both sides of the House, but I have not yet heard any practical advantages from putting through the measure. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) said that the police would learn the number of Sikhs in Slough. It is their business to know how many Sikhs there are in Slough. They should know already. The fact that some faulty information will almost certainly be gleaned from the census will not benefit policing in Slough. [Interruption.] Is the hon. Lady trying to intervene?
Fiona Mactaggart indicated dissent.
Mr. Paterson: Apparently she is not. There is no practical gain. There is the ability to gain faulty information and to draw conclusions that may have damaging effects on this country long term. For that reason, I shall oppose the measure.
12.54 am
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Miss Melanie Johnson): I see that the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow), who I believe is a Conservative Front-Bench spokesman, is just leaving the Chamber.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed) for introducing and explaining the Bill. I share the disappointment of many hon. Members and of the faith communities that the Bill was not able to receive an unopposed Second Reading on the previous occasions when it was presented before the House.
The Government recognise the importance of having a clear picture of the diversity of faith communities in the United Kingdom, to make it possible to deal with the concerns and needs of all sections of the community. [Interruption.] The census is, indeed, a once in a decade opportunity to do that, reliably and consistently, for local areas across the country.
I am grateful to some of my hon. Friends, and to the hon. Members for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed) and for Croydon, South (Mr. Ottaway), for shedding the only light cast on the subject in this long debate--[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. May I say to the House that the debate will be assisted if there are no more sedentary comments?
Miss Johnson: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
My hon. Friends the Members for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) spoke about the value of the census and, particularly, of asking the question on religion.
I remind hon. Members that the explanatory notes explain very clearly--that is what they are for--why the information is being collected. Paragraphs 2 to 5 explain the background to the matter. Bearing in mind the hour and the time that we have spent discussing the matter, I shall not read out the paragraphs, especially as some of them have already been quoted.
The basic reason for collecting such information, however, is so that it can be used to inform planning, policy and services. As some hon. Members have recognised positively in their speeches, the United Kingdom is now a very ethnically and religiously diverse community. We need that information to provide the right services while recognising people's individual ethnic and religious perspectives.
Mr. Gray: Will the hon. Lady give way?
Miss Johnson: I shall not give way. I have only just started my speech, and am attempting to reply to a two-hour debate in which many points have been made.
Some hon. Members have repeatedly but very mistakenly used the word "intrusive" to describe the question. Such a description is a travesty of the situation. The Bill emphasises that answering the question is voluntary. The form will also make it clear that it is a voluntary question, and we make it absolutely plain that there will be no penalty whatever for not answering it. Opposition Members have not recognised, as they should have done, that there is no intrusiveness in a question that is purely voluntary.
Many Opposition Members have maintained that the record of those who answer the question will be scrutinised by the Government. However, the Government will not come anywhere near any of that information, whether it is provided by the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) or by any other hon. Member or member of the community. The Office for National Statistics collects that information, the confidentiality of which is guaranteed for a full 100 years, and which is used purely for statistical purposes.
I was therefore shocked to hear many hon. Members effectively making an attack not only on the value of the question value but on the overall notion of the census. Many Departments think that the question would be extremely useful in planning services. Moreover, as the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire said, very many religious organisations have actively supported--indeed, campaigned--for the question to be included in the census. They have done so because they think that the information is important.
Recently, I communicated with organisations on the Bill's failure--because of objections by only a couple of Opposition Members--to make progress under the private Members' Bill procedure. I received representations from organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain, the Bahai Community of the United Kingdom, the Council of the Churches for Britain and Ireland, the Jain Samaj Europe, Inter-Faith Network for the United Kingdom, the Inner Cities Religious Council, the Churches Commission for Inter-Faith Relations and the archbishops of the Church of England.
Mr. Forth: Will the Minister indicate which religious groups will benefit from the distribution of resources resulting from the census information proposed?
Miss Johnson: The point about the collection of information is that it is to enable us to plan services in the best possible way for the entire community, of whatever religious, ethnic or other background--just as we collect all sorts of other information on the basis of the census. Such information is used in planning many services.
I was shocked for much of the debate because Conservative Members were displaying quite a few prejudices: their true colours were very clearly revealed. Many other people will be shocked by some of the remarks that have been made. "Shocked" is the most appropriate word in this context.
Mr. Gray: Will the hon. Lady give way?
Miss Johnson: I shall not give way at the moment.
The right hon. Members for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) and for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) were both Ministers in previous Tory Governments. They were both heavily dependent--if they were not, it is even more shocking--on census data in the planning of the services for which they were responsible and in respect of which officials in their Departments would have brought forward information closely based on the information collected in the census.
I was intrigued by the remarks of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst about the fact that the Bill was receiving some Government support. I have been reminded by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) of the considerable co-operation of the right hon. Gentleman when he was an Education Minister with the Activity Centres (Young Persons' Safety) Bill, a private Member's Bill introduced by my hon. Friend which reached the statute book in 1995 with a considerable degree of Government co-operation and support, including the right hon. Gentleman's strong support in the Committee that dealt with it. So I am not surprised if the right hon. Gentleman finds himself in some difficulty with the responses that rightly came from Labour Members to some of his remarks.
The right hon. Gentleman related the religious question to the ethnicity question, which, as a Schools Minister, he repeatedly used as a basis for funding schools and determining standard spending assessments--again a clear indication that such questions can be useful. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman showed no caution when he was a Minister in thinking that there was relevance in using such statistics in order to determine something.
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