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Mr. Forth: It pains me to say this, but I really was not convinced by the arguments of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight). I say that as someone who—the House has rarely heard me say this, but I shall say it on this occasion—has changed his mind on the Bill in a general sense. We shall return to that on Third Reading, when I hope to explain my position in much more depth and detail.
I make that point at this stage, however, because I began by having some sympathy for my right hon. Friend's new clause and amendment, and wanting to support them. I think that it takes us into a more general consideration of multiculturalism and monoculturalism. As I have said before and will say again, I am basically a monoculturalist. I believe that people who come to this country freely from elsewhere should be prepared to adapt to our culture and history, although not necessarily to our religion. I certainly would not want to say that, but I am uneasy when we go too far in encouraging differences in our society rather than integration. That is my starting point.
I therefore come to the new clause and amendment with some trepidation, although I can see exactly what my right hon. Friend wants to say. The libertarian in me wants to reflect what the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) just said. In an ideal world, I would want everyone to be as free as possible to do what they
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wanted to do of their own free will. I apply that argument to all sorts of subjects, and I suspect that we shall come to that when we debate smoking and other matters. However, that argument is overlaid by the profound cultural considerations that arise in discussion of the matter before us today. The very title of the new clause, "Cultural and non-Christian exemption", goes to the very heart of that. We must all examine our conscience and ask ourselves how far we want to go to use the law—which is what we are talking about here—either to impose uniformity on society or to acknowledge as far as possible the reasonable diversity in society. The new clause forces us to confront such issues right from the start, although I find myself torn in this case, because part of me wants the maximum freedom for people to do as they wish, even on Christmas day. I shall return to that on Third Reading, for which, unusually for me, I have done some preparation. I am not a great man for preparation, but on this occasion I have a little to hand.
When I heard the argument that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire made, the first thing that occurred to me was that, given the new clause's thrust, it is unnecessarily restrictive where it says:
"Where the owner of a large shop employs entirely non-Christian employees in that shop".
I wonder why it does not say "largely" or "substantially" instead. As the new clause stands, the presence of one Christian employee in a fairly large shop would stymie or prevent the implementation of my right hon. Friend's argument. That is somewhat anomalous, and although I can see the rationale behind his use of "entirely", it goes a long way towards undermining the whole point of what he is trying to do.
On the entirely practical question of the verification of religion, the question has rightly been raised of how we could balance reasonable privacy on a very personal matter—religion—against the reasonable verification that the new clause asks for. We get into some difficulty there. It is all very well for my right hon. Friend to say that a notice shall be made in writing and shall identify the premises—that is fairly straightforward. The issue of the owner of the shop is also probably fairly straightforward, although it might not necessarily be in some cases. For example, I wonder how the new clause would cope with cases of corporate, as opposed to personal, ownership. Where the owner of a shop that employed entirely non-Christian employees was a corporation rather than an individual, there might be a complication.
"the identity of all the employees".
The issue of identity might not provide a great difficulty—that should be known for all sorts of purposes, not least taxation and other matters—but the declaration of the employees' religion might bring considerable potential difficulties. How would we police and verify the religion of the employees to ensure that they were entirely non-Christian? That brings us, inevitably, to an intrusion into a private matter.
Of course, it could be argued that where we are discussing the cultural matters involved here, and their importance, we have to confront the fact that if we start asking people whether they want Christmas day to be sacrosanct, which is by definition a matter of religion,
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we inevitably get into declarations or verifications or religion. However, on what basis that would take place is another matter. Is it simply a question of a declaration of faith, or would one require some sort of demonstration of that? I am not a churchgoer myself, except for on one day a year, Remembrance day, and I do not want to intrude unduly into Church matters, but I am aware that some faiths, Churches and religions require a certain degree of demonstration of adherence to the faith before they will go ahead with ceremonies such as baptism or marriage.
Mr. Chope: Does my right hon. Friend not recognise that even the census requires people to state whether they are Christian, or what their religion is?
Mr. Forth: I am not sure to what extent that is a requirement, and even there I am not sure what verification procedure exists. My hon. Friend almost makes, or emphasises, my point. As I recall it, the census invites people to declare their religious affiliation, but goes no further. I am not sure, therefore, that that is a terribly good example.
I foresee all sorts of real difficulties with the new clause. Although it pains me slightly, I have to say to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire that the point that the hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes) made about red tape and bureaucracy was fair. Conservative Members need always to be aware—I have taken some of my hon. Friends to task about this before, usually, but not always, on Fridays—that, preaching as we do the virtues of deregulation and the evils of red tape, we need to exercise much care before we come to the House with measures that would impose additional bureaucracy. On the face of it, new clause 1 would do just that. It would require a procedure for notices to be made in writing and, presumably, lodged with the local authority; and my right hon. Friend also said, under pressure from questioning, that there would have to be a random inspection or verification process. It follows that those processes would have to be undertaken by local authority employees. That might be an excellent job creation scheme, or could even be part of the new deal for all I know, but it is not exactly the sort of scheme to which Conservative Members normally give ready support.
10.30 am
Mr. Greg Knight: My right hon. Friend is now trying to have it both ways. Does he not accept that I would prefer not to have this legislation? However, I was trying to say that if we must have it, the legislation would be better with the new clause and amendment No. 11.
Mr. Forth: I half accept what my right hon. Friend says, as we established on Second Reading, as is explicit in the Bill, that there will have to be some sort of additional proceeding for policing the basic provisions of the Bill, to say nothing of his new clause. He may therefore be able to subsume his red tape into the red tape that would exist under the basic provisions of the Bill. I will go that far, and perhaps accept his helpful intervention.
Mr. Mark Francois (Rayleigh) (Con):
On the point about red tape, there are data protection implications
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relating to the policing, as it were, of new clause 1, as religion is in the category of sensitive personal data as defined under the Data Protection Act 1998. It is the type of information about which those holding it must be particularly careful. Therefore, an employer who was seeking to record it for the purposes of implementing new clause 1 would need to register as a holder of sensitive personal data with the Information Commissioner. There is a cost associated with that, and the policing of it becomes more complicated. I hope that that assists my right hon. Friend in his argument.
Mr. Forth: Sad to say, it assists me in my argument but it does not assist our right hon. Friend—I am not sure whether he realised that there was this new bureaucratic horror, which has just intruded into our proceedings thanks to my hon. Friend. We can perhaps revisit in a moment the whole process that was outlined in new clause 1, as I was about to move away from it before my hon. Friend helped me. Perhaps we must now consider it again in terms of the notifications that must be made and the personal data contained in those notifications.
I am anxious to move on to amendment No. 11, which, if anything, is even more defective, if I may say so, than new clause 1. I can see what my right hon. Friend was aiming at, but I am not sure that his amendment goes anywhere near succeeding in it. Some of the questions that arose during his explanation were relevant. First, on the face of it, local public demand is an attractive phrase, to which most of us would subscribe in most circumstances, but how we identify that is a difficulty. The mechanism by which we identify it must be examined carefully.
When considering a local authority area, my right hon. Friend gave a hint that he had in mind a densely populated, relatively well-defined area such as Leicester—that is probably where his thinking started. Many local authority areas, not least in Scotland but also in England, are very large and disparate and a number of different communities will reside in them. One can therefore have a homogeneous, densely packed, highly occupied area of an urban local authority on the one hand, as opposed to a large, disparate local authority area on the other. The definition or the basis in terms of local authority areas would not therefore stand too much scrutiny.
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