Makes clear that requiring a person to act contrary to the accepted teachings of his or her religion or belief is a form of indirect discrimination. N.B. Indirect discrimination is still permitted if it is proportionate—see Clause 18(2)(d).

Like other Members, I am happy to make my arguments brief, especially as we have already touched on some of this. I thank the Solicitor-General for her assurances that she sees religion as one of the strands and that it is not being disadvantaged. It is good to have that on the record from her previous statements and I take those reassurances at face value. The point of the amendment is the link between religious belief and behaviour. We have touched on that, both in sexual orientation behaviour and with regards to religion. I argue that it is very hard to separate the two, although I accept that to some extent there are differences.

The point of how far the state should go in regulating a religion and religious behaviour is hard to determine, but we need to get the balance right. Clearly, there are examples of the state going too far and, for those who are familiar with the Bible and Daniel and the lion’s den, Daniel was told not to pray in public. That was going too far: he went into the lion’s den, but he was saved. At the same time, I completely accept that it should not be the case that every individual just claims religion as an excuse for absolutely anything. That is why we are not saying it would be a total exemption, but we are talking about things contravening the stated doctrinal or ethical teachings of the religion or belief, which I hope protects against people just having their own, individual, very strange ideas. That is probably enough just to make the point and I accept that this is building on what we have been saying before.