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The Public Bodies Liaison Committee for British Paganism

 

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5 June 2008

Consultation on the National Identity Scheme Delivery Plan 2008

A representative of PEBBLE partner organisation The Druid Network attended this consultation event held in Newport on 3 June 2008. These events had been set up so that Minister, Meg Hillier, could travel around the country to explain the government's intentions with regard to the proposed National Identity Scheme, and to respond to questions from representatives of invited faith groups.

The Druid Network representative reported that the consultation was very useful; open and informative. The main point for all the faith community, was that there is no plan to include religion of belief either on the ID Card or in the National Identity Register (NIR).

The ID Card will hold your name, address, gender, place and date of birth, your photograph, nationality and immigration status, a unique NIR number, issue and expiry date, and the encrypted mathematical algorithm of your fingerprints. It will not hold details of religious or political belief, ethnicity, occupation, criminal, tax or health records.

The NIR will not amalgamate all the existing databases into one, but will only be used to validate an identity. The Card thus validated can then of course be used to extract individual data from databases already in existence with far more ease and accuracy. However, agencies will only have the privileges necessary to extract data from their own databases and will not normally be able to data-mine.

The Card will not be compulsory, but if decide not to have a Card your details will still go on the NIR. The Cards will cost, in the first years of the scheme, no more than thirty pounds, but the cost may increase after that.

 

13 and 14 February 2008

Equality and Human Rights Commission meetings

Two representatives of PEBBLE attended these meetings on 13 and 14 February 2008 in Manchester and London respectively. The purpose of the meetings was for those with a stake in its work to give guidance to this new body. The meetings had four sessions:

  • The Commission and its remit
  • Strategy, priorities and plans
  • Promoting and protecting equality
  • Reflections, conclusions and next steps

The EHRC's work is divided into eight 'strands' split between Legacy and non-Legacy. Legacy refers to their remit to cover Race, Gender and Disability Equality and the staff that they have inherited from the three commissions that existed before the merger. Non-legacy covers the areas for which there was no previous body - Age, Faith/Belief, Sexuality, Gender Reassignment and Human Rights. The EHRC is only up to 60 per cent of staffing levels and that they will be looking for new recruits with knowledge of the non-legacy strands.

The main outcome of the Manchester meeting became:

  • the need for language to be more basic;
  • the need for more contact between groups;
  • the fact that there are far too many organisations, all doing very similar projects and all vying for funding.

It was disappointing how few people attended the Manchester meeting and even more so after lunch when so many people couldn't return because of prior arrangements.

Apart from PEBBLE, the only other religious bodies represented at the London meeting were the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Runnymede Trust and the Interfaith Network.

The main message the PEBBLE representative got across was the need for research, suggesting that the EHRC looks at outsourcing research into the needs of different faiths. Unlike some strands, every faith (or non-faith) brings different issues with it and a potential EHRC faith department will need to find out what questions to ask before they start offering solutions. The PEBBLE representative raised as an example the concern with reburial of pre-Christian human remains, something not covered by any other faith. The question arises as to how the EHRC would find out that this issue exists without people with a lot of faith knowledge.

 

20 December 2007

Faith attitudes towards sex in schools

In November 2006, Steve W took part in a project organised by Newham school students on faith attitudes towards sex and relationships and the educational system's approach.

The first of two DVDs shows Newham children answering twelve questions about sex, and they are remarkably honest. The second has faith representatives answering the same questions, and Paganism comes across as reasonable, practical and honest.

The DVDs will be distributed to every LEA in the country.

 

17 December 2007

Diversity meeting at the Houses of Parliament

As a founder member / representative of PEBBLE, Steve W attended a meeting at the Houses of Parliament today to help progress the development of a body to oversee the provision of Equality and Diversity delivery. The project was developed by the Learning and Skills Council, and so far the general agreement seems to be that a professional association, like the Bar Council, rather than a statutory body will be developed. PEBBLE intends to remain involved in this process, to ensure that Paganism is given full and equal treatment in training about religion and belief.

Being involved so early, and making sure that Steve was seen and heard, has made it clear that Pagans are stakeholders in rolling out the delivery of equality and diversity in all sectors - not just civil service and local government.

 

3 October 2007

University of Derby publishes number of Pagans in the UK

The University of Derby's new handbook, Religions in the UK, states that the number of Pagans in the UK tops 42 and a half thousand.

Pages 298-9 list and analyse the categories, concluding that the total number of Pagans in Scotland is 1,966, and in Britain as a whole is 42,890.

The Directory is edited by Paul Weller, Professor of Inter-Religious Relations at the University of Derby (Faculty of Education, Health and Sciences), and Visiting Fellow of the Centre for Christianity and Culture at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford. For more details, visit www.multifaithcentre.org.

Thanks are due to Prudence Jones of PF England and Wales and John Macintyre of PF Scotland for drawing Derby's attention to these figures.

 

2 February 2007

Passing of Tim Sebastian

Tim Sebastian, Founder member and Arch Druid of the Secular Order of Druids passed away on 1 February. For many years he has been involved with Druidry in the West Country, particularly with the Gorsedd of Bards of Caer Badon at Bath, and the Free and Open Gorsedd of Caer Abiri at Avebury. He was also Conservation Officer of the Council of British Druid Orders. He will be sorely missed by all druids.

 

19 June 2006

Sexual Orientation and Religion or Belief Regulations

On 19th June 2006 Steve Wilson represented PEBBLE at the opening meeting of the Department of Trade and Industry-sponsored TUC project on Sexual Orientation and Religion or Belief regulations, these being the Employment Regulations of December 2003 which, along with the Home Office FCU report, were part of the spur to create PEBBLE in the first place. The acronym SORB is being used widely now for Sexual Orientation and Religion or Belief, so expect it turn up as often as LGBT before too long. The meeting was facilitated by Barry Fitzpatrick Consulting, who have considerable experience in Northern Ireland, where religious discrimination was outlawed in the 1970s. See www.barryfitzpatrickconsulting.co.uk/news.php?id=4 The meeting was held at the TUC's Congress House in London and featured representatives of the Ba'hai faith, Humanists and Secularists as well as Trades Unions, with Stonewall, Justice and other pressure groups - several of whom stated that they knew there were a lot of pagans about but had never met any at such an event as this. The Bah'ai representative is also Chair of the Steering Group setting up the Faith section of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights: www.cehr.org.uk. This will be the very powerful body that will oversee the championing of all areas of Equality and Human Rights from Octiber 2007, and the fact that someone representing around only 4,000 members of his faith in the UK can be in such a position demonstrates just how tardy we pagans have been in getting involved as deeply as we can in public life. The mainstream religions were conspicuous by their absence apart from one person who works for the Church of England - a pity, since so far it has mainly been Christians, Moslems and Jews who have gone to Employment Tribunals under the regulations on religion.

The main agenda concerned the lack of any case law arising from the regulations. This is partly because many cases are either abandoned, or perhaps more commonly settled before judgement and a confidentiality clause inserted, meaning that of the apparent 200 cases per year arising out of the two protected areas, SO and RB, only about 8 can be reported on. The DTI will not currently release any details of cases that are still underway. Unfortunately all sides of the table were in the same boat - we mostly have anecdotes and cases that never went to tribunal to discuss, but that will change.

On a more positive note, it appears that the Green Paper on a Single Equality Bill that will both incorporate all existing legislation and make it possible for people to complain about discrimination without having to specify which sort will be possible - at the moment if a 50-year old Pagan of mixed race wants to complain about discrimination it is up to him to decide whether it is race, age or faith that caused the discrimination. To be allowed to claim Multiple Discrimination is an area that a lot of work has been done on and hopefully this will go through in this session of parliament.

What was clear is that there is still confusion amongst employees of any faith as to what constitutes harrassment as opposed to what only amounts to "banter", and what is meant by "manifestation" of religion - some assume this just means things like articles of clothing or religious jewellery, beards etc. It seems that it is meant to mean such things as pacifism - where that is an element of a faith - such that if someone refused to work on a contract to supply goods to arms manufacturor because of their faith, that could be covered by the regulations.

All in all it was good to have Pagan representation at this initial meeting. We need to collect more info - and this can be "anonymised" so that people could not be identified, but it has to be about employment - harrassment of pupils at a school is a separate matter, for example. There is a thread about this on the Pagan Network site, but any pagan who can give examples of discrimination, what happened, what they did about it and what resulted, can send info to us either directly or via their member group and it will be presented only after ensuring neither the Pagan nor the employer are identifiable.

The project is just beginning, and more reports will follow.

Steve Wilson, PEBBLE

 

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