Social issues - additional news and reports (November 2006)
GOVERNMENT CONSULTATIONS
Sunday Trading
In July 2006, the government announced its decision not to extend Sunday trading beyond the present six hours permitted to traders with 3,000 or more square feet of floor space. There are no limits on traders with less than 3,000 square feet of floor space. Affinity’s submission to the Consultation about extended Sunday opening, which closed in April 2006, can be viewed on the web site at http://www.affinity.org.uk
Sexual Offences in Northern Ireland
A Consultation on sexual offences legislation in Northern Ireland closed on 13 October 2006. The changes under consideration are the lowering of the age of consent from 17 to 16; a proposal to allow consensual sex between parties aged over 13 and under 18 where the age difference is less than three years; the legalising of brothels accommodating up to three prostitutes; and softening the law in connection with sexual practice in public toilets.
Home Office Consultation on Prostitution
The government’s strategy for addressing the social evils of prostitution was published in January 2006 and contained a wide range of social policy aspirations and proposals, but no additional legislation. This is not a problem, as there is more than sufficient existing legislation to cover all the criminal activity involved. All it needs is the will to use it.
There are encouraging signs that the police, CPS and Home Office are determined to take the problem seriously. Since January, in several cases involving alleged trafficking, there have been high profile dawn raids leading to dozens of arrests and several cases are now waiting to come to court.
These very public police operations boost the morale of those who want decent communities, and also act as a deterrent to some of those minded to establish, promote or invest in sex industry criminal networks.
Improving the residential environment in so-called red-light districts is a longer-term consideration which is being addressed indirectly by local strategies to encourage women to leave prostitution and to promote other ways of meeting their social needs and personal circumstances.
It would be easy to prosecute hundreds of prostitutes a week for soliciting, but instead of subjecting them to the criminal law, it is more likely that local projects will be developed, offering counselling backed up by a range of relevant support resources.
LIFE ISSUES
Assisted Reproductive Technologies
During August, a woman died at the Leicester Royal Infirmary. She was undergoing IVF and suffered a complication during the ova retrieval phase. She is not the first UK woman to die during IVF treatment. In April 2005, Temilola Akinbolaghe died at King’s College Hospital after a heart attack caused by a blood clot formed as a result of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), a condition caused by an unusual reaction to the hormones injected to promote ova production. OHSS is considered to affect 6% of IVF women. Other complications include bleeding and infection. Although these side-effects are not common, there is a death rate of about 1 in 100,000 IVF treatments in Europe.
All of which makes it even more surprising that women are now being asked to donate their ova for stem cell and cloning research experiments. Alongside this call comes the recommendation that they should be paid for their time, risk, inconvenience and discomfort. Currently, direct payment to UK ova donors is illegal, though expenses can be reimbursed. IVF clinics have long been offering cut-price treatment if a woman will donate some of her excess ova to other infertile women – it’s called ‘egg sharing’.
In July this year, the Newcastle Fertility Centre was granted permission from the HFEA to recruit women to provide ova for therapeutic cloning research, as opposed to IVF treatment. [Incidentally, the HFEA again showed its cavalier colours because it started a public consultation on the very issue of ova donation in September, two months after approving the Newcastle licence]. One of the greatest obstacles in obtaining embryonic stem cells by therapeutic cloning is that human ova are essential. And ova, unlike sperm, are hard to come by.
But wouldn’t you know it? There is now a shortage of donated sperm too. Sperm banks in the UK are in crisis because of a lack of sperm donors. Some 60% of private fertility clinics across the country say they currently have little or no sperm being donated. Several clinics have long waiting lists, and others have resorted to turning infertile couples away. Why the ‘crisis’? It’s not difficult to understand. In fact, it was entirely predictable that the number of men donating sperm would plummet. In 2004 the Government changed the law on the anonymity of donors. Children of men who donated sperm after April 2005 are now legally entitled to track down their biological fathers once they turn 18. This abolition of anonymity has also led to tens of thousands of vials of healthy sperm being destroyed because the donors have not agreed to be identified.
Can you believe it?
Stem cell technology can be both amazingly complex and stunningly simple. Some of the experimental treatments have been ludicrously undemanding, like injecting stem cells transformed into neural cells into the blood system where they find their way into the brain and start functioning. Now comes news from the University of California of a novel method for transforming stem cells, obtained from bone marrow, into smooth muscle cells – you stretch them! Yes, physical manipulation may be an important step in coaxing stem cells to transform into other, more specialised, cells. Could it be that such ‘stretching’ mimics the natural pulsating of blood as it flows through the smooth muscle cells of the body’s blood vessels? We have a lot to learn!
And finally
A word on the Blair-Brown political tussle. The character of our next prime minister matters. Tony Blair has been nothing but a bioethical disappointment – against abortion in private, but supportive in Parliament; out of step with much of Europe by his personal approval and promotion of therapeutic cloning; courting scientists from around the world to come to Britain to experiment on human embryos in our largely unrestricted scientific community.
Will the son of the manse, Gordon Brown, be any better? To date his voting record has been even worse. Since 1990 he has consistently voted with the pro-abortion lobby – for abortion up to birth, for abortion on demand in early pregnancy, for extending the Abortion Act to Northern Ireland, for ‘selective reduction’ in multiple pregnancies, and for the approval of morning-after pill RU486. He has also voted several times in support of destructive human embryo experimentation. Mr Brown is a hardliner all right – fiscally rigid and ethically anti-life.
John Ling
Morning After Pill
The Christian Institute is shortly to publish a booklet on the subject of the morning-after pill, written by Dr John Ling
PROGRESS ON RECENT LEGISLATION
Children Act 2004
The Children Act of 2004 gave the government the power to set up a national database of all children. There has been fresh controversy over this project as a result of recent press reports about special arrangements being planned in connection with the children of celebrities.
The natural question being asked concerns the security of the proposed database. Why are special arrangements necessary if the database is secure?
This is only one of many controversies which will surround the new database. But it won’t stop the database being put in place. Over the past 30 years, one public inquiry after another into the deaths of children has found that lack of communication between the agencies involved had contributed to the failure to identify risks, neglect and abuse. It is not politically possible for any government to act as though it was complacent about that. The database will increase the amount of information available to any one agency, such as social services, GPs and the police, since it will pool the information gathered by all of them.
The whole idea of what the Act calls “a shared database of children containing information relevant to their welfare” is an undesirable step, since it separates children from their parental and family contexts, seeing them, and leading to action being taken in respect of them, as individuals. This will reduce parental authority and influence over the course of their children’s lives.
Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006
On 31 January 2006, the government was memorably defeated by one vote in its attempt to enact a Racial and Religious Hatred Bill with wide powers. This defeat still left a number of offences in the Act, but they were such as would require a significantly higher degree of misconduct than those the government had envisaged. Churches and individual Christians going about their normal life and witness would be unlikely to have fallen foul of them.
However, in the nine months since then, nothing much has happened. Discussions have been held with interested parties over the implementation of the Act, but the original effective date of the Act – October 2006 – has been abandoned and no new date has been fixed.
Responsibility for taking things further has now passed to the Home Office’s Violent Crime Unit, whose next move is awaited.
Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006
These were published as Statutory Instrument 2006 No. 1031 on 3 April 2006, and they took effect on 1 October 2006. The main provisions of the Regulations are to make it unlawful to treat anyone differently by virtue of their age, and to provide for a default retiring age of 65, and procedures for varying this. For those keen enough, the Regulations can be viewed on the government’s opsi web site. The quickest way to the opsi web site is to type the title of the legislation into a search box.
Gambling Act 2005
A Casino Advisory Panel set up under the Gambling Act 2005 is due to recommend the location of 17 new casinos in Britain (eight small, eight medium and one mega), by the end of 2006.
Lasting power of attorney
The Mental Capacity Act 2005 contained provisions to set up a national structure within which individuals can appoint a Lasting Power of Attorney in circumstances when this would be helpful to them. A Consultation in connection with the wording of the relevant forms and guidance closed on 14 April 2006. On 17 July 2006 the Department for Constitutional Affairs published a summary of the 118 responses it received to the Consultation.
The full text of the government response is available on the Department of Health web site – http://www.dh.gov.uk Affinity’s submission can be viewed on the web site http://www.affinity.org.uk
Although the DCA is free to consult with interested parties informally, if it wishes, there are no further formal stages, and the Department will, in its own words, “revise the forms and guidance and complete work on the LPA processes in time for implementation in 2007, taking into account what we have learned from this Consultation.”
Rod Badams
LEGAL CHALLENGES STILL PENDING
Christian campaigner arrested at gay pride rally
Christian campaigner Stephen Green was arrested by the South Wales Police at a gay pride rally, the Mardi Gras festival, in Cardiff, on 2 September 2006, after handing out leaflets which quoted Bible references on the subject of homosexuality. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided on 22 September not to proceed with a prosecution.
On 29 September 2006 The Daily Telegraph quoted Mr David Francis, deputy chief constable of South Wales, as saying: “We have a proven record of supporting freedom of speech and lawful protest.”
In the light of that assertion by Mr Francis, the editor of The Bulletin wrote on 30 September 2006 to Miss Barbara Wilding, chief constable of the South Wales Police, asking: “In the context of the event at which Mr Green was exercising ‘freedom of speech,’ how in practice would he have had to express his message on that occasion in order to qualify for the support of the South Wales Police, on the basis of the force’s policy of ‘supporting freedom of speech and lawful protest,’ rather than being arrested by them.” A reply is still awaited.
The Christian Institute has reported: “You do not have to agree with everything that Stephen Green has done in the past to think that what has happened to him is appalling. The problem lies with CPS guidance leaflets which are hysterical on the subject of violence against homosexuals.”
Mr Green has announced his intention to sue for wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution.
Sunday work case goes to European Court
The case of Stephen Copsey, an evangelical Christian who was sacked from his job at a quarry in Kings Lynn for refusing to work on Sundays, is to go to the European Court. Mr Copsey lost his case for unfair dismissal at an employment tribunal in February 2004.
Adoption and the magistrate
The case of a magistrate who was forced to resign because of a conscientious objection to placing children for adoption or fostering into same-sex households is to be the subject of judicial review. The Court will examine the law in relation to Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which covers rights in respect of conscience. The text of Article 9 is quoted in the item headed Wrong type of ring below.
Case of abortion clinic protester
A wheelchair-bound anti-abortion protester was arrested, held for nine hours and prosecuted under The Malicious Communications Act 1988 for giving out leaflets outside an abortion clinic. This case is listed for hearing at the High Court as a test case on freedom of expression.
Guidelines challenge
George Hargreaves, a Pentecostal pastor and leader of the Scottish Christian Party, is suing the Association of Chief Police Officers over its guidelines to police in connection with arresting people for cannabis possession.
Case of Joe and Helen Roberts
The Christian Institute is awaiting counsel’s opinion on how to proceed in the case of Joe and Helen Roberts, a Lancashire couple who were interrogated by police for more than an hour after making a complaint last year about Wyre Borough Council’s gay rights policy. The Council and Lancashire Constabulary have refused to apologise to Mr and Mrs Roberts.
Wrong type of ring
Lydia, a 15-year-old schoolgirl, has been refused permission by her school, Millais School in West Sussex, to wear a silver ring as a mark of chastity. The reason given for this decision is that the ring breaches health and safety requirements. However, other girls in the school are allowed to wear traditional bangles, which are not deemed to contravene health and safety rules. A case is being filed on the basis of the Human Rights Act 1998, which incorporates Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, covering freedom of thought, religion and the freedom to manifest religion or beliefs.
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.
2. Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
DISABILITY ISSUES
“Shocking indictment” claim
A recent Disability Rights Commission report ‘Equal Treatment: Closing the Gap’ reveals that Health services are failing people with a Learning Disability.
“It is a shocking indictment of the health service that nothing has been done about it. The reason for this is that the NHS views people with a learning disability as a low priority. People with a learning disability are being discriminated against, and this is resulting in premature and unnecessary deaths”, commented a Mencap spokesperson
‘Changing Places – Changing Lives’ campaign
This is a campaign to raise the awareness and prompt action to provide accessible facilities for people with a learning disability. For instance providing suitable public toilets.
This campaign has become especially relevant since the announcement by some local authorities, e.g. Solihull, to close all public conveniences in an attempt to reduce expenditure.
Derogatory language removed from Electoral roll
The way in which people with a learning disability are viewed has taken another positive step forward following a campaign to have the words ‘idiots and lunatics’ removed from electoral law. Lord Rix, Mencap’s president, successfully proposed the amendments to the Electoral Administration Bill.
Learning disabled athletes may yet compete in 2008
There is still just a possibility that learning disabled athletes will be able to take part in the Beijing Paralympics in 2008. Learning-disabled athletes have been banned since the cheating scandal at Sydney 2000.
New tests are being devised in the hope that they will enable a more secure way of establishing the disability of competitors. The major difficulty facing the scientists seeking to produce a test is the multifactorial nature of learning disability and the diverse range of conditions that come under this diagnosis. However, the acceptance of such a test is likely to be hampered by different perceptions of learning disability in different cultures around the world.
EastEnders Story Line
The Mitchell’s [Billy and Honey] have a baby with Down’s Syndrome [Janet].
The BBC has been praised for tackling this difficult issue and thereby raising awareness of the challenges faced by new parents and their families. The programme has highlighted prejudice around learning disability and the need for parents to have good information.
Key targets for providing better care for children and young people will not be met by all Primary Care Trusts this December.
• 18% of Primary Care Trusts still cannot provide emergency cover for young people when they fall into crisis.
• 47% of trusts cannot provide access to a mental health team for families whose children have a learning disability.
The crisis is being made worse because all the trusts have had their budgets top-sliced in order to try and deal with the total NHS deficit of more than £500m.
The targets do not include provision for the mental health of children in care – amongst whom there is a higher prevalence of mental health problems. Neither do they include the short fall of services for those with eating disorders, obsessive compulsive personality disorder, or those who are likely to self-harm.
Mental health ward inpatient conditions
A recent report by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) has raised concerns with its disclosure of continuing assaults on users of mental health wards.
Mind would like to hear from anyone who has suffered abuse or assault whilst on a mental health ward. If you have information call 020 8215 2424.
Welfare Reform Bill
The Government’s plans are likely to fail at the first hurdle. Their intention to get one million people off Incapacity Benefit (IB) and into work in the next ten years cannot be achieved unless discrimination by employers can be ended.
The seriousness of this situation becomes clear when it is recognised that 40% of those claiming IB have mental health problems.
A key part of the Government’s plan is to introduce the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). This will replace IB. Claimants will have to take part in work-focussed interviews, health assessments and activities. If they do not comply they will lose up to 25% of their benefit.
Whilst it is understandable that the Government will seek to find ways of reducing the IB expenditure it is difficult to understand how the proposed approach can be anything but be more stressful and create extra distress and pressure for people who are already in a vulnerable situation.
A further cause for concern is the Personal Capability Assessment (PCA), which has proved particularly unreliable for people with mental health problems.
The solution is surely to deal directly and effectively with the issues behind the rising levels of mental health incapacity. This would require, at the least, clearer education, backed by appropriate legislation, to highlight the mental health dangers of drugs and alcohol, and significant improvements in healthcare provision for mental health patients – including greater availability of cognitive behaviour therapy.
Every disabled child matters
This is a new campaign launched in September 2006 seeking rights and justice for every disabled child and their families. A consortium of charities including Mencap, Contact a Family, the Council for Disabled Children, and the Special Education Consortium are running the campaign.
Prof Al Aynsley Green – the children’s Commissioner for England – has said that the ‘services for disabled children and their families are a national scandal.’ The following statistics relating to the 770 000 disabled children in the UK seem to bear this out:
• 1 in 2 families with a disabled child live in poverty
• only 1 in 13 families with a disabled child get any help from their local social services.
• Disabled children are 13 times more likely to be excluded from school
• 8 out of 10 families with a disabled child say they are at breaking point.
The above statistics are from the Every disabled child matters section of the web site of the National Autistic Society (www.nas.org.uk).
Gerald Tanner
MISCELLANEOUS
Islam and the West Ham mega mosque
A plan to build a vast Islamic Centre a mile from the main stadium of the 2012 London Olympics has aroused local controversy and widespread press and media coverage since it was first made public in July this year.
Officially described as the London Markaz, but known colloquially as the “mega mosque,” the project has generated considerable concern, as a result of its sheer enormity, and fears of the extent to which its activities, influence and visual prominence will dominate, and change, the local community. There are also anxieties about connections with radical Islam, rumours that the finance will be from Saudi Arabia, and concerns that the project will create a significant Islamic ghetto.
The proposals include a mosque, school, exhibition spaces, restaurant and an Islamic garden, the total built area amounting to 180,000 square metres. The worship area at the proposed mosque is estimated to be sufficient to accommodate 40,000 worshippers, but a maximum capacity of 70,000 has also been quoted. Unofficial estimates of the cost of the project have ranged between £100 million and £300 million.
A planning application is expected in time for the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation to consider it in February next year. It will need to be a detailed application, showing what is intended in the long-term. The project can be carried out in phases, as long as all phases are included in the initial application.
If an application is received, the Development Corporation will consult all interested parties, under the same procedures which apply to local authority consideration of planning applications. Local authorities in the East London area will be able to make their own representations to the Corporation in support of, or in opposition to, the application.
The Mayor of London can veto the project if the LTGDC is minded to approve it, but the Mayor will not be able to override any decision by the Corporation to refuse the application.
The Government has the power to “call in” the application, which means that at any time up to the Corporation making a decision on the application, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Mrs Ruth Kelly, can say that she will take the decision out of the hands of the Corporation. Such a move would almost certainly lead to a public inquiry.
The view of Affinity is that any religion ought to be free to provide itself with buildings suitable for worship and related activities. The implications of anything significantly beyond this need to be considered in the wider social context. In this particular case, although there appear to be serious concerns to be addressed, no firm judgements can be made until the planning application is submitted.
Rod Badams
Controversy in Britain’s prisons
Overcrowding is not the only problem in Britain’s prisons. The Prison Service is also having to contend with the confusion and controversy which its diversity policies are currently causing.
In June this year the Prison Service took the decision to axe a Christian “inner change” course, which had been running for a year, at Dartmoor Prison.
According to Mr Phil Wheatley, Director General of the Prison Service, the course was axed because it failed to meet the “What Works” criteria and the diversity policy of the Prison Service. Lady Georgie Wates, chairman of the Prison Fellowship, expanded on these reasons for closure: “First, we don’t comply with the diversity policy of the Prison Service because we teach the sanctity of heterosexual marriage as the Bible says, which is seen as homophobic. Secondly, we don’t fit in with the multi-faith agenda. They think that what we’re teaching offends other faiths.”
According to its own web site, Prison Fellowship is “a nonprofit volunteer-reliant ministry focused on the mission of transformation through the grace and power of Jesus Christ.”
This does not fit very neatly with the present methodology of the Chaplain General of the Prison Service, William Noblett, who has recently asked the Service’s chaplains to sign up to a “multi-faith” covenant, which requires them not “knowingly to say or do anything which insults or in any way denigrates the faith of any other person.” The covenant also includes the clause: “We will not knowingly distribute or display any literature which offends another faith tradition.”
Lady Wates responded: “If we teach Jesus is the Son of God, of course it is going to offend people.
The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, who had recently expressed concern about the marginalisation of Christianity in UK chaplaincies, regretted the closure of the “inner change” course and attributed the decision to the fact that the course was deemed to be “too Christian.”
The Bishop of Lewes, Wallace Benn, was much more outspoken, calling on the Chaplain-General to resign, after accusing him of appearing to “acquiesce and collude” in the decision of the Prison Service to close the course.
“If the Venerable William Noblett cannot or will not support the faithful teaching of the Christian faith, in a non-watered-down way, then I respectfully suggest that he should resign,” the Bishop said. Bishop Benn said that the Prison Service’s diversity policy was “a secularised misunderstanding of the multi-faith issue.”
The now-discontinued “inner change” course was based on the Alpha course model, with the aim of creating a Christian community in the prison. It included follow-up and mentoring after release. It was staffed by volunteers and funded from outside the Prison Service. Prison officers have testified to the positive effect the course was having among previously difficult prisoners.
Lady Wates has claimed that the decision to axe the course has left the future of Christian teaching and chaplaincy in prisons hanging in the balance.
The controversy is embarrassing for the Home Office Minister of State for the Criminal Justice System and Offender Management, Baroness Patricia Scotland, QC.
Baroness Scotland told a Prison Service Chaplaincy conference held in March this year: “Faith can provide a powerful motivator for change, and I strongly believe that chaplaincy teams and faith groups can play a vital role in the rehabilitation of offenders, providing practical and spiritual support, advice and mentoring.
“At the same time we want to encourage more organisations to become involved in this work. It is only by working together that we can ensure that not just the criminal justice system, but society as a whole, effectively tackles the causes of crime to make safer communities for all,” she added.
The “inner change” course ticked all the boxes Baroness Scotland was setting out in that speech, but fell foul of the diversity rules, based on the political-correctness which seems to afflict all government service-providing agencies, within the Prison Service establishment.
Rod Badams
David Cameron on marriage
In a speech at the Conservative Party conference, party leader David Cameron described marriage as “special” but said that it was “not about religion” and “not about morality.” He also expressed his support for civil partnerships.
Travel warnings
The British Foreign Office is currently posting warnings regarding travel to 42 countries. The grades of warning are (a) advice against travel to the country altogether – 3; (b) advice against travel to part of the country – 25; (c) advice against all but essential travel to the country altogether – 3; (d) advice against all but essential travel to part of the country – 11.
There are 192 member countries of the United Nations. The fact that it is regarded as risky or dangerous to visit nearly 22% of them rather dispels the cosy notion of the brotherhood of man.
Rod Badams
Contributors to the above reports
Rod Badams is a former journalist specialising in local government, and former General Secretary of Christians at Work. He has been FIEC administrator since 1998 and has been editor of The Bulletin since February 2006.
Isabel Bathurst is a solicitor with a diploma in advanced litigation; she specialises in personal injury and clinical negligence cases. Isabel has been an active member of the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship since 1997 and of the FIEC/Affinity Social Issues Teams since 2002.
Peter Fearnley, PhD (Wales), is married to Wendy, a teacher focusing on special educational needs. They have four children, three of whom are at various stages in the educational system. Peter has worked both in industry and in the civil service and has been a school governor for seven years.
Dr John R Ling is a freelance speaker, writer and consultant bioethicist. His two books on bioethical; issues – Responding to the Culture of Death and The Edge of Life – are published by Day One. His personal website is http://www.johnling.co.uk
Gerald Tanner, a graduate in zoology and former biology teacher, is currently pastor of an evangelical church and chaplain for people with learning disabilities on behalf of Solihull Primary Care NHS Trust.
The material above is published by the Social Issues Team of Affinity,
PO Box 2119, Reading RG1 7WS and edited by Rod Badams
(Tel. 01858 411554; Email: )
