By Asher Gratt, TCW
A STORM is gathering around the Government’s controversial Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill as evidence emerges of deep ideological influence from anti-faith pressure groups – despite Government claims to the contrary.
What is coming to light suggests not merely a lack of consultation with faith communities, but something far more serious: the infiltration and engineering of public policy by anti-faith activists.
On November 5, 2024, I wrote formally to the Department for Education, raising serious concerns about a 26-page policy paper published by Nahamu, a fringe advocacy group widely known for its hostility toward religion and the Haredi education system.
In that letter, I outlined how Nahamu’s report made sweeping and unfounded claims about Haredi education, depicting the entire community in broadly negative and deeply stigmatising terms. It pushed a hardline agenda of legal interventions, aggressive inspection powers, and the compulsory registration of home education and yeshivas.
But when I raised these concerns, Stephen Morgan MP, Minister for Early Education, replied, stating that ‘these reports do not constitute government policy’.
That claim has now been fatally undermined. The Government’s official Impact Assessment for the Schools Bill cites Nahamu as a source to justify some of the Bill’s most contentious provisions, while my formal rebuttal of Nahamu’s highly misleading assertions was completely disregarded.