Urgent: Contact your MP

Mar 16, 2019 by

from Grassroots Conservatives (received via email)

We are writing to you about the motion before Parliament for Wednesday 20th March confirming the Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education (England) Regulations 2019, which were laid before Parliament on 25 February 2019.

These regulations need to be voted down for the following reasons to

1.     avoid the early sexualisation of children
2.     prevent LGBT becoming normalised
3.     give respect and tolerance to families of faith and of no faith who wish to retain traditional family structures in the UK.
4.     maintain the morality of life in the UK
5.     stop children being bombarded and confused with imaginary gender issues
6.     step back from imposing a Test Act on Teachers who would be required to teach these materials even if they were against their conscience or beliefs. The UK revoked such imposition of beliefs on officials by the end of the nineteenth century.
7. avoid parental rights being abridged

Opting out of those lessons is of course a possibility but not the answer.

Please could you write to your MP, and to any member of the Lords you may have contact with, to ask them to attend on Wednesday 20th when these will be debated in both Houses of Parliament, to make opposition known and vote against the regulations,  As regulations they do not fall under the Parliament Act and so can be defeated by the House of Lords alone.

Yours sincerely

Ed Costelloe and Chris Sugden

Explanatory appendix.

There is very considerable opposition to these regulations, particularly from the Muslim Community as you will have noted from the demonstrations in Birmingham. Ed Costelloe our chairman and I are part of a committee chaired by a Jewish lady, and bringing together Jews, Muslims and Christians to resist what some have called “child abuse”.

The Times published a letter from me on the topic on March 1,  in which I pointed out that

“January 11 2019 was the three hundredth anniversary of the repeal of the first Test Acts. These laws made eligibility for certain jobs and public offices conditional on a person affirming a particular set of beliefs. People were subjected to a “test” to prove they agreed with the required beliefs. In 1719 the British parliament rescinded the law which excluded any non-Anglican from being a school teacher. Further repeals followed until 1888 which allowed MPs to take a secular oath. The principle recognised here was that the state cannot impose particular beliefs on anyone. That is what the current guidelines (on Relationships and Sex Education) proposed in Parliament which Melanie Phillips so ruthlessly dissects forget. They are a retrograde step.”

These regulations would effectively introduce a test act for teachers, who would not be allowed to teach unless they taught these guidelines, in many cases against their conscience and beliefs.

We enclose Professor Geoffrey Alderman’s formal objection ( among the 430 others lodged to the House of Lords Scrutiny Committee) .

To: The Chairman of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.

I wish to object to the passage of the Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education (England) Regulations 2019, which were laid before Parliament on 25 February 2019.

[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2019/9780111181997 ]

My grounds of objection are

(a) that the said Regulations seek to limit parental rights to have children educated exclusively in accordance with parents’ religious beliefs, which are a Protected Characteristic under the 2010 Equality Act;

(b) the said Regulations completely ignore the results of the formal consultation upon which they are supposed to be based: in that consultation no less than 64 per cent of responses declared that the proposed content for Relationships & Sex Education at secondary-school level was not “age-appropriate,” while 58 per cent voiced an identical concern about Relationships Education at primary level. Additionally, “a large proportion” disagreed with the position on teaching about alternative lifestyles as set out in the proposed Regulations;

(c) the said Regulations breach the protection of religious rights as guaranteed by virtue of the European Convention on Human Rights (to which the UK is a signatory), more especially Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 of that Convention which protects the right of parents to have their children educated in conformity with their religious beliefs and philosophical convictions.

Sincerely

Professor Geoffrey Alderman

Professor Alderman also wrote to the Times on March 15
PARENTAL GUIDANCE
Sir, Alice Thomson (Comment, Mar 13, and letter, Mar 14) is entitled to her view that “it is vital that children of all religions are taught what is acceptable practice in this country”. In many faith communities, however, such instruction is given exclusively in the home, and naturally in accordance with the religious beliefs of parents.
The right of parents to have their children so educated is guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights (to which the UK is a signatory). But the government’s proposals — in draft regulations now before parliament — seek to abridge this right. This ignores the results of the government’s own formal consultation upon which these proposals are supposed to be based. In that consultation no less than 64 per cent of responses declared that the proposed content for relationships & sex education at secondary-school level was not “age-appropriate,” while 58 per cent voiced an identical concern about relationships education at primary level.
Additionally, “a large proportion” disagreed with the position on teaching about alternative lifestyles as set out in the proposed regulations.
Should parliament nonetheless approve these proposals, parents will have to fall back on the right to home-school. Is this what the government really wants?
Professor Geoffrey Alderman
University of Buckingham
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/times-letters-attorney-general-s-legal-advice-on-brexit-8kr82p632

A statement from senior Anglican clergy on Monday and Tuesday this week reads

This conference objects to the new guidelines on relationships education which could lead to schools covering lgbt issues to be included at every stage of Primary Education. We urge those responsible to reject them on the grounds that they supply potentially damaging age-inappropriate information, and do not allow parents the freedom to withdraw their children from exposure to experience and knowledge that they have no means to critique.

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