‘Silly’ secularism is the new ‘elf ‘n safety, says MP

Sir Alan Beith, the former Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said that people of all faiths increasingly feel under pressure to keep their religious views “under wraps” and to avoid wearing symbols like the cross.

But he said that, far from them being actively persecuted, the main reason was a “completely false” interpretation of equality rules in which some officials assume that any expression of Christianity could be offensive to people of other faiths or none.

He likened the phenomenon to the overzealous application of health and safety rules which have been used to clamp down on innocuous everyday activities for fear that someone could get hurt.

As well as being the longest serving Liberal Democrat MP and chairman of the Commons Justice Select Committee, Sir Alan is a Methodist lay preacher and president of a group known as the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum.

Speaking at the launch of a book of essays about faith and the party, he said that the recent series of cases involving human rights and religious expression were part of a wider trend.

The most high profile such case was that of Nadia Eweida, a Coptic Orthodox Christian, and British Airways check-in clerk, who was sent home in 2006 after refusing to conceal a necklace with a cross on it in line with the airline’s uniform policy.

BA has since changed its uniform policy but it led to a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights this year that the Miss Eweida’s freedom of religion had not been protected in the UK.

Sir Alan said: “I think that what a lot of people feel now is that they are being asked to hide their religion, that secularism requires not wearing religious symbols.

“I am the kind of Protestant that doesn't go in for wearing religious symbols very much but for some people they are important.

“I think that what has arisen is that people feeling that not only does the State have to separate itself from religion under secularism, but they are being asked really to hide and keep under wraps their religious views in civil society.

“Sometimes the completely false interpretation of laws, regulations and changes leads to that happening, when it wasn't even the intention in the first place – a bit like health and safety.

“You get silly things happening, which were not the intention of any legislative change.”

While Miss Eweida won her case, a similar legal challenge from Shirley Chaplin, a nurse, over the right to wear a cross at work, was rejected in the same judgment.

In that case the judges ruled that in some circumstances the right to manifest religious belief in the workplace could be trumped by health and safety.