Local councils will once again be allowed to hold prayers during meetings under a government-backed bill that has angered secularists.
The backbench bill, proposed by Tory MP Jake Berry, is being supported by both the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Labour party, after a court ruled in 2012 that council prayers were unlawful as part of a formal meeting.
Penny Mordaunt, a Conservative communities minister, gave her backing to the private member’s bill in the House of Commons this week, saying its provisions “right a wrong decision that was taken by the high court when it ruled that councils had no power to carry on the centuries-old tradition of holding prayers at their meetings”.
“The bill will not compel anyone to pray or any local authority to include prayers in their official business, nor does it define what constitutes prayer,” she said.
“The bill will ensure that local authorities can support, facilitate and be represented at events with a religious element. Again, nothing in the bill will compel a local authority to do anything that it cannot already do, such as organise a Remembrance Sunday event safely by closing a road for a short time. Rather, it protects local authorities from those with an axe to grind, who might wish to challenge such a decision.”
Lyn Brown, a Labour shadow minister, confirmed her party’s support, saying the bill would “confirm unequivocally that prayers, religious observances or even philosophical observations may take place as part of the business of local authorities in England and Wales”.
However, the National Secular Society accused Eric Pickles, the communities and local government secretary, of “seeking to impose religion by tyranny of the majority”.
Stephen Evans, the society’s campaigns manager, said: “The supporters of this bill are being wilfully misleading by citing religious freedom, when the actual purpose of the bill is to undermine religious freedom by enabling one group of councillors to impose their beliefs on other, equally elected, councillors.
“This bill needs to exposed for what it is, an attempt by religious enthusiasts to push their religion into the public sphere. “The high court ruling did not deprive any councillor of the right to pray; the ruling did, however, prevent local authorities from summoning councillors to religious observance at council meetings and hence imposing it on those that do not wish it.
“Religious freedom demands that an individual’s right to manifest their religion must always be balanced against others’ rights to live their lives free from religion.”
Following the high court ruling in 2012, Pickles, who is also the minister for faith, introduced regulations he claimed gave “councils back the freedom to pray”.
However, the department subsequently conceded that “smaller parish councils do not have this power and neither do a range of single-purpose authorities such as fire and rescue authorities, and integrated transport authorities” and is now backing Berry’s bill to give council prayers a statutory basis in them all.
