Services funded by public money should be open to all, without alienating anyone.
The recent drive to contract out public services to faith groups risks undermining equal access.
Help us keep public services free from discrimination and evangelism.
The government is increasingly pushing for more publicly-funded services to be provided by religious organisations.
Many faith-based groups have carried out social service without imposing their beliefs. But religious groups taking over public service provision raises concerns regarding proselytising and discrimination.
65% of people have no confidence in church groups running crucial social provisions such as healthcare with only 2% of people expressing a lot of confidence.
Any organisations involved in delivering public services should be bound by equality law and restrictions on proselytisation.
Those advocating for faith organisations to take over more public services risk undermining these restrictions, which exist to protect both the public and third sector.
"We have concerns that some religious groups that seek to take over public services, particularly at local level, could pursue policies and practices that result in increased discrimination against marginalised groups, particularly in service provision and the employment of staff. Non-religious people and those not seen to confirm to the dominant ethos of a religious body, such as being in an unmarried relationship or divorced and being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered, could find themselves subject to discrimination."
Unitarian Church (Submission to the Parliamentary Public Administration Select Committee about the Big Society agenda)
There are also concerns about faith-based mental health and pastoral care in public institutions, including chaplaincy programmes in the NHS and the armed forces. Where such services are funded by the state, they should not be organised around religion or belief.
Religious commentators are often keen to document the contribution of religious organisations to the third sector and social activism. But they fail to demonstrate why it should be the state's role to build this capacity or why local authorities shouldn't have legitimate concerns about religious groups running services.
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1. Write to your MP
Ask your MP to protect secular public services.
2. Share your story
Tell us why you support this campaign, and how you are personally affected by the issue. You can also let us know if you would like assistance with a particular issue.
3. Join the National Secular Society
Become a member of the National Secular Society today! Together, we can separate religion and state for greater freedom and fairness.
Latest updates
Increase in proportion of non-religious in armed forces
Posted: Tue, 18 Dec 2012 14:51
Members of the UK's armed forces are still more inclined to claim a religious affiliation and to say they are Christian than the population as a whole, but the situation is changing fairly rapidly.
On 1 April 2012 the proportion of armed forces personnel declaring no religion was 14.7%, up from 9.5% in 2007. It was lowest in the Army (11.9%) and highest in the Naval Service (20.1%), with 17.5% in the Royal Air Force. Across all three services the number of Christians declined from 89.7% in 2007 to 83.5% in 2012 (85.7% in the Army, 81.5% in the Royal Air Force, 78.9% in the Naval Service). That leaves a mere 1.9% in 2012 professing a non-Christian faith, an improvement on the 0.8% of five years earlier but still a significant under-representation in terms of society as a whole.
The religious affiliations of civilian personnel working for the armed forces have only been collected since 2008, and the declaration rate had still only climbed to 67.6% in 2012. Of those stating their religion in 2012, 24.1% said that they had none, very close to the English and Welsh average at the 2011 census (25.1%). The number of Christians was 70.8%, much higher than the 59.3% in the census, while non-Christians amounted to 5.1% (against 8.4% in the census). It should be remembered that the comparison with the census is not on a strict like-for-like basis since there was a non-response rate of 7.2% at the census.
Source: Ministry of Defence, United Kingdom Defence Statistics, 2012, tables 2.12 (armed forces) and 2.32 (civilian personnel, including a breakdown by pay band). Prepared by Defence Analytical Services and Advice, and published on 12 December 2012.
See the whole research (pdf)
NSS call on EU Presidents to protect women's right to life
Posted: Tue, 27 Nov 2012 10:59
The Presidents of the European Council and European Commission today heard a plea for greater protection for pregnant women's right to life following the death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland. Mrs Halappanavar died in October after suffering a miscarriage after reportedly being denied a termination.
The call was made by the National Secular Society during the annual EU Presidents meeting with European philosophical and non-confessional organizations at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday, 27th November. The meeting was hosted by José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission and attended by European Council President, Herman Van Rompuy (both pictured right).
In his intervention, Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, told representatives of the European Union that both the woman's death and Ireland's denial of women's human rights were a scandal. Mr Wood called on the EU Presidents to apply pressure on Ireland to change this law which appears to breach "the right to life" enshrined in Article 2 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
He said he was also seeking more help from the EU to protect the human rights of all citizens who are denied them by the application of religious dogma in the provision of public services.
The theme of the meeting was 'Intergenerational Solidarity: Setting the parameters for Tomorrow's Society in Europe'. The meeting was also attended by NSS vice president Elizabeth O'Casey.
Mr Wood pointed out that policies made by national and EU bodies almost always reflect the perspectives of politicians and advisers, rather than those of the young – which are often markedly different. He said every EU institution needs to try harder to capture the hearts and minds of the young in order to arrest their growing alienation from politics.
He said: "One of the most striking features of the difference in attitudes between the older and the younger in much of Europe is in their attitude to religion — and arguably even more importantly — to sensitive social issues. On these, younger citizens tend to be very much more liberal than their elders."
Read the speech in full (PDF)
