Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)

My Lords, I would like to thank the long list of speakers who supported the Bill at Second Reading, as well as the Public Bill Office which helped to facilitate. The long list of speakers is an indication of how necessary it is. Since Second Reading there are two factors that have increased the importance of the Bill. First, with the move away, in so many countries in the world, towards autocracies, dictatorships and managed democracies, it is more and more vital that pupils in our schools leave school with a sense of why British values, democracy, the rule of law, freedom of religion and the equal worth and dignity of every person matter. It is absolutely crucial that pupils should leave school with a sense of those values and why they need to be supported. Secondly, I have heard, sadly, that there are moves afoot to subsume citizenship education into what is called spiritual, moral, social and cultural education. That, of course, is absolutely vital, but one of the main recommendations of The Ties that Bind—the report from the committee of which I was a member and from which the recommendation for this Bill came—was that this should not be subsumed in that way but should be taught in its own right. Citizenship education is, at the moment, taught so weakly in so many schools and we need to give it a clear focus. I very much hope that the Government will take this Private Member’s Bill seriously.