THE QUEEN. on the application of:

Transcription

1 Ref:- DRO/AJG/BRI On behalf of the Claimant Witness Statement of David Voas IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEEN S BENCH DIVISION ADMINISTRATIVE COURT IN THE MATTER OF AN APPLICATION FOR JUDICIAL REVIEW THE QUEEN on the application of: CLAIM NO.CO/2167/2015 Jeremy Fox and Daniel Fox (acting by his father and litigation friend Jeremy Fox) First and Second Claimants Kate Bielby and Daisy Wellsted (acting by her mother and litigation friend Kate Bielby) Third and Fourth Claimants Sandra Reid and Maia Doherty (acting by her mother and litigation friend Sandra Reid) Fifth and Sixth Claimants V SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EDUCATION Defendant WITNESS STATEMENT OF DAVID VOAS I, David Voas of the University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ make this statement in support of this claim for judicial review. Save as where I state otherwise, all the information set out in this statement is true and within my own knowledge and belief: 1. I am Professor of Population Studies and Deputy Director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex. I am co-director of a British Academy Research Project called British Religion in Numbers ( and a member of the executive committee of the European Values Study, a major international survey programme. I am on the councils of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the International Society for the Sociology of Religion, the two main learned societies in this field.

2 2. I have read the Grounds of Claim and Detailed Grounds of Resistance in this claim; also the witness statement of Harriet Joy Becher. I wish to use my expertise to respond to paragraph 34 of the Secretary of State s Detailed Grounds of Resistance, where she states: Folgero and Zengin cannot be distinguished, as the claimants contend (Grounds at 30 [A14]), on the basis that the priority given (to Christianity in Norway, and Islam in Turkey) was seen as permissible by the ECtHR because of the particular circumstances in those countries. The particular circumstances, which are referred to in the extracts from the judgments in the claimants Grounds, were the place occupied by Christianity in the national history and tradition of the respondent State (Grounds para 40 [A17]) and notwithstanding the State s secular nature, Islam is the majority religion practised in Turkey (Grounds para 44 [A17-18]). Here religion, and in particular Christianity, clearly occupies a significant place in the national history and tradition of the United Kingdom. Its continued importance is reflected in the statutory requirements as to the content of the agreed syllabus and the constitution of the ASC (set out in paragraphs 18 to 21 above). 3. Furthermore, in paragraph 7 of the witness statement of Harriet Joy Becher, she states: The religions covered in the annexes... cover all the most common religions in England and Wales on the basis of information taken from the 2011 census [HB1/3/57-70]. 4. I have been asked to explore the religious and non-religious demographics of England in more detail. In broad terms, there are four main ways of measuring what might be called religiosity. These are (i) (loose) cultural affiliation; (ii) membership or a sense of belonging; (iii) believing in the tenets; and (iv) practising. 5. What the figures show, in broad terms (and explained further below), is that: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) as per the Census, 59% of the population loosely culturally affiliate with Christianity, 25% with no religion, and fewer than 10% with other religions (ranging from 0.4% Buddhist up to 4.8% Muslim); furthermore, more people are non-religious and fewer are Christian amongst the young; a majority identifies as belonging to no religion, about 42% identify as belonging to Christianity or a denomination of it, and 7.5% identify with other religions (ranging from under 0.4% Buddhist/0.3% Sikh up to 4.6% Muslim); again, the young are much more non-religious and less Christian; a minority (around 17-27%) believe in various core theological claims of Christianity, while a majority are ambivalent or disbelieving; and while 58% of the population report never attending a place of worship and 13% report attending weekly, records suggest that actual weekly attendance is less than 10%, or about 4-5% at churches.

3 (i) Affiliation 6. The What is your religion? question in the Census is a measure of loose cultural affiliation and is acknowledged as such by the Office of National Statistics. It says that the 2001 question (to which the 2011 question is essentially identical) aims to include the weakest form of affiliation [i.e.] loose belonging including ethnic or family connections within the religious categories (particular reference to Christianity is made) [Exhibit DV1 pg.15]. As a result, the Census records a higher Christian figure and lower No religion figure than any other demographic survey. 7. Andrew Copson, in his witness statement [D1-2, 4] already outlined the fact that the census records (i.e. as affiliation ) 59.3% of the population of England and Wales as Christian, 1 4.8% Muslim, 1.5% Hindu, 0.8% Sikh, 0.5% Jewish, 0.4% Buddhist, and 25.1% of no religion. In addition, focusing on just those aged 0-9 (i.e. those who will be of the appropriate age to sit the new GCSE from September ), the census records 47.6% of the population as Christian, 9.1% as Muslim, 1.5% as Hindu, 0.8% Sikh, 0.5% Jewish, 0.3% Buddhist, and 31.5% as of no religion [Exhibit DV2]. (ii) Belonging 8. After affiliation, belonging is the measure that records the next highest level of religiosity. The best source on this question is the British Social Attitudes survey. It most recently (2013) records 50.6% as having no religion, 42.1% being Christian (broken down into various denominations including 19.7% Church of England and 9.1% Roman Catholic), 4.6% Muslim, 1.5% Hindu, 0.5% Jewish, 0.3% Sikh and 0.4% other religions (including Buddhism) [Exhibits DV3]. But, as Mr Copson notes, it also records more young people as being not religious 69.3% of those aged (the youngest group surveyed) compared to 20.7% being Christian (including 3.2% Church of England and 6.4% Roman Catholic), 8.2% Muslim, 0.6% Sikh, 0.4% Jewish, 0.3% Hindu and 0.6% other religions (including Buddhism) [D2, 6-7]. 9. A 2011 opinion poll conducted by YouGov and commissioned by the British Humanist Association is helpful in further illustrating the difference between a question that measures affiliation and one that measures belonging [Exhibit DV4]. It asked the same question as the Census, and found 53% reporting a Christian affiliation, 1% Muslim, 1% Hindu, 1% Jewish, 1% Buddhist, 3% other religions and 39% answering no religion (including 33% Christian and 56% no religion of those aged 18-24). 4 It then asked Are you religious? 29% said Yes, I 1 This figure is not disambiguated into different Christian denominations. 2 Those aged 9 in March 2011 will be 14 in March The first teaching of the new GCSE will be to 14 year olds from September The source states those surveyed are aged but the BSA survey only aims to survey those aged 18 and older so those aged will be extremely few in number. 4 This may have been different from the Census itself because the Census question s location after questions about national identity and ethnicity quite likely encourages more cultural affiliation-type responses.

4 am while 65% said No, I m not (including 22% and 70%, respectively, of those aged 18-24). (iii) Believing 10. Next we turn to questions of believing. The 2008 British Social Attitudes survey suggests that the population can be divided roughly into thirds. 35.3% believe in God, though slightly more than half of them have doubts. 37.1% do not believe or do not think that there is any way to know, i.e. are atheists or agnostics. The remaining 27.6% are not sure or believe in a higher power rather than a personal God [Exhibit DV5]. Among those aged 18 to 24 (the youngest group surveyed), there are less than half as many believers as nonbelievers (21% versus 44.6%) [Exhibit DV6]. A 2013 YouGov poll found that 17% believe there is a personal God, 32% believe there is some sort of spirit/god or life force, 23% are unsure while 28% do not think there is any sort of spirit/god or life force. It also found that 27% believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God, while 51% believe he was not. 26% believe that the Bible's account of the resurrection is broadly right, while 48% do not believe it happened [Exhibit DV7]. (iv) Practising 11. The latest British Social Attitudes Survey recorded that 58.4% of the population never attend religious services while only 13.1% of people report going to a religious service once a week or more [Exhibits DV8]. We know that the latter figure is exaggerated. The last English Church Census (conducted by Peter Brierley of Christian Research in 2005) found that 6.3% of the population attended church in a typical week [Exhibit DV9] Even including people practising non-christian faiths, fewer than 10% of people in England are involved in weekly observance today. Humanism 13. I understand that the claimants are seeking to challenge the exclusion of nonreligious worldviews (including Humanism) from the school curriculum in general; however it is also informative to consider demographic questions about Humanism. 14. Humanism is a descriptive label for a category of beliefs that have existed throughout time and across the planet, including long before the term itself was coined. Not every individual who meets the definition of being a humanist would identify themselves as one and many (or even most) would not have heard of the term. It is not possible to say the same about any religion. 15. With that said, the BHA has shared with me its most recently commissioned (2014) internal opinion poll, carried out by YouGov [Exhibit DV10]. This found 46% of British adults saying they do not belong to any religion, and of these, 12% 5 Some of this difference of course would be explained by the fact that the former but not the latter includes minority religions. The rest will be because due to social desirability bias reported attendance is invariably higher than recorded attendance.

5 identifying humanist as the word that best describes them (with the other options being atheist, agnostic, spiritual, naturalist, none of these and don t know). Some of these who picked other options would presumably also use the label humanist. But this suggests (subject to margins of error) that 6% of British adults primarily identify with the label humanist. 16. In terms of beliefs, in 2007 the BHA commissioned Ipsos MORI to ask British adults a series of questions about evidence, ethics and morality, from which they concluded that 36% of the population has an outlook on life that matches the humanist one [Exhibit DV11]. 17. Regardless of whether the number of humanists is taken to be 36%, 6% or some other figure again, it seems to be the case that there are more adults who are humanists than there are Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews or Buddhists. 18. As for the position of each of those worldviews in the national history and tradition of the United Kingdom, it is clearly right (as the Secretary of State s Detailed Grounds note) that Christianity occupies a significant place. 19. Religious scepticism is also an important and longstanding part of British culture and tradition. The beliefs and worldviews that are characteristic of this country can only be understood with reference to non-believers such as Aphra Behn in the 17th century, David Hume, Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine in the 18th, Percy Shelley, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, George Eliot, Charles Darwin, T. H. Huxley, Charles Bradlaugh and Thomas Hardy in the 19th, Bertrand Russell and E. M. Forster in the early 20th, or the majority of leading philosophers and public intellectuals in the post-war period. (Many of these individuals and influences are included in the annex on Humanism that the British Humanist Association drafted, with public consultation, for possible inclusion in GCSE Religious Studies [C ]). It is impossible to understand the changing role of religion in society without grasping the significance of the age of enlightenment, movements such as rationalism and freethought, and belief systems based on atheism or Humanism. The erosion of religious privilege and the spread of equality over the past two centuries is bound up with the rise of secularism. One cannot make sense of religion without some study of the alternatives. 20. However, the same claim of tradition clearly cannot be said of the other religious worldviews being considered here, with the possible exception of Judaism. Noone would claim that Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism is in that position. 21. Accordingly, whether one looks at the current situation for each of the worldviews in question, or looks at their role in Britain in the past, it is certainly not possible to draw a distinction between non-religious worldviews (including Humanism) on the one hand and religious worldviews on the other, other than by reference to the simple religion/not religion divide. It is certainly not possible to give preference to Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism over non-religious worldviews (and Humanism in particular) on the basis of any measure of current or historic significance. The Secretary of State s approach simply relies on dividing religion

6 from non-religion (and giving priority to the former). It cannot be justified by any measure of significance. Comparing with Norway and Turkey 22. The legal documents have made comparisons with legal cases involving Norway and Turkey. I understand those cases were somewhat different in nature from this one but I will leave it to the claimants to set out why (as per the grounds paras 30 and [A14, 17-18]). 23. However I do wish to comment on the demographics of those two countries. Measures of affiliation do record similar or slightly lower levels of Christianity and higher levels of non-religious belief in Norway compared to the UK. The Eurobarometer surveys are a series of opinion polls conducted by TNS opinion on behalf of the European Commission, including countries across Europe (inside and outside the European Union itself). A 2012 Eurobarometer survey recorded 51% of the population as affiliated to Christianity and 40% to no religion, compared to 58% and 30%, respectively, in the UK [Exhibit DV12 pg. 3-4]. 1% of the Norwegian population are recorded as Muslim, 1% as Buddhist and 5% of religions other than the six principal religions, compared to 3% Muslim, 1% Buddhist, 1% Hindu and 2% religions other than the six principal religions. 24. But in Norway membership of a religion or belief is organised in a different way from in the UK and this has a significant impact on the place of Christianity in national life, as religious and non-religious worldviews are funded by the state and the vast majority of the population chooses to be a formal member of such a group accordingly. In fact some 82% of the population choose to be members of Christian churches, with 75% being members of the state church [Exhibit DV13]. 2.6% of the population is Muslim, 0.3% Buddhist, 0.14% are Hindu, 0.07% are Sikh and 0.02% are Jewish. Apart from Judaism none of these religions have a long history in Norway, and Judaism only does so in small numbers. 1.7% of the population are members of the Norwegian Humanist Association, while 13.4% are not members of any group that receives state support. At the time of the Folgero case the Church of Norway s membership figure stood at 86% and furthermore it is in fact administered by the government itself. 25. When it comes to Turkey the same Eurobarometer poll records 97% of the population as Muslim and just 1% as of no religion. The poll also finds 94% believing there is a God, 1% believing in a spirit or life force and 1% believing in neither compared to 22%, 44% and 29%, respectively, in Norway, and 37%, 33% and 25%, respectively, in the UK [Exhibit DV12 pg. 5].

7 Statement of Truth I believe that the facts stated in this Witness Statement are true. Signed Dated 30 August 2015 David Voas