I don't think I can over exaggerate how depressed it makes me as a Labour supporter to see that our Labour government is knowingly allowing discrimination in employment and job applications on the grounds of belief in our public and social services to actually increase.
There was an excellent piece in the Guardian by Andrew Copson from the British Humanist Association detailing various new ways in which the non-religious are being discriminated against in the UK.
Take this example from Scotland:
"The faith-based approach that the current government has adopted over the last decade is not limited to the unpopular increase in faith schools. As part of its determination to contract out the provision of public services, the Department for Work and Pensions is actively encouraging religious groups to take over aspects of our welfare state. This is certainly going to impact on non-religious workers in this sector, if current examples of religious public service providers are anything to go by. Crossreach, "one of the largest social care agencies in Scotland", is a social care agency run by the Church of Scotland. Most of their funding is public money - it comes from local authorities- but take a look at the recruitment section of their site and you find that applicants for every job currently advertised are "required to have a Christian commitment". Might health and social care professionals soon find they have to lie about their beliefs or get a letter from the local church if they want a job, in the same way as so many parents already do in order to ensure that their child can attend a local school?"
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