Policy Unit

Census and national data

Data about the UK’s religious and non-religious demographic makeup is often misrepresented in public discourse due to the use of a leading question in the…

Public service broadcasting

The BBC makes lots of programmes about religions or for religious people, and almost none about or for non-religious people.

Citizenship education

Some schools are not educating pupils about democracy, human rights, and critical thinking.

Employment in faith schools

Religious state schools discriminate against employees based on religion.

Faith school admissions

Religious state schools select pupils by their family’s religion, driving religious, social, and ethnic segregation.

Illegal religious schools

Illegal schools in England are completely unregulated, often providing a religious-only curriculum and sometimes perpetrating physical and sexual abuse against children.

Private religious schools

Religious private schools often fail to provide a broad and balanced curriculum, and deny young people their basic freedoms.

Relationships and Sex Education

Opt-outs built into relationships and sex education (RSE) mean that many children are not receiving fact-based, objective teaching about sex and relationships. Others aren’t receiving…

Religious Education

In many schools the curriculum teaches religions as true, and in many others it teaches about religions but not non-religious worldviews like humanism.

Religious state schools

Religious state schools are a growing part of the state system; they discriminate in admissions, employment, and the curriculum; and are privileged in decisions around…

Religious worship in schools

All state schools are legally required to carry out daily worship. Many do so and almost invariably this worship must be exclusively Christian.

Science education

Some schools teach creationism as true or fail to teach evolution as true. Others fail to teach well about the scientific method.

Equality law loopholes for public services

Public services are sometimes contracted out to be run by religious groups, which can discriminate against service users and employees due to loopholes in equality…

Government, religious groups, and civil society

Governments often privilege religious groups over others in policy and in official recognition.

National ceremonies

Public ceremonies of national meaning are almost invariably Anglican in nature in spite of only one in eight adults being Anglican and less than half…

Separating church and state

England is a legally Christian country with a minority Christian population, and that causes problems from reserved seats for bishops in the House of Lords…

State chaplaincy and pastoral care

Many institutions provide religious, often predominantly Anglican, chaplains, and fail to make equal provision for non-religious pastoral care.

Advertising censorship

The UK’s advertising codes include a de facto blasphemy law.

Blasphemy laws

England and Wales’ blasphemy laws were repealed in 2008, but now the Public Order Act is being used in novel ways to charge people for…

Conscientious objection

Conscientious objection laws exist to protect individual’s freedoms, but are under threat of extension to places where this would harm the rights and freedoms of…

Free speech on campus

Universities and students’ unions sometimes try to ban ‘religiously offensive’ events and speech on campus.

Laws on harassment and incitement

The UK’s hate crime laws protect humanists, atheists, or apostates but most people don't realise this.

Abortion law

Women across the UK still don't have access to safe, legal abortion, free from harassment or the threat of criminal sanctions when things go wrong.

Assisted dying: policy briefing

Too many people are suffering unbearable pain due to incurable medical conditions; they may want to end their lives but due to the UK's assisted…

Close loopholes in the Human Rights Act

When public services are contracted out to be run by private groups, those groups don’t generally have to comply with human rights laws.

Human rights and access to justice

Our human rights laws have loopholes that need closing, and for many people are too hard to access. At the same time, they are under…

Strengthening children's rights

Children's rights are not properly recognised in UK law, never mind upheld.

Banning conversion practices

Many LGBT people have experienced so-called ‘conversion practices’ – also known as ‘conversion therapy’ – particularly from religious settings. This has attempted to ‘cure’ them…

Caste discrimination

The Equality Act contains provisions outlawing caste discrimination, but they have never been brought into force.

Ending Equality Act exemptions

The Equality Act 2010, which applies in Britain, contains a number of exceptions that allow religious organisations to discriminate against those of other beliefs or…

Legal recognition of humanist marriages

Humanist marriages are not legally recognised in England and Wales.

Religious 'courts'

Religious ‘courts’ frequently discriminate against their users on the basis of, for example, gender, while sometimes failing to make clear they are not, in fact,…

Socio-economic discrimination

England and Northern Ireland have no law preventing socio-economic discrimination in, for example, the provision of housing, education, medical care, or other services.

Complementary and alternative medicine'

Sometimes unevidenced so-called ‘complementary and alternative medicines’ (CAM) receive state funding, or are advertised as being efficacious when not.

Genital mutilation

Female genital mutilation is unlawful in the UK, but still frequently happens; while non-medical genital surgery on boys is often carried out without their consent.

Human tissues

There are frequent medical advances leading to new uses of human tissues, and the law and government policy is sometimes slow to keep up.

Organ donation

Public medicine and health

Some public voices oppose public medicine and health decisions being made on a rational basis, instead voicing false medical claims.

Animal welfare laws

Animals are intelligent, feeling beings too, and often suffer as a result of human activity.

Freedom of religion or belief

Freedom of religion or belief is not always protected equally. Too often, it is treated as applying mainly to religious people, leaving humanists and others…

Our international work

Many countries have the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy, and in many more it is impossible to be openly non-religious.

Protecting the environment

We are experiencing a climate crisis and biodiversity loss, which is bad for humanity and for other animals.