A New Prime Minister
On July 13, amidst political turmoil in the aftermath of the vote to leave the European Union, Theresa May became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Mrs May has been in Parliament since 1997. She became Shadow Education Secretary in 1999, Chairman of the Conservative Party in 2002, and was appointed Home Secretary in 2010. The daughter of an Anglican vicar and a member of the Church of England, she is said to attend church regularly. She claims that her Christian faith “is part of me. It is part of who I am and therefore how I approach things”. But where does the new Prime Minister stand on moral issues?
Encouragingly, in 2000 she voted against the repeal of section 28 – the law banning local councils from promoting homosexual lifestyles – and in 2002 she voted against same-sex adoption. A year later, she voted against lowering the age of consent from 18 years to 16 years for homosexuals – all promising. However, sadly, in subsequent years, alongside many other MPs, she appears to have changed her views, conforming to the new immoral climate. In 2010, on a BBC Question Time programme, she stated that she had “genuinely changed” her mind and now favoured same-sex adoption. As early as 2004 Mrs May voted in favour of civil partnerships, and in 2013 voted for same-sex “marriage”. She followed David Cameron in promoting the legislation allowing for religious same-sex “marriage” ceremonies, as well as civil weddings. She explained, “I believe if two people care for each other, if they love each other, if they want to commit to each other . . . then they should be able to get married, and marriage should be for everyone”.
Other votes have varied. She did vote against the recent Assisted Suicide Bill and, last year, was central in bringing into force a law banning dangerous “legal high” drugs. She voted against increasing the number of regional casinos from 1 to 8 and, in 2008, for reducing the abortion limit to 20 weeks. However, on the negative side, in February of this year Mrs May supported Nicky Morgan, the then Education Secretary, in her efforts to make sex education in schools compulsory; it was claimed that she sided with Mrs Morgan’s plan to make LGBT-inclusive sex education mandatory. She also voted in favour of all-day trading on the Lord’s Day in England and Wales.
In her former Cabinet role as Home Secretary, Theresa May was architect of the Government’s “counter-extremism strategy” – a strategy which has been heavily criticised by many Christians for the perceived threats posed to free speech and Christian freedom. There are unconfirmed concerns too as to where she stands on certain aspects of the threats posed by radical Islam and Sharia Law.
All in all, like many other MPs, Theresa May’s voting record on moral issues has been weak. Therefore, sadly, it does not appear that we can have any more confidence in how she will handle such issues than we had in Mr Cameron. However, we are to pray that she and her Cabinet will be given wisdom for the onerous task ahead as they set the tone for a new government, developing strategies and policies on a variety of daunting issues, including exit from the EU and, importantly, seeking to maintain Scotland’s union with the rest of the UK. Scripture tells us, “I exhort . . . that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men: for kings, and for all that are in authority: that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (1 Tim. 2:1,2). KHM
Major Setback to the Named Person Scheme
The long-awaited ruling from the UK Supreme Court on the Scottish Parliament’s 2014 Named Person legislation finally appeared at the end of July. The appeal was heard in March, and the delay was caused, in part at least, by the extreme complexity of the legislation under review. The ruling speaks of the “logical puzzle created” in trying to reconcile certain sections of the 2014 legislation with the Data Protection Act (DPA), and concludes: “In these circumstances, it is necessary for anyone wanting to understand the effect of sections 23 and 26 [of the 2014 Act] . . . to have the 2014 Act in one hand and the DPA in the other, to determine the priority which their provisions have vis-à-vis one another . . . and to try, by cross-reference, to work out their cumulative effect”.
The Christian Institute, which was one of the appellants in the case, hailed the judgement with the headline: “Victory! Supreme Court rules Named Person scheme illegal”. The Scottish Government, on the other hand, “welcomed the publication of the judgement and the fact that the attempt to scrap the named person service has failed”. There seems to be an element of truth in both statements. The Supreme Court’s ruling found that the notion of a Named Person for every child is not in itself a breach of (so-called) human rights, but it also found that some of the most important provisions of the 2014 legislation were “incompatible with the rights of children, young persons and parents under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights”. Very major changes in the legislation will therefore be required. The Scottish Government intends to start at once on the “necessary legislative amendments”, but this statement may just be the first step in a gradual climb-down. The Christian Institute comments: “It is doubtful that any new legislation can deliver a Named Person scheme along the lines originally envisaged by the Scottish Government”.
Whatever the ruling of the Supreme Court, the fact remains that the appointment of a Named Person for every child in Scotland is a foolish and dangerous proposal, showing a disregard for the position that the Bible gives to parents in the care of children. The Scottish Government professes a great concern for the “well-being” of children, but at the same time one Scottish adoption agency is placing one child in five in the hands of homosexual couples. A lesbian couple were recently imprisoned for the brutal murder of the child of one of them. It would be no surprise in years to come if some of the poor children thus adopted do not take legal action for the way in which they have been deprived of their “right” to ordinary family life. DWBS