Wright: Critic

A senior Labour backbencher has called on the government to drop its plans to introduce faith schools.

Dr Tony Wright said the events of September 11 had exposed the government's plans as a "mad idea" that should be dropped.

The MP for Cannock Chase told education secretary Estelle Morris: "The last thing our society needs at the moment is more schools segregated by religion. Before September 11 it looked like a bad idea, it now looks like a mad idea. We've had some splendid policy rethinks recently. Could I ask you to give us another one today?"

Education secretary Estelle Morris said it was unfair to blame single-faith schools for divisions in society.

"Don't land the whole of the issue of segregated communities on the head of faith schools because that's not what creates it. For centuries people in this country...have been tolerant of a parent's wish to have a faith-based education.

"Where we've granted that to Christians and Jews, I don't want to be a secretary of state who denies it to minority faiths. I don't know what message it gives about a multicultural society if you say to people who aren't Christians and Jews that you're the only group that can't have a faith-based school," she said.Fellow Labour MP Lorna Fitzsimons said many people regretted Britain had not chosen a secular education system 150 years ago but faiths, such as Islam, had a right to schools of their own.

"The horse has bolted and the greater damage to the communities that I represent, over 20 per cent of which and growing practice the Muslim faith, is the hypocrisy that they see reinforced where other people of faiths that are diminishing have a right protected to actually have a faith-based school and yet they are denied it," she said.

Liberal Democrat spokesman Phil Willis asked for a guarantee preventing discrimination by the schools against children of other faiths, or none at all, in their admissions policies.

Morris said it was reasonable to give preference to one faith if the school was over-subscribed but said safeguards were in place.

"There's an obligation and a challenge to make sure that children in faith-based schools do actually have opportunities to work with, to meet, to mix with people from other faith-based schools and schools of no faith at all," she said.