Our education system in Wales is based on the principle that parents, not the state, are the primary educators of their children, and that schools look after children, not on their own terms, but in loco parentis, in the place of parents and with parental permission. It's in recognition of this very important principle that parents have long enjoyed the right to withdraw their children from the two subjects that engage questions of families' world views, namely sex education and religious education. The provision of the right to withdraw in relation to these two subjects has also provided a means by which we can demonstrate that the state meets its obligations under the Human Rights Act 1998. Article 2 of protocol 1 refers to the right of education and it states that, and I quote,

'the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.'

Now, I must stress that the importance of the right to withdrawal is manifest not in its frequent use, but rather its potential use. The existence of the right to withdrawal reminds schools that they sit in loco parentis. When children go home at the end of the day, they're not looked after by parents serving the state in loco res publica. It is vital that in a free society parents should be allowed a very large degree of autonomy in the way that they discharge their parental responsibilities to educate and raise their children.

Another benefit of the potential use of the right of withdrawal is that it provides an incentive for schools to actually seek to engage proactively with parents, because it requires school leaders to sit and listen to parental concerns in order to minimise withdrawals. Now, of course, it doesn't mean that you can't engage in the sort of education that both Jenny and others in this Chamber have advocated today about protecting children from harm, talking to them about the way that their bodies work and about what's private on their body and what isn't and how a relationship should work. But I think this fundamental principle of schools acting in loco parentis is absolutely essential.

I think it's important to remind all Members in this debate today that a significant majority, not just a small majority—a significant majority—of respondents to the Welsh Government's two consultations that have been undertaken in relation to the progress that this Bill has made opposed the removal of the right to withdrawal from RSE and RVE. A staggering 88.7 per cent of respondents to the 'Our National Mission: A Transformational Curriculum' wanted to keep the right to withdraw, and 60 per cent of those responding to the consultation document 'Ensuring access to the full curriculum' also wanted to maintain that right to withdrawal. And that's in spite of the fact that, actually, the second consultation didn't expressly ask a question about the subject. People were still writing in saying how important it was to them. Now, look, I accept that the outcomes of any consultation are not necessarily a proxy for public opinion, but let's be clear about this, in completely removing the right to withdrawal, the education Minister is seeking to fundamentally shift the balance between the rights of parents and the rights of the state, something for which no party in this Welsh Parliament has a mandate.

And it's not just the right to withdraw that's a problem. The Bill will also require faith schools to provide two sets of religion, values and ethics curriculums, as has already been articulated by Suzy Davies and others: the denominational curriculum and the curriculum agreed by the local county-wide standing advisory councils if requested. This is in spite of the fact that parents, as Jenny Rathbone quite rightly said, already choose to send their children to church schools in the knowledge of the religious curriculum that is offered. The Bill places no similar requirement on non-faith schools, even if parents have no local faith school option and want their children to access a denominational curriculum. It seems to me that it's grossly unfair to expect a certain thing of a faith school, when not expecting that in the opposite direction too, and I do believe that that will be a huge burden for church schools, for Catholic schools across the country.

And then, finally, there's the issue of the locally agreed RVE curriculum. At the moment, of course, religious education curriculums in local areas are developed by standing advisory councils on religious education, or SACREs, as they're currently known, the membership of which is determined locally. But the Welsh Government's Bill wants to give the powers to change SACREs by allowing non-religious or even anti-religious groups to join those committees. That enables the potential for anti-religious values to be incorporated into local curriculums and taught in Welsh classrooms. It will diminish the voice of faith communities across Wales and that, unfortunately, is not something that I'm prepared to countenance. And it's for those reasons that I'm going to be voting against the progress of this Bill today. Our system already works well, and I think it should be maintained.