I move amendments 23 to 29, and amendment 19, all of which have been tabled in my name. The Bill in its current form is discriminatory, unfortunately, in that it places burdens on schools with a religious character across Wales that do not apply to those schools without a religious character. At present, schools across Wales either provide a religious education curriculum that has been agreed by the local standing advisory committee on religious education, or SACREs, as they're also called—it's also termed a 'locally agreed curriculum'—or they provide an RE curriculum that has been provided by the denomination to which the faith school belongs. These arrangements have served schools well across Wales for a long, long time, and there has been no clamour for change, but the Bill proposes that, in future, faith schools must, if requested to do so by a single parent, provide the locally agreed curriculum for the new subject of religion, values and ethics alongside the curriculum provided by their denomination. Delivering a dual curriculum is not going to be straightforward. In fact, it will be a significant challenge for faith schools, so I would rather there wasn't such a requirement at all, especially given the fact that parents know the religious character of a school when they actually choose to send their child to that school.

Now, if agreed, my amendments 23, 24 and 25 will ensure that if faith schools are to be required to deliver a dual curriculum, then the costs of providing that second RVE curriculum will not fall on either the individual school or the local education authority in which it's based. Llywydd, if parents in faith schools will be able to request the locally agreed RVE curriculum for their children—that is, the curriculum set by the standing advisory committee—then it's only fair that parents in non-faith schools, those schools that don't have a religious character, should be able to request that a denominational RVE curriculum should be available to their children. My amendments 26, 27, 28 and 29 would deliver just this. They would address the discrimination between faith schools and other schools in Wales by levelling the playing field to give parents with children in both types of school the same rights to request a curriculum of their choice. Also, they would ensure that the cost of making an extra curriculum available to learners will not fall on the schools or the local education authority, whether they be faith schools or no-faith schools, as a result of parents exercising that choice.

Finally, if I can just speak briefly to amendment 19, as is the case for relationships and sexuality education, the Welsh Government's Bill will remove the rights that are currently enjoyed by parents to be able to withdraw their children from RE lessons. Now, these parental rights are very important. As I indicated in the debate on the relationships and sexuality education amendments earlier, they recognise that parents, and not the state, are the primary educators of their children, and they also ensure that education legislation in Wales will be compatible and compliant with the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Education Act 1996, both of which I referred to earlier and both of which recognise the rights of parents to ensure that teaching conforms with parents' political and philosophical convictions and that children should be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents. Now, the Minister said earlier this afternoon that the legislation, in her opinion and in the opinion of her Government lawyers, was compliant with the human rights Act, and I guess it will take a court case to determine whether that is the case in the future, but she didn't refer earlier on this afternoon to the obvious conflict that the Bill currently has with the Education Act 1996 in relation to children being educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents. So, I would hope that she will be able to respond to that particular point in this debate.

Now, as I said earlier, parents have long enjoyed the right to withdraw their children from both sex education and religious education lessons, and it's therefore no wonder that a significant majority of respondents to the Welsh Government's two consultations that were undertaken in advance of this Bill—. In both of those consultations, there was overwhelming opposition to the removal of the parental right to withdraw from either RSE or RVE: 88.7 per cent of respondents to the 'Our National Mission: A Transformational Curriculum' consultation wanted to retain the right to withdraw. And 60 per cent of those responding to the consultation document on ensuring access to the full curriculum also wanted to maintain the parental right to withdraw, and that's in spite of the fact that, in the second consultation, there wasn't a question asking about his particular subject. I think that shows the strength of feeling. If we set up consultations, as a Government or an institution, then we should listen to the views that are expressed.

Now, this legislation, if it proceeds unamended, will fundamentally shift the balance between the rights of parents and the rights of the state—something that none of us in this Welsh Parliament has a mandate to do. It wasn't mentioned in anybody's manifesto at the last Senedd elections, and when people have been asked, as I indicated earlier, they said they wanted to retain these rights. That's why my amendment 19, along with amendments 20, 21 and 22 that we debated earlier, seek to ensure that these parental rights are not eroded when it comes to either religious education or sex education in the future, and I therefore urge Members to support my amendments in both groups.