The preservation of religious freedom, including the right to manifest religious belief in all its diversity, remains a cornerstone of an open, liberal and tolerant society, the Archbishops' Council has stated in its response to proposals for a Single Equality Bill.

"We have been concerned at what has seemed in some recent debates to be a trend towards regarding religion and belief as deserving of a lesser priority in discrimination legislation than the other strands where the law seeks to bring protection," the Council says in its response to Department for Communities and Local Government's discrimination law review.

'A Framework for Fairness', the DCLG's consultation paper, says relatively little about the difficult and crucial area of conflicting rights and how a proper balance should be struck, the response notes.

"The argument appears to be that, because religion and belief is susceptible of personal choice in a way that is not the same in relation to other strands, that means that religion and belief should be subordinate to those other strands when they come into conflict. We think that this is a false analysis," the Council says.

"Nor," says the Council, "is religious equality achieved by the elimination of expressions of religious belief in public institutions such as schools or local authorities. This does not amount to, or achieve, equal respect for different religious groups and those of no religion; rather it amounts to an enforced secularism that fails to respect religious belief at all."

The response notes that the Church of England has been consistent in its support for the use of the law to combat the manifestations of prejudice and to promote equality and fairness since the introduction of the first anti-discrimination legislation more than forty years ago.

It includes a detailed commentary on the consultation document and can be read in full at www.cofe.anglican.org/info/papers/singleequalitybill.rtf