As part of the Children, Schools and Families Bill, the UK Government was set to make sex education from the age of five a compulsory part of the national curriculum for schools.Decisions on sex education would be taken out of the hands of parents and school governors and placed in the hands of Government officials.
Teachers would be required by law, irrespective of personal conviction, to present homosexual partnerships and unmarried sexual relationships as being on a par with marriage. Religious as well as secular schools would be required to teach children where to get contraceptives and how to access abortions.
The bill also provided what lawyers called a draconian regime for home education, where parents who wanted to teach their children would have to be licensed, there would be regular visits by inspectors and parents could easily lose their right to continue.
No longer. At the end of a Government's term of office, there is always a period of horse trading between political parties so the Government can push through remaining legislation before Parliament rises. It is understood that the Conservatives objected to proposals for sex education and the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to proposals for home education legislation.
Schools Secretary Ed Balls this week dropped the proposals on these two issues so the rest of the bill could go through. One newspaper suggested that he ditched his sex education reforms in a fit of petulance rather than compromise on one of the Conservatives' key demands. Whatever the reason, it was certainly an answer to prayer as far as some people were concerned.
A word of warning though. Labour have promised to being the proposals back in the summer if they are re-elected.
One more thing: the Government recently passed legislation making "incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation" a specific offence. Lord Waddington successfully proposed the addition of a freedom of speech amendment which would ensure people were not taken to court for simply criticising homosexual conduct or expressing the belief that homosexual behaviour is wrong.
The Government tried four times to remove the amendment, but lost in the House of Lords each time.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said that the next Labour manifesto will include a commitment to reverse the Waddington amendment, and Labour would use the Parliament Act to overturn the Lords' decision if necessary.
