BELIEF in the values of the BBC entitles an employee to the same protection at work as faith in Christianity, Islam and the world’s other leading religions, a review for the state equality quango has concluded.
Opponents of foxhunting — but not hunt supporters — are also entitled to the same protection in the workplace as religious believers, after a series of judgments by tribunals over the past decade.
Now the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is to consider recommending changes to the law later this year to counter such rulings and prevent religion and belief from being “trivialised”.
The body said that such “incoherent and inconsistent” tribunal judgments risked bringing the law into disrepute and “undermining protection from the discrimination that Christians, Jewish people, Muslims and others have told us they face in the workplace and services”.
Others who have won cases at employment tribunals have included a humanist, an animal rights activist and an environmentalist concerned about climate change.
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While Christians read the Bible and Muslims study the Koran, the BBC’s “mission and values” are set out in a few paragraphs on its website. They include its mission to “inform, educate and entertain”. Its values include the slogan: “We are one BBC: great things happen when we work together.”
The authors of the 78-page EHRC research report conclude that belief in public service broadcasting concerns a “weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour”.
Although employment tribunals cannot generate binding precedent, the academics at Oxford Brookes University who wrote the report say that in practice lawyers make use of such decisions.
They cite an employment tribunal case involving the BBC in 2011 to declare: “A belief that public service broadcasting has the higher purpose of promoting cultural interchange and social cohesion was found to be covered by the legislation.”
Devan Maistry, 63, the former BBC employee involved in the case, insisted this weekend that he genuinely believed in the corporation’s higher purpose and it had made clear that these were “the values to believe in.”
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By contrast, an attempt to give legal protection to a belief that one should wear a poppy to show respect to servicemen failed because, according to the EHRC report, it did not concern a “weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour”.
Linda Woodhead, co- founder of the Westminster Faith Debates, conceded some protected beliefs were “clearly absurd” but said it was difficult to draw a line.
She said the debate originated with Joseph Stalin, who demanded that beliefs be given the same protection as religion under the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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“He thought communism was worthy of protection and that religion would die out,” she said.
“People in this country are turning their back on the established religions but nonetheless they believe in a life force or higher truth and the interesting question is, should they be protected? I think you can quite easily draw a line between those and the BBC and anti-foxhunting.”