MPs yesterday strongly criticised the government's plans to inspect non-school education settings. During a lively Westminster Hall debate, MPs labelled the plans 'unworkable' ', 'illegal', 'unlawful' and 'hopelessly broad'.

In his response to the debate, the Minister – who was unsurprisingly the only speaker supporting the Government’s proposals – revealed several key points:

• There were more than 10,000 responses to the Government’s out-of-school education consultation which ran over Christmas (thank you again to all who responded!)
• This was the very first acknowledgement on the part of the Government that churches offer more than one form of out-of-school education and not merely Sunday School. This cuts to the core of one of CARE’s central concerns, that while Sunday School alone may not cross the Government’s 6 hour threshold (resulting in the need for registration), young people are likely to access more than one service from a church in a given week – e.g. youth club, choir, two services on a Sunday, etc – surpassing the 6 hour threshold.
• The Government claimed it has “no intention to regulate religion or interfere in parents’ right to teach children about their faith and heritage”.

Unless the Government now changes its proposed policy, churches providing 6 hours of educational services for children and young people will have to register with the state and face the possibility of all those services – including Sunday School – being inspected.

We await the Government’s response to its consultation and hope that the strength of feeling shown by MPs during the debate, as well as the responses of more than 10,000 members of the public, will encourage the Government to rethink its proposals.

During the course of the debate, MPs from four different parties urged the government to drop its plans altogether. Below are some of the key points made during yesterday's debate. You can watch the debate by clicking here and can read a full transcript of the debate here.

Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con): “I believe that Ofsted has neither the capacity nor the resources. It should concentrate on its job of ensuring good educational standards.”

Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab): “The Christian organisation CARE, in its briefing for the debate, rightly asks the question that he raised: what became of the big society?”

Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con): “The proposals are disproportionate and likely to be ineffective, and pose a real threat to freedom of speech, conscience and belief. They are also quite probably illegal.”

Rob Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab): "The best thing that the Government could do is to bury the consultation once and for all."

Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con): "We should be promoting the teaching of the Bible to our children, not seeking to restrict it, because the results of that produce an awful lot of good."

Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP): “We cannot end up in a situation in which a Sunday school is declared a radical theatre or religious studies at a local primary school becomes a matter of national security.”

Caroline Ansell (Eastborne) (Con): “As a former teacher, I think this has all the hallmarks of parents’ evening: it is only those parents who we really need to see who will not come.”

Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP): “While we are talking about brainwashing and indoctrination, I should add that I am far more concerned about children who spend six-plus hours in front of the television, being fed soap operas and “The X Factor”, with all the lessons that those teach.”

Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con): “If we go ahead with this, it will have the opposite effect on safety to what is intended.”

Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP): “I want to highlight the promise made to the people of this country in the Conservative manifesto last year. On page 61, it states that a Conservative Government will “reject any suggestions of sweeping, authoritarian measures that would threaten our hard-won freedoms.” Live up to that promise, Minister, and having considered the possibility of the proposals, set them aside.”

CARE Chief Executive Nola Leach had labelled the plans 'more Big Brother than Big Society'. You can read a full reaction from Nola here. Her comments were also picked up by Christian Today.

The image used on this post is taken from Parliament TV, as a screen grab.