BBC News | UK POLITICS | Government pledges to lift Section 28

On Friday a Downing Street spokesman said ministers would try to overturn an amendment by the Tory peer Baroness Young altering the proposed new guidelines.

"There is a fundamental difference between what Baroness Young is proposing and what we are proposing," the spokesman said.

"The government believes it has made every effort to listen to opinions across the range.

"[Education Secretary] David Blunkett has done a lot of negotiation with the churches."

The defeat for ministers, the second in the upper chamber over the Section 28 issue, means the government will have to go back to the Commons to try to overturn Baroness Young's proposals.

The government has blamed the remaining hereditary peers in the upper chamber for the defeat, the latest in a series of rebellions since the House was reformed last year.

However, the government's position in the Lords is likely to be strengthened soon with the appointment of a new batch of working peers.

'Preventing prejudice'

Baroness Young, who said she would continue to fight for the retention of Section 28, had argued that the government's guidelines would not prevent the promotion of homosexuality in schools.

But Schools Minister Jacqui Smith said the government was committed to make sure children received a sex education which was not prejudiced against any group. "What the Lords chose to do was to impose a much more restrictive, and we feel, positively damaging amendment in terms of sex and relationships education.

"It explicitly excluded the key objective we have that pupils are given accurate information for the purposes of enabling them to understand difference and preventing or removing prejudice," she told the BBC.

"We have a commitment to ensure that our young people get the sort of sex and relationships education they need, to avoid some of the hysteria that has surrounded the debate and to make sure that we work with teachers, church leaders, parents, professionals to give our young people that education."

Shadow education spokeswoman Theresa May has called on the government to back down in the wake of the defeat.

"The government should apply some common sense and drop this nonsense," she said.

"Parents want the comfort of knowing homosexuality cannot be promoted in schools at public expense and that their children are protected."


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