The People vs Scientology

The UK Government today has responded to two scientology related petitions on the number10.gov.uk web site.

The first petition asked the government to stop the “church” of scientology calling itself such (“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to rename The ‘Church’ of Scientology under section 32 of the Companies Act”) received the following response from the government:

Legislation deems some words to be “sensitive” in the context of company names. A company wishing to use such a word in its name must satisfy certain conditions. The word “church” is not deemed to be a sensitive word and its use in a company name is therefore not subject to any particular controls. Indeed, it is used in many company names which appear on the Register.

Section 32(1) of the Act states that a direction may be issued where, in the Secretary of State’s opinion, a company’s registered name gives so misleading an indication of the nature of its activities as to be likely to cause harm to the public. It is not the company’s activities themselves that are under scrutiny. The name needs to: (i) give an indication of the company’s activities; and (ii) that indication must be so misleading as to cause harm to the public. A company’s registered name means the company’s name as a whole, not one word considered in isolation. It is the name “Church of Scientology (England and Wales)” that is under consideration, not just the word “Church”. .

As the Company is called the “Church of Scientology (England and Wales)” and its main activity is the promotion of Scientology there does not seem to be any attempt to mislead. A person dealing with the Company might not have a comprehensive understanding of what Scientology is, but he or she should be aware that the company’s “trade” is Scientology, therefore there is no basis for the Secretary of State to issue a direction.

So, no win there.

The second petition, to stop the scientology-based Narcanon drug “treatment” programme from inveigling its way into UK prisons and schools (“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ban the usage of Narconon in any publicly funded orgianisation”) had the following response from the government:

The Government is clear that the commissioning of drug treatment services such as Narconon, is the responsibility of local drug partnerships. Such partnerships are best placed to know the needs and priorities of their clients and how well particular drug treatment services can meet these needs and priorities. We have produced a number of pieces of evidence based guidance to support commissioners and providers in ensuring the drug treatment services that they commission and deliver are of a high quality. This guidance is available on the Department of Health website.

Narconon courses are not run in prisons, but they are delivered via correspondence and there is no legal basis on which to deny prisoners access to Narconon letters. The National Offender Management Service does, however, encourage staff to refer misusing offenders that receive correspondence from Narconon into accredited interventions.

In schools, teachers should be the main providers of drug education and maintain responsibility for the overall drug education programme. External contributors can be used where they add to the drug education programme a dimension that teachers alone cannot deliver. It is for schools and local authorities, however, to decide whether to use the services of an external contributor to assist with their drug education programme, and if so who this should be. The Government’s guidance on drugs, Drugs:Guidance for Schools (DfES 2004) http://www.teachernet.gov,uk/wholeschool/behaviour/drugs/ encourages schools to liaise with their local authority and local Healthy Schools Programmes on the range of individuals and agencies who can support drug education programmes.

This reads like a partial success to me.

As Tony Curtis might have said, you can’t win ‘em all.

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