To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the answer to the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst of 7 January 2010, Official Report, column 524W, on religious buildings: registration, if he will make an assessment of the likely effect on the Registrar General's power to refuse applications for registration as a place of worship of the provisions proposed in the Equality Bill. (313088)

The Secretary of State does not believe that the Equality Bill will affect the way in which the Registrar General considers the certification of a building as a place of meeting for religious worship under The Places of Religious Worship Act 1855. As detailed in the answer to the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) of 7 January 2010, Official Report, column 524W, in his assessment of such certifications, the Registrar General considers the judgment in the 1970 Segerdal case which defines a place of which the principal use is a place where people come together as a congregation or assembly to worship God or do reverence to a deity. The Secretary of State does not believe that the definition of religion or belief in the Equality Bill (which replicates the existing definition) will impact on existing case-law such as Segerdal.