Equality in Fife: Religion and belief

What do we know about Religion and Belief and Equality?

Religion has the meaning usually given to it and includes lack of religion, and Belief includes religious and philosophical beliefs (such as humanism) and includes lack of belief[1].

Generally, a belief should affect one’s life choices or the way that one lives for it to be included in the definition. The Equality Act also points out that a belief must also be worthy of respect in a democratic society and not affect other people’s fundamental rights.

Interesting #Equalityfacts about Religion and Belief in Fife

Diversity of religious communities

Religions in Fife include Christianity (Church of Scotland, Roman Catholic, other Christian), Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Baha’i and Judaism.

Increasing secularity

The 2011 census showed that, as across Scotland and the UK, Fife has seen a decrease in the proportion of people who said that they belonged to a Christian denomination in the last ten years –  from 56% in 2001 to 45.3% in 2011. People in Fife who said that they had “No Religion” increased from 35.4% in 2001 to 46.3% in 2011. Those who stated that they had “No religion”, were most common for all age groups up to 50-54, with the highest concentrations in the 0-9 and 25-34 age groups.

Recurring religious Hate crimes and incidents

In Scotland, the number of people convicted with religious aggravations increased in 2016-2017 by 12%. In Fife, partial data shows that there were 29 charges reported for religiously aggravated crime (18 in Dunfermline, 11 in Kirkcaldy) in 2017-2018, a marked increase on the previous year (18). Across Scotland this has decreased from a high in 2011 (896) to 642 in 2017. The number of people convicted with religious aggravations increased in 2016-2017 by 12%.

Demography

Religions in Scotland and Fife

The Census is the main source of information for detailed data on religion at national and local level. Fife shows a lower proportion than the national average of Roman Catholics, Muslims and Other religions, and a higher proportion with No Religion:

	Fife	Scotland
All people	365198	5295403
% Church of Scotland	31.4	32.4
% Roman Catholic	8.5	15.9
% Other Christian	5.4	5.5
% Muslim	0.7	1.4
% Other religions	0.8	1.1
% No religion	46.3	36.7
% Not stated	6.9	7.0

Table 184 Religions in Scotland and Fife

Source: Census 2011 Data Explorer

Age grouping show an increasing proportion of the population stating that they had No religion up to the age group of 50-54.

Figure 62 Number of people and religions across age groups in Fife

Source: Census 2011 Data Explorer[2]

	All people	Church of Scotland	Roman Catholic	Other Christian	Buddhist	Hindu	Jewish
Fife	365198	114773 (31.43%)	31092 (8.51%)	19757 (5.41%)	736 (0.20%)	489 (0.13%)	245 (0.07%)
Male	176943	51918 (29.34%)	14124 (7.98%)	8506 (4.81%)	353 (0.20%)	268 (0.15%)	108 (0.06%)
Female	188255	62855 (33.39%)	16968 (9.01%)	11251 (5.98%)	383 (0.20%)	221 (0.12%)	137 (0.07%)

 

	Muslim	Sikh	Other religion	No religion	Religion not stated
Fife	2591 (0.71%)	324 (0.09%)	1190 (0.33%)	168932 (46.26%)	25069 (6.86%)
Male	1396 (0.79%)	184 (0.10%)	466 (0.26%)	86944 (49.14%)	12676 (7.16%)
Female	1195 (0.63%)	140 (0.07%)	724 (0.38%)	81988 (43.55%)	12393 (6.58%)

Table 185 Proportions of religions in Fife

Source: Census 2011 Data Explorer

Age	All people	Church of Scotland	Roman Catholic	Other Christian	No religion	Religion not stated
0 to 4	20775	2473	1273	603	14127	1933
5 to 9	19156	3404	1284	683	12271	1220
10 to 14	20186	4341	1493	717	12137	1226
15	4280	1003	317	146	2487	269
16 to 17	8852	2044	641	317	5190	536
18 to 19	9532	1763	795	556	5554	649
20 to 24	24141	3818	2114	1609	14338	1648
25 to 29	20802	3027	2099	926	13075	1108
30 to 34	20787	3434	2028	1052	12771	941
35 to 39	23035	4623	2063	1126	13579	1118
40 to 44	27445	7092	2518	1267	14546	1579
45 to 49	28007	9004	2745	1450	12615	1817
50 to 54	26152	9750	2532	1443	10247	1794
55 to 59	22981	9767	2066	1413	7757	1698
60 to 64	24996	12083	2118	1749	6898	1968
65 to 69	19529	10433	1628	1409	4379	1562
70 to 74	15652	8993	1318	1138	2861	1266
75 to 79	12425	7440	927	868	2076	1044
80 to 84	8730	5465	613	634	1197	790
85 and over	7735	4816	520	651	827	903
Total	365198	114773	31092	19757	168932	25069

 

Age	Buddhist	Hindu	Jewish	Muslim	Sikh	Other religion
0 to 4	13	31	8	256	35	23
5 to 9	14	15	9	199	28	29
10 to 14	15	31	11	176	16	23
15	4	4	2	37	3	8
16 to 17	16	7	1	80	4	16
18 to 19	25	30	24	100	10	26
20 to 24	115	63	72	248	38	78
25 to 29	82	60	7	303	34	81
30 to 34	49	67	7	310	33	95
35 to 39	77	46	19	215	33	136
40 to 44	65	38	17	160	27	136
45 to 49	71	26	16	137	17	109
50 to 54	58	22	15	138	25	128
55 to 59	53	18	10	89	8	102
60 to 64	42	9	9	34	6	80
65 to 69	18	8	3	44	4	41
70 to 74	3	5	5	26	2	35
75 to 79	11	6	6	23	0	24
80 to 84	3	3	3	9	0	13
85 and over	2	0	1	7	1	7
Total	736	489	245	2591	324	1190

Table 186 Number of people and religions across age groups in Fife

Source: Census 2011 Data Explorer

Education

Educational attainment of children and young people

Data on religion in the education sector focuses on the denomination of the school and not on the religion of pupils or teachers. In September 2016, 17.8% of pupils in publicly funded schools attended a Roman Catholic school[3]. There is no further data at local level.

Modern Apprenticeships (MA)

MA equality opportunity monitoring covers Disability, Gender and Ethnicity, there is no data collected on sexual orientation and religion of Modern Apprentices in Scotland.

Work

Employment

Similar to education, there is no dedicated local data on religion and employment conditions at local level at this time. At national level a change over the past year (2017) in employment rates +11.1% for Buddhist and of +1.8% for Hindu followers.

	Christian			Buddhist			Hindu		Muslim
	Rate	Level	Rate		Level	Rate		Level	Rate	Level
2004	72.8%	1,915,300	58.6%		4,900	64.7%		4,000	50.6%	17,900
2005	73.1%	1,906,600	57.4%		3,500	67.1%		3,900	48.8%	16,600
2006	73.8%	1,904,700	60.5%		4,800	83.4%		4,900	51.7%	22,600
2007	73.8%	1,902,300	64.6%		4,400	72.8%		7,100	60.1%	21,400
2008	73.7%	1,857,900	56.8%		5,100	58.2%		6,600	51.8%	16,400
2009	72.4%	1,793,000	61.2%		5,700	62.8%		9,200	49.2%	24,600
2010	71.7%	1,753,300	71.5%		7,800	73.5%		9,800	46.1%	21,300
2011	70.0%	1,443,600	67.7%		7,100	74.0%		9,800	50.5%	19,100
2012	70.1%	1,396,900	60.7%		6,400	64.8%		10,000	52.8%	23,700
2013	71.1%	1,340,500	59.8%		6,800	74.7%		6,500	42.8%	19,900
2014	72.5%	1,283,700	62.0%		7,500	81.9%		13,000	53.8%	28,900
2015	72.4%	1,267,300	47.9%		3,900	81.1%		12,500	49.7%	25,300
2016	72.8%	1,205,600	68.5%		3,700	61.9%		9,700	50.5%	33,800
2017	74.1	1,162,000	79.5		7,100	62.2		10,400	56.0	39,900
Change:
On year	-1.3	-44,300	11.1		-200	1.8		-3,300	5.2	8,500

 

	Other		No religion			All
	Rate	Level	Rate	Level	Rate		Level
2004	68.2%	20,800	73.5%	465,900	72.6%		2,430,000
2005	72.2%	22,100	73.8%	500,300	73.0%		2,454,600
2006	72.7%	22,300	74.8%	538,900	73.7%		2,500,200
2007	71.7%	26,800	75.1%	563,900	73.9%		2,528,400
2008	72.1%	25,900	74.4%	621,300	73.6%		2,534,600
2009	66.6%	28,500	72.8%	635,500	72.0%		2,497,700
2010	66.0%	31,800	70.6%	653,300	71.0%		2,479,700
2011	65.4%	32,200	71.9%	935,600	70.5%		2,476,300
2012	67.5%	36,700	72.0%	1,003,100	70.5%		2,481,500
2013	63.6%	40,100	71.6%	1,075,600	70.8%		2,494,300
2014	67.0%	51,900	73.5%	1,170,600	72.6%		2,557,700
2015	70.1%	57,200	74.8%	1,192,600	73.1%		2,577,300
2016	69.2%	51,700	74.2%	1,265,200	72.9%		2,579,700
2017	68.5	54,800	75.5	1,336,800	74.3		2,618,100
Change:
On year	-0.6	-5,900	1.2	70,500	1.3		-1,900

Table 187 Employment rate by religion, Scotland

Source: Regional Employment Patterns in Scotland Statistics from the Annual Population Survey 2017

Living Standards

Housing

As for education, there is no dedicated data on religion and housing conditions for the local level at this time. A very rough approximation may be possibly through ethnicity due to the strong correlation between race and religion.

Health

Health outcomes

The 2011 census does not directly report on the self-assessed health by religion, but some approximation may be had by the 2001 census. Muslim and Sikh women were more likely than women in other groups to report poor health, though the number of respondents in older age groups was small and the figures in these groups should be interpreted cautiously. Muslim, Roman Catholic and Sikh men were more likely than men from the general population to report poor health.

		Age group (years)
Religion	Gender	0 – 15	16 – 29	30 – 49	50 – Pensionable age	Pensionable age – 74	75+	All people
Church of Scotland	Male	98.7	97.1	92.7	83.5	82.0	75.8	89.6
	Female	98.9	96.6	91.7	85.6	83.5	72.5	88.2
Roman Catholic	Male	98.4	95.9	89.7	74.4	72.4	67.0	87.8
	Female	98.7	95.5	88.4	76.9	73.6	64.0	86.2
Other Christian	Male	98.7	94.4	86.9	82.3	76.0	78.3	90.9
	Female	98.8	95.1	89.2	82.5	82.9	70.0	88.3
Buddhist	Male	99.2	94.4	86.9	82.3	76.0	78.3	88.7
	Female	98.0	95.1	89.2	82.5	82.9	70.0	89.7
Hindu	Male	99.1	98.2	96.7	86.6	81.3	56.7	95.0
	Female	98.5	98.2	93.5	85.3	67.2	47.1	93.1
Jewish	Male	98.4	98.2	92.4	86.4	84.0	71.0	89.3
	Female	98.7	94.8	92.0	86.0	84.1	68.4	86.5
Muslim	Male	98.5	96.5	90.9	71.2	68.2	63.8	92.5
	Female	98.2	95.9	86.2	63.9	52.9	56.2	90.2
Sikh	Male	98.8	97.8	89.7	75.7	72.1	54.8	91.6
	Female	98.8	97.2	87.0	66.5	61.2	66.3	88.7
Another Religion	Male	98.3	94.8	89.9	81.8	76.1	70.3	92.0
	Female	98.2	93.0	86.1	77.5	77.7	71.0	88.4
No Religion	Male	98.4	96.6	93.0	84.3	79.9	72.7	92.9
	Female	98.7	95.8	91.5	84.4	80.5	69.5	92.6
Not Answered	Male	99.3	95.7	90.7	80.9	76.0	78.0	91.8
	Female	99.4	95.5	90.5	81.4	77.3	78.8	90.8
All Religion Groups	Male	98.6	96.6	92.2	82.3	80.1	74.3	90.6
	Female	98.9	96.0	90.9	83.7	81.2	71.5	89.2

Table 188 Percentage of people who assessed their health to be ‘good’ or ‘fairly good’, by current religion and age

Source: ScotPHO / GROS Census 2001

Justice and Personal Security

Conditions of detention

As at 30 June 2013 just over 4,600 prisoners (58% of the prison population) in Scotland indicated that they held religious beliefs. Of these, 93% were Christian (of various denominations), 4.4% were Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Jewish, Hindu and other religions accounted for 2.7% of the religious prison population. 3,270 prisoners (42% of the prison population) held no religious beliefs.

As Muslims accounted for around 1.2% of the Scottish population aged 15 and over, prison the proportion was over twice that at 2.5%.Prisoners indicating “other religion” also had a higher proportion of representation in prisons than among the general population:

Figure 63 Religion of prisoners, Scotland

Source: UK Prison Population Statistics
Parliament UK Number SN/SG/04334, 20 April 2017

Hate crime

There were 673 charges with a religious aggravation reported in 2016-17, 14% more than in 2015-16. This is the highest number of charges reported over the last four years, but is 2% lower than the number (689) reported in 2012-13.

There were 642 charges with a religious aggravation reported in 2017-18. This is 5% fewer than in 2016-17, but higher than the numbers reported in the previous three years. However, as noted above, direct comparisons between 2017-18 and earlier years are unreliable because of the discontinuity in the figures due to the repeal of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012.

Figure 64 Trends in Hate Crime, Scotland

Source: COPFS (2017) Hate Crime in Scotland 2017-2018

In 2017-18, court proceedings were commenced in respect of 85% of charges with a religious aggravation. In total, 92% of charges reported in 2017-18 led to court proceedings (including those not separately prosecuted, but which may have been incorporated into other charges for the same accused). No action was taken in respect of 3% of charges.

Year		10-11	11-12	12-13	13-14	14-15	15-16	16-17	17-18
Total number of charges of an offence aggravated by religious prejudice		694	896	689	591	567	591	678	642
Decision on how charge will proceed
	Court proceedings	86%	87%	82%	89%	86%	91%	86%	85%
	Not separately prosecuted	9%	7%	11%	6%	6%	5%	8%	7%
	Direct measures	2%	1%	1%	1%	1%	1%	4%	4%
	Referred to Children’s Reporter	0%	1%	2%	0%	1%	1%	0%	0%
	No action	3%	4%	3%	4%	6%	3%	2%	3%
	Awaiting decision	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	1%

 Table 189 Religiously aggravated crime Charges reported, 2010-11 to 2017-18

Source: COPFS (2017) Hate Crime in Scotland 2017-2018 p9

In Fife, partial data shows that there were 29 charges reported for religiously aggravated crime (18 in Dunfermline, 11 in Kirkcaldy) in 2017-2018, a marked increase on the previous year (18). Across Scotland this has decreased from a high in 2011 (896) to 642 in 2017. 

	Financial Year Reported
Office	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17	2017-18
Dunfermline	1	11	4	4	6	6	6	18
Kirkcaldy	7	5	7	8	0	12	12	11
Scotland	694	896	689	591	567	591	678	642

Table 190 Charges reported – Racially aggravated crime, Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and Scotland

Charges reported, 2010-11 to 2017-18, by Procurator Fiscal Office Table 5 

People convicted and aggravations

Across Scotland, in 2016-2017, 12,252 people were convicted with aggravations, the majority of which (10,830) were on charges of domestic aggravators. The number of people convicted with religious aggravations increased in 2016-2017 by 12%.

	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17	% change 2015-16 to 2016-17
Male and Female
All aggravators	13,751	13,828	12,252	-11%
Domestic	12,441	12,376	10,830	-12%
Racial	701	761	721	-5%
Religious	241	247	277	12%
Sexual orientation	320	369	356	-4%
Disability	40	68	54	-21%
Transgender	8	7	14	100%

 

	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17	% change 2015-16 to 2016-17
Male
All aggravators	11,884	11,980	10,689	-11%
Domestic	10,796	10,741	9,501	-12%
Racial	573	633	588	-7%
Religious	213	230	258	12%
Sexual orientation	265	316	290	-8%
Disability	33	55	41	-25%
Transgender	4	5	11	120%

 

	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17	% change 2015-16 to 2016-17
Female
All aggravators	1,867	1,848	1,563	-15%
Domestic	1,645	1,635	1,329	-19%
Racial	128	128	133	4%
Religious	28	17	19	12%
Sexual orientation	55	53	66	25%
Disability	7	13	13	0%
Transgender	4	2	3	50%

Table 191 People convicted with an aggravator recorded against the main charge by gender

Source: Criminal Proceedings in Scotland 2016-17 (27 February 2018)

Participation

Political and civic participation and representation

Across Scotland, the level of applicants who declared a non-Christian religion or belief is low. The 2016 figure (4.7%) was slightly higher than in the preceding four years, where the level ranged from 2.6% (in 2013) to 4.2% (in 2012). Of those appointed, the proportion belonging to this group was between 3% and 4% from 2012 to 2015, but fell to 2.0% in 2016, there is no further local breakdown available at this time[4].

[1] EHRC (March 2017) Equality Act 2010 – Handbook for Advisors [Scotland] p8

[2] To access original data, visit Census 2011 Data Explorer, select Topic: Ethnicity, Identity, Language and Religion, select table: DC2107SC Religion by sex by age, then select Fife area

[3] Pupil Census Supplementary Data, Table 1.15

[4] Public Appointments in Scotland 2016 Diversity Analysis Report – March 2017