Letter: In Brief

Sir: Eric Thompson (letter, June 8) laments sectarian education in Scotland and Northern Ireland, extrapolating from this to criticise state funding of religious education throughout the UK: "New Labour is using our taxes to subsidise Islamic indoctrination." Muslims, Catholics and Anglicans are taxpayers too, and many want their children educated in schools which nurture them in their own religious traditions, rather than in accordance with relativist or humanist principles. For the state to deny parents this choice would be just as intolerant as the sectarianism which Mr Thompson, rightly, condemns.

DERWYN WILLIAMS

St Albans, Hertfordshire