Scottish Government Equality Outcomes: Religion and Belief Evidence Review

2 CONTEXT

Legal definition of religion in the Equality Act (2010)^[1]

2.1 Religion has the meaning usually given to it, but belief includes religious and philosophical beliefs including lack of belief (e.g. Atheism). Generally, a belief should affect your life choices or the way you live for it to be included in the definition.

2.2 It should be noted that some of the data sources cited in this Evidence Review cover the whole of the UK and so are not specific to Scotland. This will be pointed out in the text.

Demography

2.3 Table 1 shows the religious composition of Scotland's population^[2]. Note that 2011 Census equalities data are expected to be available from summer 2013^[3].

Table 1: Current religion in Scotland - all people (Source: Census 2001)