Leading article: A vote based on conscience is a principle to be upheld

When it comes to matters of morality, Parliament has a well-worn convention that its members are allowed to follow their consciences and be left alone to do so by the whips. Abortion, capital punishment and fox hunting are the disparate, but classic, examples of issues that can be defused – or at least as defused as such emotive causes can ever be – by this fine Burkeian tradition.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill also falls into this category, though not as neatly as some might assume. It is certainly a much-misunderstood piece of legislation, but the fact that it inflames passion is obvious. On balance, it ought to be up to MPs individually to decide how they want to vote on this. The Government's offer of a "compromise", permitting abstention – and even that only if the passage of the Bill is not jeopardised – is a fairly pathetic one, answering a challenge of principle with astonishing cynicism.

It would be far better to honour the old convention of conscience. Not the least benefit of this is to ensure that politics does not become too mixed up with religion. Party politics and moral crusades don't mix well, and the best examples to demonstrate this can be seen on the other side of the Atlantic.

It is perhaps ironic that the United States, where Church and State are separate under the Constitution, has allowed itself to drift to a situation where the religious right has a stranglehold on the Republican Party, and the atheistic tendency holds a similar sway over the Democrats. What a God-fearing anti-abortionist who was nonetheless attracted to Democrat ideas about better health care or the war in Iraq was supposed to do has been a mystery. Barack Obama's preacher also shows us how not do things.

However, the parliamentary convention of conscience does raise an awkward thought. What is it that drives MPs' minds? Why is it that Cabinet ministers, such as Ruth Kelly and Paul Murphy, are said to be considering resignation from the Government over this? The problem is that these ministers look as though they are prepared to put their religion – rather than just their principles – before their country. They happen to be Roman Catholics, but the principle applies to all faiths.

Of course the Kelly/Murphy counter-argument would be that a decision driven by religious principle is one that is also in the best interests of the country. But is it true that the two should always, and necessarily, converge? A Quaker minister, say, might refuse to vote for a war even if the survival of the nation or the prevention of a genocide were at stake. Would that be a praiseworthy exercise of radical conscience or a mere indulgence demonstrably at odds with a national or moral imperative?

Almost half a century ago John F Kennedy, the first – and so far only – Catholic to win the White House, was forced to confront the issue. He did so with clarity. For the Prime Minister, for the Catholic members of the Cabinet, and for all the religious figures now making so much noise about the Embryology Bill, his words are instructive: "I believe in an America where the separation of Church and State is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President – should he be Catholic – how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote... and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him."

Or, as Alastair Campbell succinctly put it on behalf of Tony Blair, now a Catholic, "we don't do God". As creeds go, that is an admirable one.

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