The Sunday Times reports that “the Scout Association has ditched its traditional pledge of loyalty ‘to God and to the Queen’ in favour of a series of multicultural options. Muslim Scouts can opt to swear to Allah, while atheists can drop God altogether and budding republicans can pledge themselves to the state rather than the monarch…. The changes have horrified some prominent former Scouts. Stephen Pound, the Labour MP and chairman of the all-party parliamentary Scout group, called the changes ‘profoundly retrograde, uncalled for and potentially extremely divisive’.”

Sunday Times, 12 June 2005