Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

My hon. Friend is right. There is the hint of a new orthodoxy in the air, which provides that people must restrict their speech so that they do not cause offence or encourage people to dislike others, whatever the views of the person to be disliked. Philosophically, that is a nail in the coffin of a free society. The moment we go down that road, it will be impossible to hold the sort of robust discourse that created the freedoms and democracy that this country enjoys. They were not born of everybody being inclusively kind to each other. I am sure that many advances in freedom of speech in the past 200 years were offensive to those on the receiving end.