Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

My right hon. and learned Friend has got it absolutely right. The problem then, which is one of the reasons why I think this legislation is so misguided, is that the Government have found themselves hoisted on their commitment to create equality and a level playing field between racial and religious hatred. As a result, as became apparent from debates in Committee, every time a suggestion was made that religion should be treated differently from incitement to racial hatred, it was condemned by the Government on the basis that they would then fail in the promise that they made to the Muslim community, as I understand it, to create a level playing field with Jews and Sikhs. That is why I suggested to the Minister earlier that the Government might like to consider the possibility of splitting hatred against Jews and Sikhs on religious grounds from hatred against them on racial grounds. I accept, however, that that is a problem. As long as the Government persist in demanding that the Bill should apply equally as regards race and religion, we will be faced with that problem. In the fascinating debate in Committee, which I found to be one of the most interesting in which I have been involved since entering the House, it became plain to me that the Government were trying to do something that was difficult, impossible and had a whole series of unintended consequences about which the House should be concerned. The truth is that race and religion are different. As long as the Government persist in maintaining that they must be treated identically, we will face that sort of problem. In the other amendments that we tabled, we tried to deal with the problem through an alternative approach, by leaving the offence of ““specific intent”” in religious hatred but removing—if I may use the expression that seems to have been introduced in Committee—the ““likely limb”” of the offence. That approach has much to commend it, but falls foul of the issue that I raised a moment ago about the equality between racial and religious hatred. Again, as long as the Government are hooked on maintaining that link, it will not help them to find a way through their problem. I have grave anxieties, however, about whether people should be criminalised on the basis of expressions of religious hatred unless they were specifically intending to foment such hatred. In those circumstances, those are other grounds on which the House might consider that it would be sensible to allow a distinction to be made between racial and religious hatred.