Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

It is because the change to the likely limb in each of the other clauses will have a different effect from the change to the likely limb in section 20. If the hon. Gentleman looks closely at section 20, he will see that I am right. There are plenty of hedges around the offence relating to the production and performance of plays, not least the defence that the wider context of the play must be borne in mind. That is why the Minister will probably tell me that the director of the National Theatre has every freedom to produce plays such as ““The Jew of Malta”” or ““The Merchant of Venice””, or a play written by a young Muslim woman from the east end of London that exposes problems in her community that she believes have stemmed from Islam. Such a play might even show some very unpleasant aspects of Islam, as she sees it, and might even include language that was extremely aggressive, threatening, abusive or insulting to Islam, because some of the characters might have to present such attitudes for the presentation to be effective. Indeed, many people might find elements of the novel ““Brick Lane”” by Monica Ali, if put on stage, offensive, insulting and so on. The wider context of a play must be borne in mind under the Bill. Intent must be borne in mind, and I believe that the Government are weakening the likely limb unnecessarily. I hope that the Minister will be able to give me some comfort in his reply.