Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

It occurs to me that the longer we go on discussing this group of amendments, the less clear it is exactly what will and what will not be caught by the Bill. One of my fundamental problems with the legislation is that, unless it is amended—I shall discuss some of the specific amendments very briefly in a moment—and if it passes into law in its current form, I believe that we are in danger of stoking up difficulties between various communities. There is such uncertainty about what the Government intend and such uncertainty about what is and is not caught that the Bill will not help community relations and is likely to inflame them. The Government have chosen their Minister with great care. He has been extremely courteous throughout the proceedings that we have enjoyed together. He is obviously a very reasonable man. He is, quite honestly, the right face to introduce legislation of this kind, but I can imagine the tactics meeting at the Home Office after the Bill’s consideration in Committee, bearing in mind the lobbying that was going on, and I can imagine the Minister saying, ““Look, we’ve got to give way on something in the Bill. Let’s find the smallest possible amendment that we can concede, and we’ll completely block the rest.”” What the Minister has done successfully—I welcome the concession that was made in the previous group of amendments, which, of course, I will not discuss now—is to deal with the speck of sawdust, leaving the plank lying in the middle of the Chamber for us all to trip over. Unless one of the amendments in this group is accepted, I do not think that the Bill will become law; nor should it. A number of excellent points are made in many of the amendments, which I should like to touch on briefly. I will be mercifully brief. I am a very fair-minded person, so I want to touch first on new clause 2, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), the broad thrust of which I support. However, the word ““tone”” worries me slightly. I can imagine occasions on which the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) could be in his pulpit and expounding a very important religious doctrine, of course, very reasonably indeed, but perhaps in a tone that might fall foul of my hon. Friend’s new clause. I certainly support new clause 4, which would provide the kind of balance that we are looking for in the Bill. At the moment, it is not clear that the Government do not intend to clamp down on the kind of religious freedoms, discussions, discourse and even the kind of cynical lampoonery that I do not often enjoy and often find distasteful when poked at other people, other religions, other political parties and so on, but that is none the less an important part of a healthy democracy. New clause 4 has a lot to commend it, and if the Government cannot go all the way and accept new schedule 1, I hope that they will at least look seriously at new clause 4. I think it particularly important that proposed new paragraph (3) in new schedule 1, or something like it, be incorporated into the Bill, because it gets to the heart of the matter. Why were 2,000 reasonable people outside Parliament campaigning against the Bill earlier today? I am not sure whether they are still there. Why have we been lobbied so extensively on the Bill by a lot of people who do not normally take the trouble to write to their Member of Parliament or to come to see us at our surgeries? Why is that happening? It is happening because a lot of genuine, decent people, many of whom hold their own religious beliefs very passionately and sincerely, are very scared indeed that the Bill will in some way curtail their freedom of religious belief and religious expression. They fear that the Bill, cloaked in uncertainty, will in some way undermine their ability to preach their gospel, to expound their faith and to contrast and compare other religious beliefs freely, sincerely and passionately. That is why people are demonstrating in Parliament square today, and it is why we have received so much lobbying. No matter how many ministerial assurances we receive, we have all heard them before. Ministers come and Ministers go. Unless we place something in the Bill that makes it abundantly clear that that is not what the Government are seeking to do, the Bill will not attract widespread support, and it will be poor law. Even if the Minister cannot accept new schedule 1 or part of it, I hope that the Government will be able to introduce in another place an amendment, drafted by experienced parliamentary draftsmen, that deals with the substance of proposed new paragraph (3) in new schedule 1. I am repeating myself so that the Minister, who is returning to his place, absolutely understands that we must have something in the Bill that gives comfort and reassurance, as well as legal protection, so that people from all faiths in this country are free to expound their faiths in the years to come. I enjoyed what has been said about amendment No. 9, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield. It is very important to discuss what we mean by a religion. We had a bit of a discussion about Satanists—we do not often do so in the House—during our proceedings in Committee. I should like to ask the Minister whether he thinks that Satanism is a religion. He many want to leap to his feet to intervene now; he may want to deal with that in his winding-up speech. He is itching to move. I think that he is about to intervene, and here he goes.