Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation, although I am sorry that he cannot accept the amendment. I am troubled by the implication of that. It was said during the course of the debate that no one was trying to prevent people from hating others because they did not like their views or their religion, yet the Government persist in holding the view that someone might be able to hold a private hatred but that they cannot communicate it to someone else in order to persuade them to take the same viewpoint. I find that astonishingly illogical, and we ought to be anxious about that. If the mischief that we are trying to address is not inciting people to hatred so as to commit acts of violence, what the Bill is really saying is that people cannot communicate their own strongly held beliefs to others, even though that would not lead to violence.