Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

No, my Lords, but I truly believe that the motivation for this Bill is purely party political and I wish to express my contempt for the behaviour of the Government. The reason the Government have brought this religious hatred offence back for a third time is not to tackle a real problem; it is to appeal to certain Muslim campaign groups. They think that they are placating a section of the population. It is all about votes. After failing to get religious hatred on the statute book in 2001, the Government left it three and a half years before trying again. It did not seem to be a great priority for them—until election time came around and there were panic-ridden predictions of a collapse in Muslim support for Labour. Some noble Lords may be angry at me for suggesting that the Government would dare to play politics with our civil liberties, but I have here a letter, which has already been referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, that makes quite clear that this is precisely what they are doing. Timing is all. Shortly before the election, the Home Secretary wrote the letter—on Labour Party notepaper but calling himself Charles Clarke, Home Secretary—to mosques up and down the country, as the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, said, blaming the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats for rejecting the religious hatred proposals in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill. Some sections of the letter have already been read out by the noble Baroness, but it also includes the sentence:"““They””—" in other words, the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives—"““bear the full responsibility for blocking this part of the Bill. I am sure that you and other members of the Muslim community will take very careful note of that””." I find that astonishing. But that is not the end of it. It is illustrative of the division this law is already bringing to our national life that no such letter was sent to churches. Noble Lords will have noticed that, with some exceptions, most of the active support for this measure comes from Muslim groups, while much of the active opposition is from Christian groups. I fear that the battle lines are already being drawn up for how our communities will divide once the offence becomes law. This was not the first time that the Government had played politics with this issue. In January this year, Mike O’Brien, then an energy Minister, wrote an ingratiating article in the Muslim Weekly, boasting that lobbying from the Muslim Council of Britain was behind the decision to press on with the religious hatred law. ““It was””, wrote Mr O’Brien,"““a major victory for the Muslim community in Britain””." This is a blatant exercise in pandering to a particular special interest group. Noble Lords will have already spotted that Mr O’Brien is now the Solicitor-General and will have a key role in deciding which cases are to be prosecuted under the new offence. The Muslim Council of Britain continues to be the Government’s chief cheerleader for this Bill. The Secretary-General of the MCB is Sir Iqbal Sacranie, twice honoured by the Blair Government for his services. I do not know how representative the group is; but I know that ““Panorama”” recently exposed Mr Sacranie—sorry, Sir Iqbal Sacranie—and the MCB as rather less moderate than we would like to think. Sir Iqbal was one of the joint leaders of Muslim protests against Salman Rushdie’s book, The Satanic Verses. When asked about the Iranian fatwa calling for the death sentence on Rushdie, Sir Iqbal said:"““Death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for him””." When asked on ““Panorama”” on 21 August this year if he would still put pressure on publishers to withdraw the book if it was published today, he answered:"““There is no law at the moment, sadly, that would enable me to pursue with a legal course of seeking its withdrawal””." However, judging from his article in the Daily Telegraph on 14 December last year, it appears that Sir Iqbal believes that the religious hatred law would be precisely that law which would enable him to do so. Of course, if the religious hatred offence were to be applied evenly, as per the wording, Sir Iqbal could conceivably find himself on the wrong end of it, especially if he were to repeat his comments about the death sentence being ““too good”” for Salman Rushdie. This is why not all Muslim groups support the offence. They realise that some of their imams could be targeted for prosecution. There is a widely held view that the law will not be applied evenly. Many Christians fear that they will come in for much stricter treatment under the new laws than Muslims. They can give examples to support their claim. Christian street preachers all over the country are reporting that police are harassing them, ordering them to stop preaching, even though their actions are perfectly legal. Yet when Abu Hamza was thrown out of the Finsbury Park Mosque in February 2003 and began to conduct his meeting in the middle of St. Thomas’s Road outside the mosque, the Metropolitan Police responded by sending over a dozen uniformed officers to guard the meetings, a privilege which lasted months and cost the taxpayer almost £1 million. This is a very divisive Bill. It will not, as some hope, improve community integration. It will work in precisely the opposite direction, setting religious communities against one another with complaint and counter-complaint. There will be fury when the Attorney-General decides to prosecute, and fury when he does not. I am a Christian, and as such I have a duty to explain the Gospel to those who ask me from time to time, ““What makes you tick?”” or ““Why are you so committed to speaking on moral and religious matters?””. If I state that as a Christian my life is a feeble and frail attempt to walk with and work for God, we may get into a discussion about whether there is one true God. I would never become belligerent or aggressive on these issues, but if I state categorically that there is only one true God, could I be prosecuted? What if someone feels very insulted by this? What if someone else is listening who strongly agrees with me and a dispute arises? Have I stirred up religious hatred? Can I be prosecuted? This simple scenario demonstrates why the whole idea of a religious hatred offence is a minefield and we should steer well clear of it. I hope that we will send this back to the Commons and invite them to think again.