Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky. I have opposed this Bill in every form in which it has come before this House and I shall continue to oppose it while there is breath in my body. First, this Bill is based on a misunderstanding, which is that because Jews and Sikhs have protection as religious minorities, Muslims and others need it. The protection that Sikhs and Jews have is not as religious minorities. It was a very peculiar decision of the House of Lords which is, as I have said before, based on a complete ignorance of facts. The decision was based on the idea that Sikhs constitute a homogenous ethnic community. The issue at that time was about the wearing of turbans, which of course does not apply to Sikh women. So we are protecting the right of Sikh men to wear turbans, and I have nothing against anybody wearing turbans. But then to elevate that into the idea that therefore every religious community has to be defined as a homogenous community or race—the logic was that because they have homogenous beliefs they are a race. That was the spirit of the original protection. But now we are saying that every religion is a race. If every religion is a race, what is the distinction between race and religion? If there is no distinction between race and religion why do we need this Bill? That is what I do not understand. As my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor said, nobody has argued that protection ought to be removed from the Sikhs and Jews. I beg to differ. I argued from these Benches that it would be much better if we redefined the protection the Sikhs have and made it clear that it is not a protection because it is a religion. Like my noble friend Lady Flather, I got a distinctly angry letter from the British Sikh Federation who also proceeded to tell me that I clearly had not understood that Sikhs are not Hindus, thank you very much. That showed a lot of intolerance, but we will ignore that. If we are going to say that every religion is a race, then Scientologists are a race, Satanists are a race. But are they? Are they ethnically homogenous? It defies belief. Somebody should have challenged the 1983 judgment of the House of Lords which was based on complete anthropological ignorance. But that is for another day. We have this Bill for the third time running. It is supposed to argue against hatred. I have experience of being on the wrong side of what the schedule provides. In paragraph 5(3) it states:"““having regard to all the circumstances, the words, behaviour or material are (or is) likely to be heard or seen by any person in whom they are (or it is) likely to stir up racial or religious hatred.””" I have recounted this before, but a good story is always worth telling twice. I went to a conference of comedians after the last religious hatred Bill was rejected. The comedians did not turn up, so I had to make a speech. I remarked on how interesting it was that I knew lots of jokes about the bible, I knew lots of Jewish jokes but I do not know any Muslim jokes. There must be something funny in the Koran—not that there was something funny in the Koran, but there must be something in there about which I could tell a joke. My noble friend Lord Ahmed told me later that there was a lot of trouble about that remark of mine. In somebody’s view that was likely to stir up hatred. I did not intend hatred, but the law does not say anything of my intention.