Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

My Lords, there is a case for state intervention in this field. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, made a number of powerful points on that. We have now had 22 minutes of my reply. I have no great desire to withdraw from or duck the issues raised in the debate; they are extensive and most of them can be dealt with in Committee. If I have missed important points in dealing with the broad thrust of the issues I shall pick them up in correspondence and will be more than happy to circulate that to all who have taken part. One issue in particular was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, on the importance of consulting on guidance. I assure the House that we fully intend to do that. We hope to publish draft guidance before we get too far into the detail of the debate in Committee. The issue of publication of the Keeling schedule was raised by the noble Lords, Lord Wedderburn and Lord Hunt. We have produced a consolidated version of what the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill would look like in its connection with the Public Order Act 1986. That is available and was placed today in the Library. This has been a very long, learned, interesting, witty and powerful debate. I can see from the plethora of questions and issues raised that we are going to have a very hard-fought Committee stage. As ever, I shall give a commitment from the Government Benches that we will listen and respond to those points. Of course we will continue to work with those who seek to resolve what I think most of us can agree is a very urgent issue. Even the strongest opponents of the Government’s case accept that there is an issue at the root of this. I hope that our debates can be constructive in finding a solution that finds support not only in your Lordships’ House but more particularly in another place. On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the whole House.