Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

Can I come back to that in a moment because I want to make three more general points? The first is that the amendments would enable the Government to meet their aims more effectively. The second is to clarify the nature of the offences that the Bill will give rise to and I realise that my noble friend’s question relates to that. However, I will make the third general point first. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I have the privilege of being a member, in both this and the previous Parliament, argued in the previous Parliament that the Bill is compatible with the Human Rights Act. I accept that. I was party to that decision, and I am not in any sense resiling from it. But the Human Rights Act does not specify that this is the best Bill that could be produced. There could be another Bill, or an amended Bill on incitement to religious hatred that would be better than the Bill that was found to be compatible with the Human Rights Act. I do not resile from the Committee’s adjudication, as it were, at that stage, but I think that, for the reasons I have given, this would be a better way forward on the Bill. Three elements of the amendments are very important. The first is the point about intention that has been made many times this afternoon and which is agreed to, as I understand it, by my noble friend Lord Foulkes, who is not enamoured with the overall strategy of these amendments. It is extremely important, because if we are looking at effects rather than intentions, there is an almost an incentive for those who feel aggrieved by some public utterance to turn its hatefulness into harmfulness. There is an incentive there. We ought to be able to prove intention to make that point.