Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, says. Given the enormity and substantive nature of the amendments we have tabled, I thought it was a kind indulgence of the Committee to give me a little space. I shall try not to be unduly repetitive and I will be as brief as possible. There were two main tranches of amendments, which I shall withdraw at the end of this short speech. The effect in each case was to remove the ““likely”” limb and therefore make ““intention”” a necessary element of the offence. The same effect is achieved—although with much greater elegance, I admit—by the re-written schedule of the noble Lord, Lord Lester. On balance I prefer our way because I believe that Amendment No. 31 runs the risk of unduly narrowing the scope of the offence, but the agreement between us is of more significance than our differences. Should that not happen, however, at a later stage, the purpose of these amendments is to neutralise the effects of the ““likely”” limb if it is allowed to remain. We were going to make a twofold defence. The first defence is that of acting in good faith,"““for the purposes of discussion, teaching or propagation of religious belief or lack of religious belief””." This formulation echoes the definition of religious hatred in the new Section 17A of the amended Public Order Act and is designed to safeguard the freedom of both religious and secularist groups to express their opinions and pursue their aims. The second defence is modelled on that provided by the Obscene Publications Act 1959; namely, justification for the public good as being in the interests of science, literature, art or learning, or other objects of general concern. I am aware that the public good defence may give rise to problems of interpretation, but taken together I believe the two defences cover much the same ground as the declaratory clause proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, while excluding from their protection actions taken with the intention of stirring up hatred. I trust we will attend carefully to all the comments made in Committee today. I beg to move.