Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

My Lords, I see that I have the pleasure of following the noble Lord, Lord Renton, because clearly he is a very fit man. I read an interesting piece in today’s Evening Standard. Apparently the noble Lord, Lord Renton, managed to run faster than his noble friend Lord Pilkington, who is only in his seventies, in order to catch a cab. I look forward to sprinting against the noble Lord myself. I approach Amendment No. 2 with somewhat mixed feelings. It is clearly motivated by a genuine desire to remove the vestiges of religious discrimination from our law and I certainly support the principle of a level playing field and equal respect for all religions. But I do raise the question whether this is the right time and the right Bill for such an amendment. I should make it clear that I do not wish to defend the present law of blasphemy and blasphemous libel, and I suspect that that goes for all the other Members on this Bench. I could not agree more with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that God does not need a law to protect Him. For myself, there is first the question of what might constitute blasphemy. If blasphemy is defined as what ““grieves the heart of God””, I submit that this is above all about human cruelty: unkindness, injustice and all that defaces the image of God in humanity; that violates his children. Personally, I find a very great deal in our society which is lewd, vulgar and distasteful. Some of it is directed to religion. I would rather we lived in a more civilised society which did not display such signs of decadence, but I do not think that such things count as blasphemy in the same way as torture and cruelty. So there is the whole question of what actually counts as blasphemy. On a more technical point, as the majority of the Law Commission argued in 1985, the meaning of these offences is legally uncertain in the place that they give to intention. They are unacceptably discriminatory in protecting only the Christian religion—and possibly only the tenets of the Church of England, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, pointed out—and for these and other reasons they are a dead letter. In recent years the Church of England has expressed a willingness in principle to assent to their repeal. However, we have advocated a step-by-step approach to deal first with the problem of religious hatred and then to tackle blasphemy. It is asserted that to abolish blasphemy at this point would send a clear message that this Bill is not an extension of the blasphemy law. It is important that such a message should go out and be received. But to deal with blasphemy now runs the risk of sending exactly the opposite message, or at any rate a confused one. If religious hatred is nothing to do with blasphemy, let the two be dealt with separately. On the question of disruptive behaviour in church services, places of worship or burial grounds, it is true that Section 2 of the Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860 reflects an historical situation which no longer obtains. It would be desirable to reform the law to reflect the needs of a multi-faith society. The Law Commission recognised this in proposing two new offences: the disruption of communal worship and the desecration of places of worship. But such a reform of the law would require very careful consultation and thought. As I have said, I think that I can speak on behalf of all the Members on this Bench in not wanting to oppose an amendment like this in principle, but we have to ask whether this is the right time and the right Bill for it.