Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

My Lords, I echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, on the sense of revulsion one has about such attacks. It is important that the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, has expressed his personal view on these matters, because it underlines why we all recognise the importance of dealing with hatred, whether it is stimulated by virtue of race or religious belief. It is important, therefore, that we view the amendment in that light. I say with the greatest delicacy that to proceed with dealing with racial and religious hatred in a way that impacts on individuals, we need to be quite clear about separating objects from people. There are already a large number of offences which would bite on such acts of desecration and criminal damage, also enabling the court to deal much more trenchantly and effectively with the perpetrators. We have done that by giving the courts the ability to attack such behaviour if they believe it is racially or religiously motivated in an improper way. There is of course an issue about how to express our distaste for that in the way in which the courts deal with it and in sentencing. The Sentencing Guidelines Council will be empowered to look at all those issues. That may be the most appropriate place to deal with the matter. The amendment would effectively create a statutory offence of incitement to the desecration of religious objects. As I have said, to incite another to such activities could already be prosecuted. It would be very difficult to make the argument in public that it is people whom we really want to protect by virtue of this offence and not religion per se. While we believe that a maximum sentence of seven years’ imprisonment is appropriate for those who seek to pit entire communities against each other, we doubt whether it is appropriate in the case of objects to give a similar protection.