Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

moved Amendment No. 4:"Page 3, line 10, at end insert—" ““(2)   In this Part— ““religion”” shall mean belief in a god or supreme being and worship of that god or supreme being, and ““religious”” shall be construed accordingly; ““threatening”” shall mean deliberately subjecting someone to justifiable and immediate fear of violence.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, I hope that I may be forgiven if I briefly say before I turn to my amendments that when the two Front Benches swap pieties at a difficult moment, I always feel that I am going to be lost and will probably be faced with a Bill and certainly with consequences which I do not welcome. I am sorry to say this to the noble Baroness, whom I admire immensely, but at the end of her remarks she left me nourishing the dark suspicion that where she was heading was back to the old Bill and presenting us with the Government’s original intentions as declared in their manifesto. I have only one more comment to add to that: I have never been able to subscribe to the idea that any party manifesto deserves the status of holy writ that is normally accorded to them. They are dreadful documents. I recall with pain having once had something to do with one. I remember the aching boredom and the total frustration that accompanied the process. That anybody should elevate the results of a manifesto to the status of holy writ is beyond my imagination. Perhaps I may proceed very briefly to the amendments and say to your Lordships that, after this afternoon’s proceedings, I hope to endear myself to your Lordships at least by my brevity. The amendments owe a great deal to the unfailing kindness of the Public Bill Office. I was extremely uncertain about the definition of ““religion”” and I am extremely grateful to the Public Bill Office for its usual courtesy, co-operation and help. I take the subject of the amendments very seriously indeed. If I am right in thinking that religion is part of man’s age-long search for a better understanding of God, it is therefore surely an area which governments should enter only with the utmost caution and with greater respect than they are normally accustomed to showing to anyone except themselves. I have four points. First, I regard the fettering of expressions of opinion in any event as an encroachment on freedom which is usually wrong and almost always counterproductive. Secondly, to plead that it has been done previously, as did the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, compounds rather than excuses the offence. When the Lord Chancellor started to talk about gaps in the law, he made me think of a rather over-zealous dentist looking round the teeth of a patient to see whether any holes need stopping. Thirdly, the lack of a definition in the original Bill worried me. It contained expressions such as ““likely to””. The repetition of ““likely to”” in as little space as a single line made it too horrible a piece of legislation for me to wish to dwell on. I regard vagueness in legislation as asking for trouble. I hope that the Government, whatever else they may do, will not attempt to repeat phrases such as ““likely to”” in their next version of the Bill. I turn to the last of my detailed points. If discussion is going to be stifled, does one stifle it everywhere or just in some places? Does one leave Members of either House of Parliament free to say whatever they want and to be reported however likely to disturb their words may be, or is it intended to stifle discussion in your Lordships’ House and another place? I conclude with this single comment: for a government—even a government who see themselves as wholly secular—to intrude and make criminal the expressions of opinion which were originally uttered or printed without any intention to provoke anybody is a monstrous intrusion and a piece of arrogance which I would find very hard to forgive. I await with some interest, and a little hope, the Minister’s reply. I beg to move.