Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

The Bill has had a long passage through Parliament and, in its later stages, after the Lords substantially amended it, the Government made a genuine attempt to see whether a compromise could be achieved. I would not wish this moment to pass without putting on record my thanks to the Home Secretary and the Minister for the spirit in which those discussions took place. They were constructive, and a credit to all the parties who participated, but ultimately that compromise has proved elusive. The reason for that is that the Government appear to have got themselves off to a completely wrong start. Through their decision, which was due, I think, to the pressure of various interest groups, to offer an identical Bill in relation to incitement to religious hatred as in relation to incitement to racial hatred, they got completely tangled up, because, in fact, the two issues are entirely different. Race is immutable in its characteristics. Religion, however, is a matter of belief in exactly the same way as politics and political views. The attempt to run the two together is the main reason why the Government got themselves into such a mess. The House of Lords made a valiant effort to get the Government out of their mess. The Bill that it returned to us might contain some small details that could do with attention—the Minister mentioned the extent to which it might apply to Scotland: he does not want that—but its architecture is probably the best that could be on offer. Its key components reduce the offence to a narrow scope and concentrate on the issue of threatening behaviour, which I suspect every Member would agree is unacceptable in any discourse. The trouble is that the Government seek to reverse that. They have told the House that they are paying attention to what the House of Lords has done, but the end product of the Government’s amendments is jolly close to the original Bill.