Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

: I shall attempt to emulate the brevity of the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson), but I am afraid that I would seek to follow little else in his speech. He still seems suck in the same problem as the one that the Government have been stuck with throughout the proceedings on the Bill—trying to create some sort of equivalence between the treatment of people according to their race with that according to their religion. Those are very different aspects and they must be treated very differently. I wish to associate myself with the remarks about the Minister made by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve). The debates have often been difficult and emotive, as we have heard today, and I want to place on the record my appreciation of the Minister for the fact that he has been unfailingly courteous to those who have opposed him throughout the proceedings on the Bill. The Liberal Democrats invite the House not to agree with the Government’s motions to disagree with the other place. The arguments about the Bill in its broadest sense have been well rehearsed, and I do not intend to repeat them. However, by saying that there will not be a huge number of prosecutions under the legislation, the Minister does not bring any great comfort to the House. I seem to recall that the same arguments were advanced with regard to demonstrations in Parliament square, but in excess of 28 people have been arrested on allegations of breaching that legislation merely a few months after it came into force. Such reassurance does not address our concern that there will be a fundamental chilling of the freedom of expression. In our view, the Bill is very much improved by the amendments that have been made in the other place, and we very much regret that the Government again seek to change it in two ways. First, they want to expand the state of mind involved from merely making the crime one of intent by including recklessness. That is our most fundamental objection, and I will expand on that later. Secondly, the expansion to include conduct that is covered by abusive or insulting words or behaviour is also exceptionally worrying and very wrong. In fact, we find the combination of both those elements fundamentally obnoxious. If the crime were merely one of intent, I could probably live with the extension to include abusive and insulting behaviour.