Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

This is one of those Bills whose face is liberalism, but whose heart is oppression. The society in which we now live is unrecognisable from the freedom that we knew only a few years ago. We are not in danger of being shanghaied off to the Lubyanka, but we are in danger of the police knocking on the door or ringing us up and starting an investigation against us not on the basis of what we have allegedly done, or of threats that we have allegedly uttered, but merely on the basis of a view that we have expressed. There have been some ludicrous examples and some dangerous examples. I do not often stand up for the Prime Minister and I shall not make a habit of it, but perhaps the most ludicrous occurred when the Prime Minister made a rather disobliging comment about the Welsh to his own television set. It was deemed to be worthy of investigation by the North Wales constabulary. You could not make it up, Madam Deputy Speaker, but it actually happened. Then, there was the much more serious example involving Lynette Burrowes, who is a respected children’s writer. She expressed the view that she had reservations about the adoption of children by same-sex couples. That same view was freely expressed by Members in this House, and without any danger of police proceedings, when we debated the law in question. [Interruption.] My colleagues are right to say that we are okay—that we are protected. However, Lynette Burrowes had the police on the phone to her. There is an even worse example. A couple living in Lancashire asked their local council if they could display Christian literature—they did not say anything in public—alongside material from the council promoting civil partnerships. If the council had simply said no, that would have been one thing. Did it? No, it called in the police. The couple were interviewed in their own home by the police for an hour and 20 minutes. That should frighten any Member who is seriously concerned for the liberties of this nation. There is the further example, often quoted tonight, of Sir Iqbal Sacranie. He did nothing more than elucidate Muslim teaching, yet he was immediately investigated by the police because somebody made a complaint. All those examples have one thing in common. Someone somewhere decided to take offence at what had been said. That person made a complaint to the police, who believe—erroneously, in my view—that it is sufficient for a complaint to be made for it to have to be investigated. If they apply this Bill’s provisions in that way, there will be an immensely oppressive impact not only on Christians and Muslims, but on anybody who says anything that somebody else decides is worthy of police investigation. I would go along with such a provision if we narrowed it to intent, because nobody is going to say that one should ““intend”” to stir up religious hatred. But this is not about intent; it is about subjective judgments such as abuse and insults. As I have said before, the right hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) should be allowed to say, if he wants to—he has mellowed a bit recently, so he might not want to—that I have signed up with the Antichrist. He should be allowed to say, if he wants to, that when I go into a church in which there are statues, I am practising idolatry. He should be allowed to say, if he wants to, that when I take part in the sacrifice of the mass, I am committing blasphemy. He can say all those things, and yes, I will find them insulting, but I am 58 and I have often been insulted in my life. I have no doubt whatever that I will be insulted again, but I shall not think that the remedy for feeling insulted is to go off whingeing to a policeman. It is regrettable that we have only three hours for this important debate. I accept wholly that there have been previous stages of this Bill, but the other place has made some very important amendments that need careful study. We already live in a society in which things that would have been unthinkable a few years ago are a daily reality: a society in which, if one simply speaks to a viewpoint, one can end up on the wrong end of a police investigation. That is not the Britain that I want to live in, and this Bill makes it more likely that that effect will be increased, not decreased.