Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

It is a great privilege to be called to speak after my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) and the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright). In their speeches, both were tremendous advertisements for independence of mind. It is independence of mind that is under assault in the Bill before the House this evening. If the Government get their way and their amendments are carried, we will see not only a significant curtailment of freedom of speech in this country, but perhaps the most significant undermining of religious liberty since 1688. I mention the 17th century advisedly, because that was the last time in this country when questions of political and religious strife put lives at risk on the mainland of the United Kingdom. During that period of the 17th century, one of our greatest writers, Milton, even at that time of strife, made a heartfelt plea for liberty in his work, ““Areopagitica””. Milton pointed out that truth did not need the law to suppress falsehood in order to prevail. In open debate, those who are confident of their beliefs will not want the state to intervene on their side, because the confidence in their beliefs will be enough to sustain them. It is significant that almost all the religious groups in this country which are organised and respectable are opposed to the Bill. They have sufficient confidence in the strength of their own beliefs not to pray the state in aid. It is striking that there are only one or two significant exceptions to that rule. One of them has been the Muslim Council of Britain. Its head, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, has throughout his career been a doughty fighter against prejudice against those whom he represents. I would happily acknowledge that there is much that can be done by Government and by all politicians to fight prejudice and racism against Muslims and other minorities, but I suspect that in the past few weeks Sir Iqbal and others have begun to realise how dangerous it is to criminalise free speech in this country. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald pointed out, Sir Iqbal himself was on the receiving end of the attentions of the police for words that he uttered on Radio 4—words that I find offensive, but which I believe that he has every right to utter on whatever platform is given to him. Because of that intervention in Sir Iqbal’s right to speak freely, we can all see the dangers of criminalising speech. Sir Iqbal was referred to earlier by the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) in the context of the debate about ““The Satanic Verses””. It is appropriate that we consider for a moment the controversy that surrounded the publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel. If we imagine that the law that the Government intend to pass today were in place then, I submit that ““The Satanic Verses”” would never have been published by Penguin. Let us look at proposed new section 29K and the references to abusive and insulting behaviour and to recklessness, and ask ourselves this question: if we had been executives at Penguin and had read that text and calculated the effect that it was likely to have on the Muslim community in this Britain, would we have calculated that it would abuse the Muslim faith? We would certainly have made that calculation. Would we have known that individual Muslims would be insulted? Of course we would have recognised that. Would we have known that, by publishing, we could have been accused of recklessness? We would have been aware that that accusation would be flung at us. Would we therefore have taken the risk of publishing? I suspect that we would not, and that, to me, would have been not just a loss for freedom of speech, but an attack on the creative spirit and a loss of what makes us a distinctive and cherishably free country. That chill factor, which would have applied to ““The Satanic Verses”” if the legislation had been in place, has been mentioned by several hon. Members. It is a worrying curtailment of liberty and an ominous extension of state power. There are two other areas that I shall cite briefly where the state extends its power in an ominous way in the Bill. First, there is an unwarranted and ominous extension of Executive power in the reliance that the Minister places on guidance to the prosecuting authorities and to the police. As nearly every hon. Member who has referred to the guidance has pointed out, we all have complete faith in the Minister to frame guidance that would be sensible and proportionate, but whatever our beliefs about the immortality of the Minister’s soul, we know that he will not be permanently in office. We cannot trust future Ministers and future Governments necessarily to frame guidance that will be proportionate and correct. It is quite wrong for us to trust the Executive to decide what prosecutions could and should be brought in the future. We should decide now and write that into the Bill as we discuss it. There is one final area where the state arrogates to itself unwarranted power in the Bill—that is, in the very definition of what constitutes religion. It is wrong that the state should be able to extend to any group of believers a privileged status by saying that they constitute a fit and proper religion. If we consider recent reports about what happened in the Navy when an individual officer claimed for himself, on the basis that he was a Satanist, a safe religious space in which to enact his rituals, we can see that the present Government and future Governments may extend to all sorts of cults and other unsavoury groups the protection that is in the Bill. I have no hesitation in saying, safeguarded by privilege as I am, that I regard Scientology as an evil cult founded by an individual purely in the interests of enriching himself and sustained by those who are either wicked or wayward. But if the Bill were to pass and I were to repeat those comments outside this House as an ordinary civilian, I would lay myself open to prosecution simply for having sought to point out the dangers of a fraudulent organisation masquerading as a religion. I have pointed to three dangers—three extensions of state power—which are three very good reasons why I believe that the Government should withdraw their amendments and we should accept the wisdom of the other place.