Emergency Workers (Protection) Bill

No, I am absolutely certain that they add a great deal to the law. Let me say why, and explain why the offence that we are talking about is different. We made a substantial change to the law to ensure that there was a specific aggravating factor for racially and religiously motivated offences of all kinds because of what happens when an offence is committed against a person in a category shared by many other people in the community. If a person is attacked because of their faith or race, other members of the same community are terrorised. Such an act should be a statutory aggravating offence because of the terrorising effect on those who share the person’s characteristics. An assault on a person would not have the same terrorising effect on those who shared his or her profession. None the less, emergency workers need to be properly protected, so if I can make progress with my speech I will describe the actions that we will take to deliver that. There is consensus in the House about what we want to achieve. If hon. Members give me time to explain how we can do that, we can get consensus on that, too. We all know about the vulnerability of private Members’ legislation; indeed, the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) mentioned it in a slightly guarded way. I hope that we can build consensus about the important lacunae that exist in the law and use this opportunity to deal with them. We should not try to move forward with private Members’ legislation on too wide a front so as to put its progress at risk.