Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

Another reason for introducing legislation is to overcome anomalies that may already exist in respect of other legislation. For some considerable time, we have had an offence of incitement to racial hatred, and we now have an offence of incitement to religious hatred. Is it not now time that we had an offence of incitement to hatred on grounds of sexual orientation? The number of people facing homophobic attacks—both physical and verbal, and often directly associated with the vile propaganda of organisations such as the British National party—is now growing, not falling.