Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

A number of noble Lords have said that they quite understand what the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, is getting at. I am afraid that what the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, has suggested is rather alarming. He has said that there may be many cases where people will make remarks like this one and they need not be threatening, but that there are some cases when they might be threatening and therefore that it would be a good thing to have this clause in the Bill. I find it frightening because you will end up with people being too frightened to say anything. It is not a question of an argument going up to the noble and learned Baroness the Attorney-General; it is a question of a person being frightened and alarmed at the prospect of possibly going to court and possibly going to jail for saying something in a perfectly innocent way. I think that we are getting ourselves into far too much of a straitjacket by trying to determine the whole way through life what people must say and what people must not say and what they can and cannot do. To accept the amendment would be a retrograde step.