Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

On this issue, I agree with Peter Tatchell. Over the years, I have not always agreed with him, but on the creation of a homophobic hatred offence, he is right. He has concluded that the introduction of such an offence is unnecessary and a danger to free speech. I also note that Matthew Parris and Iain Dale, both prominent homosexual journalists, have also declared themselves opposed to this offence. In fact, when the Government announced they were bringing forward Clause 126, they found themselves being criticised in the media by almost everyone from the Christian Institute, to Liberty, and to the comedian Rowan Atkinson. There is very little support for this, but we are where we are. The Government have pressed ahead, so we have to find a way of making it less bad. The Government have an almost perfect record of completely ignoring protests from the people they are supposed to represent. Whatever the Government want, the Government get, whether or not it is a manifesto commitment. I therefore support amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. It is an eminently sensible attempt to make sure that this legislation does not add to the climate of fear that already exists around the controversial subject of homosexuality. Noble Lords will know from their postbags that there is already a great deal of concern among the general public—Christians in particular—about the freedom to speak out, however moderately, on sexual ethics. Given the number of high-profile complaints to the police, some of which were mentioned by my noble friend Lord Waddington, it is easy to see why. Noble Lords might not agree with the churchman who says that all sex outside marriage is a sin, but do we want an environment in which he feels afraid to express his point of view? Some noble Lords may want to live in that kind of a society; I do not. A lawyer recently told me of the case of a street preacher who was preaching the Gospel in the streets of one of our major cities. He was not preaching about homosexuality per se, but he read out a Bible passage which listed various sins, including homosexuality. A complaint was made to the police, who duly turned up. The preacher spent the next hour in the back of a police van answering questions about the Bible passage. The police eventually let him go and turned their attention to the complainant, who they finally concluded was just a trouble-maker. Some will say, ““All's well that ends well””, but the fact is that those policemen, no doubt reluctantly, deprived the preacher of an hour of his valuable time for no good reason. It should have been immediately obvious that the reading from the Bible was not a criminal matter, but the politically correct climate in which the police now operate meant that they felt obliged to take that silly complainant seriously. The amendment before us would make clear to the police that expressing an opinion on homosexuality is a matter of freedom of speech. If the words used really are threatening, existing public order legislation will apply and the police can intervene, but disagreement should not be a crime.