Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

Occasionally Governments do something that I regard as pointless—I do not mean that it has no point; I mean that it has less point than anything that I can think of—or useless, by which I mean that it is perhaps of some use but I cannot think what the use is. I will speak from a different point of view. The signal that is sent by doing this causes me concern. I refer to my experience of the more difficult things in life, when I was sent on useless and pointless missions after a mistake had been made that was regarded as blasphemous. I had the unfortunate job, as chairman of the Middle East trade committee, of dealing with ““Death of a Princess””, where the true story never came out. At the same time as the play ““Anyone for Denis?””, I had to deal with another play in London; I took the Saudi ambassador to see a dress rehearsal of ““Goose-Pimples””, which caused a few problems. Another time when things were difficult, I had to go to Libya on my own—as ever, when no visas were being granted. As a hereditary Peer in your Lordships’ House, I was seen as a perfectly justifiable casualty, who should have been put down. It was useful to be able to go there and to say that I was sent because I was worthless. The final thing was when a particular man wrote a book called The Satanic Versus and I was the only one allowed to go to Tehran, where I sat with great names and prelates. I learnt that the monotheists or the people of the book, as they are called, who believe in one God, were pretty considerable—roughly half the world’s population. I would be there as the Jesus man; there would also be a Moses man and a Muhammad man. We would sit and debate. It is difficult when you have bowlegs to sit cross-legged in the dark smoking hookah pipes with a few people and trying to have a discussion when you are not briefed. In the holy city of Isfahan I was given a team of a couple of lawyers and a couple of mullahs and we had a debate about blasphemy. There is a big difference between a spiritual and a temporal fatwa—I had the feeling that the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, was about to issue a temporal fatwa. For example, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa that said that you could not play chess because it was too secular and you were defending the king. The prelates pointed out that the king was the weakest person on the board and even the queen was more powerful. The king hid behind his castles, knights or bishops. Even the peasants could move two steps forward and attack the king. Another fatwa was that you could not eat caviar anymore because it was not halal. Cousteau, who became a Muslim, worked out that the sturgeon’s backbone was stronger, so suddenly the British embassy, which was flooded with cheap caviar, found that it could eat it again. When you issue a spiritual fatwa, however, which cannot be revoked except by a higher authority, you come to great ground. In all these areas—and there are other incidents to which I could draw attention—you will find that people get worried and anxious for the wrong reasons. They then turn to blasphemy. I have heard people arguing that the law of blasphemy in this country effectively protects God. We can help when people insult prophets and things of that sort, but it is the same thing. The symbolism of removing this causes me concern. I am not saying that war and religions or beliefs are related or that trade and religions or beliefs are related. People’s desire for their own beliefs is critical and to try to interpret other people’s beliefs is worrying. Has the Minister consulted the other monotheists—those who believe in one God—and the other religions? What is their attitude? Their attitude before was that we should perhaps amend the law on blasphemy to make it applicable to other faiths. This is a very doubtful area in which to tread without having consulted over a wider range than just within Parliament.