Coroners and Justice Bill

I, too, support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. My name is the fourth name to it. I apologise to your Lordships that I was not here for the first few speeches; the time that I was away was the only time that the noble Lord, Lord West, could give me to pursue questions arising from one that I asked in your Lordships' House a few weeks ago. I was unsuccessful in being in two places at once. The proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, and the clause that it seems to hold within the law are necessary and proportionate. I must tell the noble Baroness that I have heard nobody responsible for this amendment say either that it will have no real effect or that it cannot do any harm. I am sure that we would not be troubling your Lordships if we held either of those views. I believe that it will have effect if the clause stays and will do some good for precisely the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Dear, so magisterially laid out. The chilling effect on the way to a decision by the Attorney-General is potentially, and in some cases actually, very substantial. The clause is modest in its content; yes, it is declaratory, but we have heard from other speeches why it needs to be so. It needs to make it crystal clear that it does not defend any language or behaviour that is intended to stir up hatred or may result in doing so. I believe that it has potentially and, already actually, good effects, and that it does good. The question that we are facing in this debate is accurately described as one of free speech. What is at stake is whether your Lordships' House and this Parliament intend to outlaw open discussion and teaching, not just among Christians but among others, of views that differ from the currently dominant political orthodoxy, and therefore privilege, in the face of others, that currently dominant orthodoxy. To be explicit, I mean the orthodoxy that sexual preference is as innate and fixed as ethnicity, and that sexual preference or orientation is more akin to ethnicity than to religious belief. That is the current political orthodoxy that lies behind the Government’s Clause 61. People of all sorts in this country need to be assured, peaceably and quietly, whether on street corners, in churches, mosques, synagogues or wherever, that they are free to express views that others may strongly disagree with but which question the current dominant political orthodoxy.