Coroners and Justice Bill

I do not have a carefully constructed speech as I was not sure that I would speak at all today. The one group which will find this debate chilling is the gay community. Let us just take our arguments one at a time. I had not intended to speak so I take them steadily. We are not talking about anything that would result in jokes involving gay people or that a gay person might consider offensive being outlawed. This would certainly not impede genuine freedom of religious expression. As a woman of faith, I would gladly engage in a theological discussion with the Church about the basis of the present discussion on the background of homosexuality. If we took that theological discussion to its extreme, we would stone adulterers in the streets and carry on all the practices in the Old Testament. Christ said, "You may say in law an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say unto you love the Lord your God and your neighbour as yourself". We are talking about some of our neighbours. I am a great advocate of free speech. I believe in free speech and I stand up for free speech. That is why it is good that we have this debate on record, because the police have to be absolutely clear that gay people may be upset by what is said. They may challenge what is said, and the police have to get it right. I know that professionals do not get it right all the time—after all, I am a social worker and we get it wrong, as we see in the press, most of the time. Social workers, lawyers and the police will get it wrong from time to time and we should understand that. It is then up to the Crown Prosecution Service and other services to oversee us, and we know that they do that substantially in other areas. We heard that in the debate about assisted dying this week. We know that considerations are made all along the road, so we have to make sure that we get that right. We have it now in Hansard that we do not expect jokes and bits of free speech to result in prosecution. However, this is about something quite different. It is about the incitement to do damage to people who are gay or lesbian. During the past few days, there have been a number of debates on the Floor of this House reflecting our thinking about public behaviour. I agree absolutely with the Bishops’ Bench that this will send a message to the community. It will send a message to the gay community that it is not valued, because we are prepared to have, on the face of the Bill, something that it finds deeply offensive and which would not stop free speech. Would noble Lords include in the Bill something that said it was all right to use threatening language intended to stir up hatred against black people? That would be called racism, but it is exactly what noble Lords are suggesting happens here. On the face of this Bill you have something that is called free speech, but is in fact prepared to allow incitement to hatred. I say all this because it is not really understood how deeply gay people feel this in terms of the offensiveness involved and the way it demeans their lives. They may well not be acceptable to many people in this House: you may not believe that people who feel that they are gay or lesbian are real human beings—are men and women; you may believe that they may have some sort of disease that could be cured and that research may show that. That is a deeply offensive position to take against gay and lesbian people, just as this clause stands on the statute book. I therefore stand with the Government and reject the Waddington amendment.