Coroners and Justice Bill

There is indeed a strong sense of déjà vu about this debate, given that it is the fourth time that we have discussed the free speech clause. We have also discussed a previous attempted free speech clause, as proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Jim Dobbin) in January 2008. I do not want to add to the sense of déjà vu by repeating all the arguments that have been made before, but I want to explain why I think the Government are still wrong on the matter and why I wish they would let the free speech clause remain on the statute book, where it has been for the past 18 months. The other place has voted for the clause three times, most recently in July, by 186 votes to 133, giving a majority of 53. I unsuccessfully moved an amendment in this place on 24 March to retain the free speech clause, so I was obviously pleased with the vote in July. I was especially pleased that more and more Back Benchers in the Lords from my party seemed to see the sense in a free speech clause. They either voted for it in greater numbers or abstained. I had hoped that the Government would start to see the sense in the free speech clause too. I find it hard to accept that we are again being asked to vote against the free speech clause. I thought that free speech, civil liberties and human rights were exactly the sorts of things that we were supposed to be in favour of. I am sure that they brought my hon. Friend the Minister into the Labour party, among other things, and they certainly did me in North-West Leicestershire. We should say that we support civil liberties. We all quote Voltaire and proclaim our tolerance, but here we have an opportunity to uphold tolerance for people whose views we may not agree with, but who have a right to those views and a right to express them in a reasonable way. Before anybody intervenes with a dreadful example of incitement to violence against gay and lesbian people that they claim would be protected by the free speech clause, let me remind hon. Members—for the third time, and briefly—what it says:""for the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred."" The clause does not remove any mention of the context of the remarks. We are not talking about protecting foul rap lyrics or violent rants; we are talking about protecting discussion, criticism or the urging of people to modify their conduct. If someone uses threatening words and intends to stir up hatred, that is of course not mere discussion, but discussion with threats and intent to stir up hatred, which falls squarely within the offence, and so it should. The free speech clause is irrelevant in one sense. As paragraph 392 of the explanatory notes makes clear, it would not affect""the threshold required for the offence to be made out."" The clause would not provide a defence, which is what the Minister implied at one point. It would not narrow or alter the scope of the offence, which is what she tried to say earlier. However, if threats and an intention to stir up hatred are not present, the discussion falls outside the new offence, and the free speech clause simply makes that plain. It is, as it says, for "the avoidance of doubt", and would help to protect innocent people from unnecessary and intimidating police investigations. We need that protection, because there seems to be quite a lot of doubt, and as a result quite a lot of unnecessary investigations. In fact, people seem to make complaints to the police as a tactic to silence opinions that they do not like. I am sure that hon. Members from all parts of the House would agree that we should deprecate that. That is not what the criminal law is there for, nor is it what the police are there for. We should make that clear when there is doubt. Who wants the criminal law to be used to silence discussion or criticism of sexual conduct? Who wants the new homophobia offence to be used against those who merely urge people to modify their conduct or, in religious language, to repent of their sins? There have been countless cases, and several more since we last discussed the matter in the House seven or eight months ago, of exactly that happening. Andy Robertson is a street preacher. There is a video of him on YouTube, which hon. Members may watch in their offices before the vote. He comes across as an eminently calm and sensible man, and he has preached in the streets of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire for 10 years with no complaints whatever to the police or civil authorities. Yet police officers were sent in by a council employee to move him on, and told him that describing homosexuality as a sin falls foul of section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. I shall return to that. The preacher had not even mentioned homosexuality, but the police, having failed to move him on by citing irrelevant council byelaws, seemed to seize on unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations of homophobia as a device for shutting him up. If they can do that with section 5 of that Act, which is a general offence covering harassment caused by threats, abuse or insult, who can doubt that they would use the new offence, which specifically covers homosexuality? I look forward to hearing the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. He believes that we should remove the word "insulting" from the section 5 offence. I think he probably has a point, and I hope that the Government will listen to it, but that will not solve the problem of how to stop the new homophobia offence being abused in similar ways. Recent cases have shown that a dangerous attitude to gay rights is prevalent among the police and that makes it important to include the free speech clause. Another example with a little more detail is that of Pauline Howe, which is the most recent case to hit the headlines. She is a 67-year-old grandmother who wrote to her council complaining about a gay pride march at which she says she was verbally abused. She used old-fashioned, politically incorrect words and several biblical references, and I doubt whether many of us in the House would have written a letter in those terms. I hope that the Minister is listening to my comments, and not just to Front Bench conversations. Pauline Howe's letter certainly did not merit two officers interrogating her in her living room, and apparently frightening the living daylights out of her, but that is what happened.