Coroners and Justice Bill

It is good to be back on this subject. I always predicate my remarks on these issues with the words of the late and greatly missed Linda Smith, who said. "I'm not religious; I get on with everyone." I doubt whether that could apply to me, but it is fair to say that I have a record of protecting free speech. That is true in respect of religious hatred—as the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) will remember, we worked together on curtailing what would have been an overly broad offence. I have also worked on proposing the repeal of blasphemy, on opposing the criminalisation of the so-called "glorification" of terrorism, on calling for libel law reform and, indeed, on proposing an amendment to get rid of the "insulting" provisions in section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, which we were not able to debate during the passage of this Bill through the House because of the use, yet again, of a preposterous undemocratic programme motion, which denied us the opportunity to provide due scrutiny to Government legislation. I should add that owing to yet another programme motion that has not been consulted on—at least not with Liberal Democrat Members—the provision passed in the other place to repeal seditious libel and criminal libel is one that once again we cannot debate. I hope the House will therefore accept that I have a record of supporting free speech. I want to make it very clear that I support free speech for homophobes. I believe that people who are homophobic—that will include some religious people who may not necessarily intend any offence, but they are perceived as homophobic by some people—should have the right to free speech without great restriction, albeit within certain limits. It is a good thing that we are discussing homosexuality in the context of free speech rather than the rights and wrongs of homosexuality. I think that that is a sign of how things have progressed during my time in the House. I have to say to supporters of the Waddington amendment, however, that they are promoting the wrong amendment. If they want to tackle the existing mischief and the future mischief of over-policing of comments that might be taken to be homophobic, they have to ensure that our law does not criminalise insulting speech, whether intentional or not, that is short of threatening—or, in the case of directly causing harassment, distress and alarm to someone, something that is short of abusive. While "insulting" exists in the Public Order Act, inserting this provision into it will, with or without the Waddington amendment, still make people feel that they cannot insult people on the basis of sexual orientation and will still make the police believe—perhaps the police should think much more carefully about this, but the "insulting" provision is on the statute book—that they have to investigate complaints, particularly given the fact that people feel that the police should take seriously complaints about incitement to hatred or insulting behaviour on the grounds of race, sexual orientation or religion. I thus urge the House to recognise that in a sense we are debating the wrong amendment. I will come on in a few moments to the right amendment to remove the insulting provisions from the statute book, but it has been put to this House—although not debated—and is supported by the Joint Committee on Human Rights.