Coroners and Justice Bill

I am an eternal optimist, and I believe that we should aim for the right legislation, not create the wrong legislation on the way to getting the right legislation. My hon. Friends and I will support the Government in the Lobby tonight, and I suspect that there will be another large majority in favour of deleting the provision, so the matter will go back to the House of Lords. However, their lordships should apply themselves to the specific legislation where the problem lies. Let me set out the reasons for the position taken by the Liberal Democrats. As the Minister said, the incitement to racial hatred provision currently has a low threshold. However, the religious hatred provision rightly has a much higher threshold—it was important that that was restricted to threatening language, and that "intentional" was a requisite part of the offence. Given the importance of being able to proselytise freely, or to criticise religion, there should be a broad free speech saving that was not about religious conduct or practice but about the arenas in which speech would take place, such as those of political discourse, comedy, performance or broadcast. Clearly, that would not be in the nature of language that was threatening and intended to incite hatred such as when talking to a bunch of skinheads in a pub. The measure that we agreed for religious hatred is therefore the right one. In relation to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation, the Government have done what is essential: they have ensured that the measure deals with threatening only, and intentional language only. I can think of no pastor or street preacher who is so extreme that they would seek to incite hatred and use threatening language. They might do one or the other, but it is hard to imagine a preacher who would do both. I do not necessarily have good views of religious extremists, but I cannot think of one who is likely to do that. Some religious extremists incite violence directly, and that is already an offence, but they do not go the roundabout way of intending to stir up hatred using threatening language; they usually talk about measures that incite violence directly. No example has been given of the sort of religious speech that would be covered, without the so-called saving. The saving is unnecessary to protect religious speech. However, there is a real danger out there of extremist political parties using threatening language about sexual orientation that is intended to stir up hatred, without otherwise breaching another part of the statute. Again, let us imagine the British National party saying something homophobic in the context of paedophilia, which is, of course, a myth about homosexuality. However, if it is inciting, and if it uses the words, "And they've got it coming to them," that adds the threat, and that is the real mischief. We know how child abuse is sometimes dealt with in the popular press, and how that can create the sort of mob mentality that is the execution of the incitement of hatred. That would rightly be caught by the offence.