Coroners and Justice Bill

First, may I say to the Minister that neither she nor her right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, or any Minister involved in this law, has the smallest appreciation of how threatened people out there feel when it comes to the exercise of free speech? One of the most common phrases that we hear now, on a wide range of topics, not just this one, is "Of course, you can't say that these days." Normally, it is said to indicate that the person has a view but is afraid, under current state orthodoxy, to express it. Interestingly, when we last debated this particular amendment from the other place—I hope that the other place insists on it, as it has done in the past—many of the same examples were cited, although the most recent Norfolk one was obviously not available then. The Minister at the time—not this one, I hasten to add—stood at that Dispatch Box and told us categorically, "Of course, this was unreasonable. None of that police action should have taken place." Let us forget for a moment which particular law it took place under. She said that it was all due to misplaced interpretation and all that would be cleared up by guidance. Several incidents have taken place in which police action has resulted in very severe criticism, including from Ministers. Despite that, despite the publicity given to it and despite the Government apparently distancing themselves from that sort of action, recently there was an exact repeat of the problem in the case of the 67-year-old pensioner from Norfolk. In other words, not all the guidance that is being issued is stopping this particular menace. It may be that the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) is right when he says that the most satisfactory way of addressing this problem would be through section 5 of the Public Order Act, but that Act is not before us tonight. It is not promised to be before us in the near future or even in the distant future, long after this Government have ceased to exist—it is not promised to be before us at all. Thus we must act with the tools that we have got. The amendment offers some very necessary reassurance to people who seriously believe at the moment that their freedom of expression is restricted and that it is now possible—we have seen from those examples that indeed it is—that the police will arrive on their doorstep not because of something that they have done, but for an opinion that they have expressed. That properly belongs to totalitarian states; it should not belong to free countries. It should never be a feature of a free country that if one writes to a council to express a view on something—anything at all—it should result in the police arriving on the doorstep. The amendment seeks to reinstate a clause that simply, for the avoidance of doubt, endeavours to put on the face of the legislation freedom of conscience and freedom of the expression of religious and other views. When such a provision was last opposed by the Government, the entire argument—it is all there in Hansard—was based on its being unnecessary. If it was merely unnecessary, there would not be such movement tonight to remove it, and so now the Minister has changed the position. Now, it is not so much that it is unnecessary, but that it might produce the sort of behaviour that we are trying to curtail. The ground has shifted, but there needs to be protection for ordinary Britons from having the police on their doorsteps, as happened to the Lancashire couple, to the children's author Lynette Burrows, to Iqbal Sacranie himself—no preacher, said the hon. Lady, is in any danger, but what is Iqbal Sacranie if he is not a religious leader and preacher?—and lately of course in the Norfolk case. There has to be a signal from us that enough is enough; that guidance will not suffice, because it has not sufficed; and that condemnation from this House and from those on the Government Front Bench does not suffice, because it has not sufficed. We must make it explicit that there is freedom of opinion, freedom of conscience, freedom of religious belief and, above all, freedom of the ability to express any of them.