My Lords, I think it is the sense of quite a few of us that it might be wiser to remove the phrase “causing spiritual injury to” because that is, I think, the most difficult element of it. I think most of us would understand
“placing undue spiritual pressure on”.
I respectfully suggest that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, might be a useful person to consult on this. Some of us may remember the occasion when, as Lord Chancellor, he attended a requiem mass for a Catholic judge in Glasgow and was threatened with exclusion from his own church, very clearly threatening to use spiritual pressure. He has presumably thought all of this through extremely well.
I thank the Minister for explaining the efforts that have gone into defining “undue influence” rather better. I still feel that we are looking at something which we all know is there but we are not at all sure that the police, let alone the Crown Prosecution Service, are going to want to take on very much. This is an area involving the boundaries between campaigning, free speech, improper behaviour and downright offences which we will probably have to live with, unsatisfactorily, because that is part of the nature of democracy.