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Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

I agree with my right hon. Friend, and the question that she asked, which the Home Secretary failed to answer correctly, was exactly to the point. If what the Home Secretary said was what the legislation said, there might be a different argument, but what he said the legislation said it does not say—or, at least, it says more than that. The same must be true of Satanists or witchcraft. There was a great deal of discussion about witchcraft organisations doing a whole range of things in certain churches. There is a certain religion in which it appears that babies stolen from their mothers have been passed off as a kind of miracle children. I am not suggesting that many people adhere to those beliefs, but I am suggesting that pretty tough words may need to be used about them, and the result of those words could well be that some of the people to whom they were addressed would consider that their use stirred up hatred against them. I merely say that that is a strong possibility. Those are examples of what might happen, whereas the Home Secretary has provided not a single example of what the Bill would stop. Labour Members must accept the fact that this is the first Bill of such seriousness on which the Home Secretary has come to the House without explaining the examples that led him to make this decision. I therefore go on to why people should be worried about the Bill. It is all right for some of the hon. Gentleman who have now left the Chamber to say that they want reassurance from various groups of Christians. During the past few months, in the town neighbouring my constituency—Ipswich—a group of Christians who have proclaimed their views in the streets for many years were ordered to go to the police station to explain why they should not be arrested for stirring up hatred. They had a very difficult time. They happen not to be a Christian group with whom I have much in common. They are a narrow group of rather old-fashioned believers of a Brethren type, but I will defend them for ever; they should have the right to proclaim their faith in Britain and not to be stopped and taken to the police station by the police. If that can be done under the present law, how much more likely that it could be done under the Bill? After all, if the Home Secretary is saying nothing else, he is saying that the Bill will make the law tougher. If it will not make the law tougher, why is he introducing it at all?