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Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

I had rather hoped that I was keeping it in perspective. The Minister’s suggestion that there would be very few prosecutions seems to have been put forward to reassure the vast majority of people who are engaging in religious debate that they need have no fear while doing so. My anxiety is that the Bill is worded in such a way that anyone looking at its terms will see that they are very wide, and that only the Attorney-General’s discretion will restrict them. For those reasons, I am trying to find a way forward. I do not much care for the Bill—I shall come back to that in a moment and suggest some alternatives—but I am trying to suggest ways in which the Attorney-General’s remit might be lessened. The police might therefore not need to get involved. They might say, ““There was nothing in those words that could justify violent acts against anyone. You might find them very offensive, you might not like what was said, and people might be getting very worked up about it, but there is no justification for prosecution because the hatred was not of a kind that would tend towards acts of violence.”” One of the problems with the Bill is that it does not define hatred. By its usual definition, all that it amounts to is an intense dislike.