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Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

: I accept entirely that the hon. Gentleman has a genuine commitment to civil liberties and that he argues with complete sincerity, but does he accept that Labour Members who support the measure have no less a commitment to free speech, and that we were warned constantly that, if we passed race relations measures to ban racial discrimination, we would undermine the honourable tradition of free speech in this country? The critics were proved wrong. We are no less a free country than we were before those laws were passed. We may be making a mistake today. I accept that that is a possibility but the warnings that he and his colleagues are expressing may prove no more right than those of Conservative Members so many years ago.