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Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

That is absolutely true, and it certainly applies as much to religion as to the example of the theatre producer that I have already offered to the House. Of course, the Government will say that there is the safeguard of the Attorney-General’s intervention and so on. Again, that is highly unlikely to be of any great use when someone has been taken to the police station, questioned, arrested and perhaps spent a night in the cells. That is where the real chilling effect will be felt. We will never be able to quantify the chilling effect, because the people who do not proceed because they have been warned that they could fall foul of the law will never be recorded anywhere. The people who are prepared to make a stand will become apparent, because they will go through the system and the statistics will be gathered. The real danger is for the people who heed the warnings, and they will be substantial in number. Lowering the threshold to include recklessness will be counter-productive. Where little is needed to constitute an offence, one is almost inviting complaints to be made, either inter-faith or intra-faith, by different sects in a religion, one against the other. In that way, the protection of religious freedom that the Government seek to enshrine and encourage will be weakened. By trying to frame the Bill in such a way, the Government are putting great reliance on the distinction between the belief and the believer. For example, they want to criminalise attacks on Christians, but not Christianity itself. That is exceptionally unrealistic. I think that most Christians—I am one—and especially fundamentalist Christians, will perceive an attack on their faith as an attack on themselves. At the very least, they will see that as insulting. Indeed, if the test is to be recklessness, it is difficult to envisage how such an attack could not be covered. I wish to say a few words about the free expression rider. I am afraid that I do not draw great comfort from a measure that effectively says that conduct will not be an offence if it is an offence. It is worth reading into the record the terms of the rider that the Government are recommending:"““a person is not guilty of an offence under this Part of being reckless as to whether religious hatred would be stirred up if he is reckless as to whether hatred would be stirred up against a religion, religious belief or religious practice but is not also reckless as to whether hatred would be stirred up against a group of persons defined as mentioned in””" proposed new section 29A of the Public Order Act 1986. The provision is there"““For the avoidance of doubt””." I now understand why the hon. Member for Beaconsfield was getting excited by the prospect of the litigation that would arise as a consequence of the measure. It might have been proposed for the avoidance of doubt, but as far as lawyers are concerned, it is certainly not for the avoidance of profit. The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie) asked the Minister about the Bill’s impact on Scotland. The Bill will, of course, apply only to England and Wales but, as he observed, it will be have impact on Scotland. I commend to the House an example cited by the Christian Institute. It obtained the opinion of one of Scotland’s leading Queen’s counsel, Herbert Kerrigan. He says:"““though it is correct to say that the Religious Hatred law will not directly apply to Scotland it is simplistic to say that it will have no effect on Scotland. In practical terms the law will affect Scotland and every institution in Scotland which is in any way involved in writing, publishing or broadcasting will have to obey it even though it is not part of Scots law. The law is being criticised in England because of its ‘chilling’ effect on religious debate and because it will inevitably lead to ‘self censorship’ and caution. It will certainly have those effects in Scotland also.””"