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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

The Opposition are going to have a free vote on this matter. In a way, that puts me in a more uncomfortable position than I would have been in had we had a whipped vote, because I am personally answerable to my noble friend Lady O’Cathain for the way in which I vote. I cannot simply refer her to an instruction from the Whips’ Office. In a case that has been cited by many noble Lords this afternoon, the Jerry Springer case—more formally Green v the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court—the court held that what was necessary to make the publication of potentially blasphemous material a crime is, "““that the community … generally should be threatened””," which, "““will be established if but only if what is done or said is such as to induce a reasonable reaction involving civil strife, damage to the fabric of society or their equivalent””." If that is what the offence today amounts to, it is a redundant offence, because a very large number of offences on the statute book connected with public order and related matters will fulfil the function of blasphemy just as well as that definition of the crime itself. If this was the only issue in the debate, that would be the end of the matter. But, as so many noble Lords have said, it is not quite as simple as that. The principle of equality in the eyes of God is the basis of the rule of law in our society, developed by common law judges over the centuries informed by Christian principles. Christianity has been absolutely fundamental to the development of our constitutional freedoms and I worry a little that this is no longer understood in our society. Secularisation will bleach from our memories the inextricable link between Christianity and so much of value in our society and in our system of law and government. Would keeping blasphemy on the statute book arrest that process, or at least be an enduring symbol that Christianity remains, and ought to continue to remain, at the root of our society? This is a difficult question, which I have found very hard to resolve myself. I have decided, on balance, that things are best left as they are.