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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

The second point is that although my hon. Friend's point is about religiosity and reinforcing the need for respect for religion in this country, particularly Christianity, the structure of his argument is based on a misunderstanding of history. The common law of blasphemy emerged as a tool of secular power. When the divine right of kings was reinforced by the threat of damnation, there was a need for a law of blasphemy, because it protected the power of state, in the person of the Crown. Now that things have moved on and we do not have internecine disputes between the Jacobites and the Protestants, as we had in 18th century England, which flowed from the problems that we faced in the Reformation—