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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I strongly support the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. In doing so, perhaps I can be brave enough to remind the House that I have absolutely consistently been a supporter of every piece of legislation in favour of gay rights that has come before the House while I have been here. There is, however, a single legal, but none the less important, point to make. There is serious misapprehension about the Government’s approach to the problem. On Report, the Minister said that although Parliament put into the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill an exemption clause that is very similar to the one that we are considering here, "““the Government did not think that it was necessary and we do not think that it is necessary in relation to this Bill””.—[Official Report, 21/4/08; col. 1375.]" There are two points to make. First, the Government may well have been right at that stage. Secondly, however—the Minister may not like this—we are concerned with what Parliament did in that Bill and not what the Government would have liked it to have done. What is on the record and what is fact is what was enacted. What the Minister said on Report was the point at which I am afraid he strayed into error; it comes from a totally false premise. The very similar race relations Bill has an express exclusion for freedom of speech that is not in precisely the same words as those of the noble Lord’s Motion but is to much the same effect. What the Government’s argument, and with respect the point taken by the other place, fails to take into account is the absolute principle of law that: first, Parliament is deemed to know what it said last time; secondly, it is deemed to have drafted provisions in a subsequent Bill in the light of what was said before; and, thirdly, if it says something different, it means something different. Lord Maxwell, on statutory construction, says: "““From the general presumption that the same expression is presumed to be used in the same sense throughout an Act or a series of cognate Acts””," such as these, "““there follows the further presumption that a change of wording denotes a change in meaning””." He then cites Lord Tenterden: "““Where the Legislature in the same sentence uses different words, we must presume that they were used in order to express different ideas””." If this Bill is enacted with no exclusion of any kind similar to the one in the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, the courts will be bound to presume that Parliament intended a different result. Therefore, in this second Bill—