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Coroners and Justice Bill

As one of the four Members of the Committee opposing the Question that Clause 61 stand part of the Bill, I accordingly support the continuation of what is now generally referred to as the Waddington amendment, which was agreed by your Lordships about 12 months ago. I need to make a number of points immediately. Like probably everyone in your Lordships’ House, I do not hold anti-homosexual views, nor do I advance them; in fact, I abhor homophobia. I fervently believe in a tolerant society but I also agree with freedom of expression within the law, and it is that phrase "within the law" that concerns much of what we are dealing with today. There is no direct case law to help us. Yet if one examines the long line of cases that start with Beatty v Gilbanks in 1882—I will give the Hansard writers the references later—which was the Salvation Army case, all the way through to the great review of the law in this area, Redmond-Bate v DPP in 1999, one sees a consistent guide that where the right of public expression of view has been challenged in the courts, the issue of reasonableness has been at the forefront of the minds of the judges. If I may be allowed a reminiscence just for a moment to make a point, I recall a time in the late 1970s—perhaps it was the late 1980s—when, as a fairly senior police officer, I was often involved with the policing of large demonstrations and marches, some of them in those days very large indeed. I remember sitting at home watching the evening television news which showed yet another march wending its way slowly through some street or other in yet another city, the marchers flanked intermittently by uniformed police officers. My young daughter, watching this, turned to me and asked, "Daddy, why are policemen always demonstrating?". I had then to explain in simple terms, as we shall explore later on, what concerns us today—that there is a right within the law to demonstrate beliefs and views within reasonable bounds, and that it is the duty of the police to allow that to happen. As I said previously, we are dealing with finely balanced judgments of what might or might not cause offence. The circumstances of Redmond-Bate in 1999 are particularly interesting and bear closely on the circumstances at which we are looking today. In 1997, three women were preaching from the steps of Wakefield Cathedral. They were described as fundamentalist Christians. They attracted a crowd of around 100, some of whom took exception to the views being expressed and became hostile. A police constable asked the women to stop preaching and, when they refused, he arrested them for breach of the peace and subsequently charged one of them further with police obstruction. The appellant, one of the three women arrested, was convicted by the magistrates and her appeal to the Crown Court was dismissed. But in 1999, two years later, at the Queen’s Bench Division, Lord Justice Sedley and his fellow judge took a very different view and allowed the appeal, holding that the women had not acted unlawfully. The judgment in that case is interesting because it reviewed the whole scope of the law at that time and not much has changed since. Lord Justice Sedley made a number of particularly relevant points in his judgment. He cited Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, especially Article 9.2, which states: ""Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law"—" I ask noble Lords to note what comes next— ""and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others"." In other words, mere annoyance or disagreement with those views is not enough. Article 10.1 states: ""Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority"." Continuing to review the case law in that case, and the arguments adduced by counsel, the judge said this—and it is particularly telling: ""Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having. What Speakers' Corner … demonstrates is the tolerance … extended by the law to opinion of every kind and expected by the law in the conduct of those who disagree, even strongly, with what they hear. From the condemnation of Socrates to the persecution of modem writers and journalists, our world has seen too many examples of state control of unofficial ideas. A central purpose of the European Convention on Human Rights has been to set close limits to any such assumed power"." What a long way we seem to have come since those words were spoken 10 years ago. Many Members of your Lordships’ House are better experienced and better qualified than me to develop an argument from case law, and I fully appreciate that nothing that I have said can ignore the fact the Parliament can legislate pretty much as it likes and that the material that I have quoted is only persuasive—