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Coroners and Justice Bill

Whatever its failings, the Bill has resulted in some passionate and important debates, particularly in the course of the past week’s hearings in your Lordships’ House. Today’s debate has been no exception. Clause 61 will remove from Part 3A of the Public Order Act 1986, which includes offences of stirring up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation, Section 29JA, which deals with freedom of expression. I say for the avoidance of doubt that that section was agreed by this House in the passage of last Session’s Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. The Government have always said that there is no doubt about the threshold of this offence; I will come to that in a moment. I will first do my best to answer the criticism that it is somehow constitutionally improper for the Government to come back to the issue at this stage. I do not accept that argument for one moment. As has been indicated and as, I think, noble Lords know, we needed to secure Royal Assent for the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill by 8 May 2008, so we were unable to ping-pong on the Bill beyond the initial rounds. If we had said nothing about it at that time, I could understand the criticism, but at the time we made it perfectly clear that we would return to this issue.