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Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, in speaking in support of the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, I make a number of points in fairly quick time. Your Lordships addressed this issue in great depth and detail on 9 July this year, when the debate continued for over two hours. I do not believe that we need take that amount of time today. The facts and issues have not changed. This has nothing to do with homophobia; the law is, rightly, rigorous enough already. It has everything to do with freedom of speech within the law, a principle that I was happy and proud to uphold in my earlier professional career in the police service. I reflect that upholding that principle of free speech sometimes called for a very delicate judgment, protecting the majority from the minority and almost simultaneously protecting the minority from the majority. I shall return to that police dilemma in a moment. Surprisingly, I do not recall anyone in our July debate reminding us of the well known, often hackneyed words of Voltaire: "““I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it””." That principle has been a cornerstone of English law for centuries and, until recently, there has been little cause to defend that principle. So long as the words were not intended to cause violence or gross insult, or likely to do so, they were tolerated. Noble Lords have it in their power tonight to protect that principle. I must say, as the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, has already said, that it seems to me nonsense that, while there is a free speech clause in the legislation dealing with religious hatred, it is now sought to exclude a similar clause in the homophobic hatred offence. Is it, perhaps, that the Government have bowed to lobby groups that are more vociferous in the one category than in the other? When I spoke in the debate in July, I highlighted the position and plight of the police and the prosecuting authorities. I shall do so again. Before the introduction of the Waddington amendment in 2008, the police and the prosecuting authorities were in an almost impossible position. There had never been any question that behaviour would be tolerated if it was offensive, aggressive, threatening or demeaning. The police would, and should, uphold the law to curb behaviour of that kind. The current law is robust and adequate on this point. But the police regularly received complaints from homosexual groups that exception was taken to remarks that homosexuality was deplored on religious grounds. The police were forced to act. They operated against a background of Home Office guidance notes on how to handle hate crime under the Public Order Act 1986, to which the issue of sexual orientation was added by the criminal justice Act 2008. The so-called guidance notes in fact required rigid adherence. Any complaint of hate crime, whoever made it, even if it was made by a bystander, had to be formally recorded and fully investigated in the ensuing procedure. No exercise of discretion was countenanced. The prosecuting authorities were bound to go through the whole rigmarole of interview, arrest, fingerprinting, taking DNA samples, police bail and so on, even though it was clear to all concerned that there was little likelihood of a prosecution or even a conviction. As I commented in July, what a waste of time and resources and what a terrible burden on the person caught up in the process. The tactics were sometimes all too obvious: a tactical complaint from a pressure group; the inevitable police response; and the chilling effect on those who might later be tempted to speak up in public in a similar way—all in all, a very successful way of dissuading and limiting free speech. I reported in the debate in July that the police support the Waddington amendment and I reassert that today. The Association of Chief Police Officers has carefully distanced itself from the issue; it has not declared a position either publicly or, as far as I know, privately. But individual chief officers, members of ACPO, and junior officers who face this problem in the streets have told me privately, in numbers, very clearly, that they support the amendment proposed, which will allow them to use a discretion and common sense that is often denied them in contemporary society and allow them to deal with these situations with that light touch that so many of us, and them, want to see. They resent the straitjacket that had been imposed on them. While Parliament debates the pros and cons, patent injustices continue. Speaking in the other place on Monday this week, when the Waddington amendment was removed from the Bill, the Minister, Claire Ward, said in her introductory remarks: "““The House is not attacking free speech. It is clear that people retain their right to freedom of speech. The clause is unnecessary because the threshold of the offence is already set incredibly high … We believe that we have got the balance right””.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/11/09; col. 101.]" I very much doubt whether Mrs Pauline Howe would agree with that. Mrs Howe’s experience is by no means the only example that I could cite. Mrs Howe was not a shrill, loud-mouthed demonstrator, shrieking abuse in the streets. She did not carry a placard in public with abusive or insulting words written on it. Mrs Howe is an eminently respectable, highly principled, late-middle-aged, middle-class lady married to a clergyman. She lives in Norwich. In July this year, she wrote a letter to c. She complained against the holding of a Gay Pride march in Norwich. The letter, which I have seen, was well constructed and forthright, but it was by no means inflammatory. However, the council officials in their wisdom saw fit to pass it to the police. In September, she was visited and interviewed in her own home by not one but two police officers from Norfolk Constabulary. She was interviewed for writing a letter, not for demonstrating in public. I have spoken to Mrs Howe at length on the telephone and she has authorised me to quote from a letter that she wrote to me. She said: "““I must say, the police officers were professional and polite … nevertheless, the visit frightened me. Why was I made to feel like a criminal when all I had done was to express an opinion? It was an intimidating experience. For 67 years I have been a law-abiding citizen. I know some people don’t like my beliefs. That’s fine, it’s a free country. But surely I have the right to express my beliefs, particularly to a government body, without fear of a visit from police. This is Britain isn’t it?””." Well, Mrs Howe, this is Britain in 2009 and I dare bet that George Orwell on this particular point would have been hard pressed to envisage such a state of affairs when he was writing his celebrated novel in the 1940s. The noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, has already referred to the case that I referred to in July—that of Redmond-Bate and the DPP in 1999. She quoted at some speed from it. I want to take noble Lords rather more slowly over those same words, because they bear heavily on what we are looking at night. I quoted that judgment at length before and I will not do that tonight—I will not explore the same ground—but the case still provides the best and surest signpost to us in our deliberations. In that case, allowing the appeal of a woman who was described as a fundamentalist Christian and who had been arrested for addressing a crowd from the steps of Wakefield Cathedral, Lord Justice Sedley in the Queen’s Bench Divisional Court defined free speech, saying in his judgment: "““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””." He concluded that, "““our world has seen too many examples of state control of unofficial ideas””." It has indeed. I urge noble Lords, keeping the Mrs Howes of this world in the forefront of their minds, to insist in the Britain of 2009 on the inclusion of the free speech clause in the Bill.