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Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I shall say very little because virtually everything I wished to say has been said by the noble Lords, Lord Waddington and Lord Dear, and by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. Having read Monday’s debate in the other place, as others have said, the case seemed to be asserted but not made. I believe that this element of what, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, rightly said, is the law, is necessary. It does not affect the very high threshold, but it makes clear that this element of the law we are talking about keeping is permissible. It protects individuals and society from the chilling and dumbing effect on free speech and debate that the noble Lord, Lord Dear, particularly, in the past, in writing and this evening, has clearly expressed. I want to take issue with the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, and the noble Lord, Lord Smith. I want to say to the noble Baroness that words do matter, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, intimated but did not go into detail about, the absence of words matters too. If these words are not on the statute book, it will be harder for the police to be assisted in the ways in which the noble Lord, Lord Dear, has expressed. They need to be assisted to work in a way that uses their intelligence, common sense and judgment, and thus do not waste time investigating people who have not done anything to deserve being investigated, long before the Attorney-General comes into the picture. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Smith, that signals matter, and they do. I share with him a horror of the fact that people are attacked, beaten up and killed because others believe them to be homosexual or because they are homosexual. That is manifestly wrong and wicked. But, as the noble Lord said, many others live increasingly in anxiety and fear. There is a very strong sense across quite a wide swathe not only of Christian opinion but of other opinion that the rights of those who hold the kind of views that this law would defend are seen as second-class. That is even there in the language of the noble Lord, Lord Smith. He said that it will be taken that it is all right to be intolerant. That is a particular kind of judgment on those who take the view that this amendment in defence of a piece of law seeks to sustain. Notwithstanding an unargued assumption of the Government that they must carry on in this way, it is most important that people of all sorts can be assured that, whether they are on street corners, in mosques, churches or synagogues, or be they journalists, academics, comedians or whatever, they are free to express views with which others may strongly disagree and which question the currently dominant political orthodoxy in these matters.