Clause 1 - Hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds
Racial and Religious Hatred Bill
10:30 am
Alistair Carmichael (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Orkney and Shetland, Liberal Democrat)
Amendments Nos. 31 and 45 and new schedule 1 stand in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone). I shall leave amendment No. 1, to which our names have been appended, for the hon. Member for Beaconsfield to discuss.
Right at the start of Committee proceedings, we come to the heart of the Bill and the differences between the Government and Opposition Members. Amendments Nos. 31 and 45 are perhaps probing amendments. I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about them. They are much narrower in their compass than new schedule 1, which in essence is what we referred to on Second Reading as the Lester amendment. Amendment No. 45 would clarify that religious hatred would be covered by the Bill if it was racially motivated. However, I shall focus on new schedule 1, which is the meat of our discussions.
The new schedule would introduce a new definition of “racial hatred” in respect of
“persons defined by reference (whether directly or indirectly) to colour, race, nationality, (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins (“a racial group”).”
It then defines “an indirect reference” as a reference to race using religion as a proxy. It refers to a reference to religion
“as a pretext for stirring up racial hatred against a racial group”.
The term “religious group” is widely defined in the final part of the new schedule.
The Minister referred to the somewhat anomalous position whereby some protection is given by existing legislation to Sikhs and Jews but not to other religious groups. The basis of that, as I have always understood it, is that their religions are what are generally described as mono-ethnic religions, and case law has been developed under the Public Order Act 1986 that has allowed those people to be protected from racial hatred. I think that it is commonly accepted that that protection does not go so far as to include proper theological—if I can put it like that—religious hatred that could be stirred up. The import of the law as it stands is that coverage is given on racial rather than religious grounds.
I have seen some reference to that by the Minister, and I would be grateful if he accepted that that is the Government’s understanding of the law. I have noticed in recent times that most Government comment on this issue says that those people are protected from the stirring up of hatred, but there is no further specification of whether that is religious or racial. Currently, Jews, Sikhs and Muslims are protected if the basis for the attack or discrimination is their ethnicity, rather than their religious beliefs. That is probably the basis on which the leader of the BNP is being prosecuted. To that extent, new schedule 1 constitutes a belt and braces. It would enact through statute what currently exists in case law, but it would put the degree of protection beyond all doubt.
Muslims are currently protected from incitement to racial hatred, not on the basis that they are mono-ethnic—clearly they are not—but so that racists would find no shelter behind the word “Muslim” or “Islam” in the courts. The Minister dealing with the previous Bill that dealt with the matter, the right hon. Member for Salford (Hazel Blears), made the fair point that the words do not have to be racial but can be merely intended to stir up racial hatred, or insulting, threatening or abusive with the likely consequence of inciting racial hatred. There has been so much widespread comment about, and occasional misrepresentation of, the nature of the inequality of treatment that we believe that the amendment is necessary to put the issue beyond reasonable doubt.