Schedule - Hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds
Racial and Religious Hatred Bill
4:30 pm
Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, (Assist the Home Affairs Team); Beaconsfield, Conservative)
My hon. Friend is right. It is precisely that matter that troubles me, and that we must tease out. I used the example of gays or lesbians precisely because that has been one of the rather heated areas of debate in the recent past and is therefore classically illustrative of the nature of the problem. Will condemnation of gays and lesbians, for instance, lead to them saying that they are being attacked for their lack of religious belief—some may have religious belief, but others may not—which is in part fuelled from their sexual orientation and their belief in the appropriateness of homosexual and lesbian behaviour, and therefore that the mullah or priest who has delivered a sermon fiercely criticising such practices is liable to prosecution because he has incited hatred against them on the basis of their lack of religious belief? I do not think that that is what the Government intend, but it may be the result of the way we are reading the Bill. If it is, the Committee and the House should become fully aware of it; otherwise the legislation will start to affect to an enormous extent what one is allowed or not allowed to say, and the debate will undoubtedly move into the political sphere very quickly, although the Government keep reassuring us that that is not an area into which the Bill will stray.
Amendments Nos. 24 and 25 are, perhaps, slightly tongue in cheek. They were designed to try to focus attention on what it is we are trying to debate and what we think might or might not be appropriately protected. In amendment No. 24, I seek to confine religious belief to the mainstream faiths that the Government identified in the explanatory notes to the Bill, as they suggest that those are certain to be covered. That leaves open what else might be covered, but those are the mainstream faiths that the Government seem to have in mind. Under the amendment, one would not be allowed to incite hatred against Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Rastafarianism, Baha’ism, Zoroastrianism and Jainism.
In amendment No. 25, I have tried to reverse the process for the purposes of trying to get some debate going in the Committee—I hope that members of the Committee will not be too coy. I have tried to identify beliefs for which the provision of protection against hatred some people would think extraordinarily repellent. The Jedi Knights at the end was put in as a bit of a joke, but we have to face up to the fact that Jedi Knights seemed to feature in the census return as being the belief of rather a large number of people. I shall read through the list that I have produced: Satanists; believers in human sacrifice to propitiate a deity; believers in animal sacrifice to propitiate a deity; believers in female genital mutilation to live in accordance with the rules of a religion; believers in violence as a means of proselytising a belief; believers in the supremacy or superiority of one race over another; believers in the supremacy or superiority of one gender over another; and Jedi Knights.