Schedule - Hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds
Racial and Religious Hatred Bill
6:00 pm
Paul Goggins (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Wythenshawe and Sale East, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman seeks to draw me into future debates, but I do not intend to go there. I shall simply say that the fact that someone feels deeply insulted by something that they have read is not in itself caught by this offence.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Hammond case. I shall say nothing more about that case other than mention the fact that of course the offence was captured not by the legislation that we are discussing, but by section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986.
We have had an interesting discussion about whose job it is to define a religion and what groups may be described as religions. It is an interesting debate. We have always left it to the courts to determine which group is a religion and which is not, and we do not intend to change that approach in the Bill.
I was interested in the comment that the hon. Member for Beaconsfield made about Satanists, which took me to the heart of the debate. He gave us an anecdote in which he was a shopkeeper who treated courteously a Satanist who came into his shop. I was pleased to hear that he would do that, and it is right that he should. Indeed, under provisions that we shall contemplate in the near future, he would be committing an offence if he did anything else. Why then, I wonder, is he not in favour of a Bill that would stop somebody inciting hatred towards people who adhere to that set of beliefs? Why would he not take that step if he was decent enough to serve that gentleman in his shop?