Schedule - Hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds
Racial and Religious Hatred Bill
4:45 pm
Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, (Assist the Home Affairs Team); Beaconsfield, Conservative)
Yes, my hon. Friend is right. We have no definition of a religion. The Government say that they are happy to leave that to the courts and that they are happy to allow case law to develop. Religion has been defined in English case law, although in slightly different contexts. There are definitions under the Human Rights Act and under charity law. All one can say is that the courts have, on the whole, been prepared to give the widest possible construction to religion. In charity law, they have made it clear that religion can exist if an objective observer, by whom I suppose one means the judge—judges are not necessarily the most objective people in the world, but they try to make themselves objective—decides that belief in a deity and an organised rite of worship of or obeisance to the deity apply. Those are the only two criteria and they would certainly cover Satanists, Christians, Muslims and anyone who believes in a god and for whom there is a ritual surrounding that. The scope of the term is therefore very wide. The Government, however, do not seem to be quite so confident, because they have deliberately left the issue right up in the air.
In amendment No. 25, I listed Scientologists before Jedi Knights. There has been debate about whether Scientology is a religion, and there is a court authority to suggest that it is a set of philosophical beliefs but not a belief in a deity. I leave that to one side. With Jedi Knights, it is difficult to know. They seem to believe in a force, because the force has to be with you, and they appear to be able to master the force by the processes of their own spirituality.