Schedule - Hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds
Racial and Religious Hatred Bill
6:30 pm
Paul Goggins (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Wythenshawe and Sale East, Labour)
I shall try to return the compliment and keep my remarks as brief as possible. The hon. Gentleman hit the nail on the head almost immediately he stood up to address the amendment, when he said that it would introduce different thresholds for racial hatred offences than for religious hatred offences. We seek to remove the anomaly that Jews and Sikhs are treated differently from other religious groups, so we cannot have different rules for Jews and Sikhs than for Muslims and Christians. That goes to the heart of why it is not possible to accept the amendment.
Amendment No. 11 would remove “abusive and insulting”. Would the hon. Gentleman describe it as abusive or insulting for someone to say that inherent to someone’s belief or religion is a commitment to wife-beating or the abuse of children? That is not threatening, but if we were to accept amendment No. 11, such an insult would not be covered.
The courts have been able to use all three of these words and interpret them in relation to inciting hatred on the grounds of race for nearly 20 years without a problem, so it should not be a problem in future when we extend them to cover religious hatred.