Written evidence to be reported to the House
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
4:00 pm
Don Horrocks: As I indicated before, we feel that there is no need for this legislation. We feel that there is sufficient legislation. The current law is sufficient. If my comments earlier about legislation in the pipeline are right, there is even more rationale for that view.
Were this legislation to pass, we feel that there could be an impact similar to the impact that we warned about during the passage of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, which Parliament agreed with. At the end of the day, there would be a severe impact on freedom of speech: on legitimate disagreement, legitimate argument, even on the legitimate causing of offence and the legitimate expression of hatred. Let us admit that there is a legitimate expression of hatred. The Bible encourages Christians to hate sin. So if one accepts that there is a legitimate expression of hatred, the fear is that if the Bill is drawn in a way that has such a low threshold as Ben Summerskill has suggested, and as seemed to be proved by his comments on the protest in Parliament square, we would be very concerned. We feel that it would have a chilling impact.