I beg to move amendment No. 3, in schedule, page 2, line 10, leave out ‘a group of’.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 4, in schedule, page 2, line 11, leave out first ‘religious’.

No. 6, in schedule, page 2, line 11, leave out first ‘religious’ and insert ‘religion or’.

No. 5, in schedule, page 2, line 11, leave out second ‘religious’.

No. 7, in schedule, page 2, line 11, leave out second ‘religious’ and insert ‘religion or’.

No. 24, in schedule, page 2, line 12, at end insert—

‘17BMeaning of “religious belief”

For the purposes of section 17A a religious belief is confined to—

(a)Christianity;

(b)Islam;

(c)Hinduism;

(d)Judaism;

(e)Buddhism;

(f)Sikhism;

(g)Rastafarianism;

(h)Baha’ism;

(i)Zoroastrianism;

(j)Jainism.’.

No. 25, in schedule, page 2, line 12, at end insert—

‘17BGroups not protected by Part 3

For the purposes of section 17A any group of persons holding the following religious beliefs or lack of religious belief shall not enjoy the protection of this part of the Act—

(a)Satanists;

(b)believers in human sacrifice to propitiate a deity;

(c)believers in animal sacrifice to propitiate a deity;

(d)believers in female genital mutilation to live in accordance with the rules of a religion;

(e)believers in violence as a means of proselytising a belief;

(f)believers in the supremacy or superiority of one race over another;

(g)believers in the supremacy or superiority of one gender over another;

(h)Scientologists;

(i)Jedi Knights.’.

I concede at the outset that these are probing amendments. I am unlikely to press any to a vote. Indeed, it would be rash of me to attempt to do so. Each one will, I hope, highlight areas that I urge the Committee to consider carefully. If I may, I will take the Committee briefly through what each amendment is designed to highlight. I should then like to develop   my arguments more generally; hopefully, there will then be an opportunity for the Committee to discuss some of the issues.

Amendment No. 3 seeks to delete the reference in the meaning of religious hatred to

“hatred against a group of persons”.

When we are talking of a racial group most people would acknowledge that it would be rather unusual to have a single person constituting a race. I want to raise the question of whether that same issue applies to religion. We know that religion, in so far as we have definitions in charity law, is defined as recognition of a deity and organised worship of the deity. That is about the best definition that has ever been supplied. Certainly it does not appear to be an activity that requires a group to carry it out.

Recently a Satanist in the Royal Navy was authorised to use a cupboard on board one of the frigates to store his religious paraphernalia and conduct his worship in solitary form. He was clearly worshiping a deity. Indeed, the Royal Navy, presumably applying as best it could the provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998 and after scrutiny by the captain and chaplain of the vessel concerned, decided that this Satanist, who believed in such things as vengeance as a legitimate part of religion, should be allowed to carry out his worship.

In seriousness, I ask whether it is right simply to convert the concept of a racial group into the concept of a religious group, or whether we are, as a result of doing that, denying the protection of the Bill to people who may have individual religious beliefs that they practise routinely as part of worship. That is not merely a fanciful consideration. The evidence is pretty overwhelming that the degree of pluralism that exists now in British society means that people may believe in all sorts of things and have wholly individual beliefs that might not be shared by others. Nevertheless, does that constitute a religion? I should be grateful to hear from the Minister the Government’s view and that of their legal advisers. If we continue to use the word “group” in a religious context, we may be excluding certain people.

The next few amendment seek to play around with the issue of what constitutes a religious belief. The origin of my concern is the explanatory notes on the Bill, which make it clear from the use of the words

“religious belief or lack of religious belief” that the Government intend the Bill to cover not only people who incite others to hatred against people with other religious views, and therefore a belief in another deity, but those who incite others to hatred of groups that essentially have no religious belief. What does that mean, to have no religious belief? It is an important question that the Committee must consider. Are we talking about incitement against secularists, atheists or agnostics, or about incitement to hatred of individuals who hold views that are incompatible with the religious belief of the group that is being incited to hatred?

I give the Minister an example: the case of Hammond. Mr. Hammond was prosecuted under the Public Order Act 1986 because he put up a banner   saying, “Stop immorality. Stop homosexuals. Stop lesbianism. Jesus Christ is Lord”. The basis of the prosecution under the provisions of the Act was that Mr. Hammond was liable to insult people in the street who might presumably be of a homosexual or lesbian orientation. But when the law has been changed as the Government intend, it would be possible for the expressions “stop homosexuals” and “stop lesbians” to be caught by the provisions of incitement to religious hatred if—it is the “if” to which I want an answer from the Minister—the lack of religious belief is the fact that someone who is of a homosexual orientation and believes it is appropriate to engage in homosexual activity is doing something that is contrary to the tenets of the religious faith of the people who are being incited. That is no light issue.

The Bill as drafted is sufficiently loose to encompass any viewpoint that might be incompatible with the religious views of a religious group that is being incited to hatred. For example, it is said that people of some religions do not believe in democracy, so if one is promoting or criticising that group for not believing in democracy, it could be an incitement to hatred against that group.

Even leaving aside the wider issues—I am trying to narrow them down as much as possible—about what a lack of religious belief means, are we talking about criticising people for not believing in God, or are we opening the avenue to prosecution because a group of people who do believe in God are being incited to hatred of people whose views are incompatible with belief in the God whom that group happen to believe in?

I hope that the Minister will tell the Committee whether the Government have focused on this matter, because from reading the Bill and the explanatory notes about what is intended it seems to me that the lack of religious belief could be construed as simply being any belief that is incompatible with religious belief.

My hon. Friend has a very lucid argument, which I had not thought of. Is not it also possible that a court might find that a person’s behaviour, about which another person complains, happens because of that person’s religious belief? That might be something that the religious leader seeking to address the issue is implying—that because a person does not believe in God, they are some kind of outsider, infidel, heathen or unbeliever, and therefore act in a certain way—and that person could well be brought to court under the provisions of the Bill.

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.

I was looking forward to discussing the proposed new sub-paragraph (g). I suppose that there are those who would argue that when Graham Leonard, the former Bishop of London, argued that a woman was no more ordainable than a potato, he was indeed arguing that he was a believer in the supremacy or superiority of one gender over another. Might there not be a conflict between the hon. Gentleman’s amendments?

The hon. Gentleman is catching on fast to the point that I am trying to highlight. Indeed, in a moment I shall—I hope that by doing so I will not   offend the Committee—read one or two short bits from the Koran and the Bible, which I think the Committee might want to consider. Although the lists in amendments Nos. 24 and 25 appear superficially to be starkly at odds, there is in fact the capacity for interchange.

My hon. Friend is being rather modest when he says that he tabled the amendments in a tongue-in-cheek way. Does he not agree that they go to the heart of the matter? The fact that the Government have not stated what a religion is will cause huge problems with the Bill. Disreputable groups will undoubtedly hide under the protection that comes with being classed as a religion and will potentially not be able to be criticised for their abhorrent views. Does my hon. Friend not agree that the definition of what is and is not a religion goes to the heart of the Bill?

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.

It is fictional.

I have no idea whether being a Jedi Knight is fictional. The text from which it is derived was written by an author who was not pretending that it was revealed truth, but there seem to be a number of people who, for their own reasons, put in their census return that it is their religious view. I cannot comment any further on that.

I hate to say this, but it is also true that several hon. Members have placed light sabres in the Cloakroom in the place where they could be hanging their swords. I do not think that that means that anyone believes genuinely in the power of the force in the sense of a religion.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and fascinated by his expertise on the subject. All I can say is that he may be right, but I have no certainty on the matter.

I may have made this point in the Chamber, too. The hon. Gentleman’s contribution has been fascinating and fun, but can he give examples—from the charity law to which he referred, the Human Rights Act jurisprudence, the case law since the legislation relating to the employment and religious discrimination directive was introduced a couple of years ago, or the extensive European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence—in which the mischief that he is talking about has been a problem?

I find that a difficult question to answer. Case law has developed case by case. On the whole, the interpretation by the Court of Human Rights of what a religion might be seems historically to be narrower than that of English charity law, as an example. However, I cannot be certain that that is so. In the 19th century, Joanna Southcott believed that she had heard voices and could provide revelations. A fund left to perpetuate her teachings was decreed to be a charitable purpose, even though the judge concluded that the teachings were probably, on any intellectual analysis, rubbish. That has always been one of the classic starting points, although others who know more about charity law may correct me. It is also true that a charitable purpose might be void if it were contrary to public policy, so if a religion believed in something that was a criminal offence, it would be unlikely to be recognised as a charity.

The best that I can say is that there are parallel strands of legal thinking, but I do not think that a court, starting along the process of ruling on such matters, would necessarily find itself confined to the jurisprudence of the Court of Human Rights. If I were a prosecutor going before a court, and the first question that the court had to determine was whether people who were victims of religious hatred were in fact a religion, I would start to look at the definitions. The hon. Gentleman should bear it in mind that, as I said previously, we are talking not just about religious belief, but lack of religious belief. The courts will have a complex time deciding what falls within the parameters.

Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that the same definition was used in the anti-discrimination legislation a couple of years ago? To my mind, there has been no example of an employee claiming to belong to any of the 10 groups that he lists in order to try to obtain the protection of the legislation against discrimination on the grounds of their religious belief or lack of it.

It can only be a matter of time when it comes to the first group, Satanists, because they have already featured in an employment case with the Royal Navy concerning the rights of an individual to practise his religion on board ship. The view clearly taken by the Navy was that the Satanist was entitled not to be discriminated against. It was precisely because the Navy wanted to ensure that he was not discriminated against that it allowed him to keep his paraphernalia in his cupboard and to practise his rites. He was also allowed to step out of attendance at church parade on the quarterdeck. Therefore, if that issue has not yet arisen, it is likely to come up in future.

I have been following my hon. Friend’s argument with considerable interest. He will be aware, as I am and, I am sure, is the Committee, of recent worrying reports from the Metropolitan police about certain groups that believe in the need for exorcism or, in certain cases, for children to be sacrificed. There are, according to the Metropolitan police, a good number of these groups, which clearly fall within one of the definitions that he has described. Does he share my concern that the irony of the Bill if not correctly refined will be that we end up protecting such groups, most of which our constituents would regard as utterly repugnant and in need of being rooted out?

The subject of exorcism has a mainstream track record in Christian faiths. The Catholic Church will still, in exceptional circumstances, practise exorcism, although I do not think that it involves beating people to death in order to achieve it. However, there is a belief that people may be freed from spirits. The Anglican Church would still recognise that as a possibility. As I understand it, the criticism made by the police is of Christian sects, not voodoo culture religion, although some may be influenced by animist faith in arriving at their position. There is a long tradition of animism running alongside Christianity from the cultural origins of the people concerned.

All that illustrates the complexity of the problem. Many think that the practice of exorcism is unjustified in any event. Some think that even if it can be justified, because it is just saying a prayer and hoping that somebody gets better, rituals that may be terrifying to a child, perhaps physically endanger a child or even, as we seem to have discovered recently, kill a child are matters of huge abhorrence. Many would take the view that they would be entitled to hate people—or intensely dislike them; I suggested to the Committee yesterday that that is what hatred means—who practise such things. We could easily have added exorcism, and Christianity would have been slotted into both categories.

May I point out that things such as female mutilation and human and animal sacrifice are already outlawed in this country under various laws, and the law supersedes religion? The hon. Gentleman’s case is that religions come and go over time, and that people’s interpretation of them can change. We know that, but   if the Government’s position is right, it does not make sense to mention specific religions in the Bill. Surely the hon. Gentleman is arguing against his amendment.

I disagree. It is true that religions may come and go, but the Government have made it clear that they do not wish to inhibit the practice of religious faith; that is not their intention. The criminal law already prevents people from doing things, irrespective of their religious belief. There may well be legal challenges over some of those things, but I suspect that the law will fall on the side of state intervention.

I do not think that those who have a religious faith that believes in paedophilia will succeed in getting a court to allow them to practise it. The fact is that most people regard paedophilia as abhorrent. It is perfectly possible to hold a religious belief that children should be initiated in sex at the age of seven, and to say that that is what one is striving for, but that in the mean time one will obey the law. I am certain that there are people in this country—indeed, I have met one or two from other cultural backgrounds—who believe that female circumcision is an appropriate cultural and religious rite, but they do not practise it because they have been told that the law would stop it. Indeed, some send their daughters abroad for the purpose, where the law of the land cannot touch them for it. Again, I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that saying such people are horrible and should be hated will be criminalised under the Bill—save those cases in which, as I said yesterday, the Attorney-General decides that it would not be in the public interest to prosecute them.

I ask the Committee to forgive me for giving some short quotations. I turn first to article 18 of the 39 articles of faith of the Church of England, which states:

“They also are to be had accursed that presume to say, That every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law, and the light of Nature. For holy scripture doth set out unto us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved.”

What poor old Mr. Hammond—an evangelical preacher; I do not think he was a member of the Church of England—was saying in the street may have been insulting to his audience and should not have been said, but it was rather compatible with the tenets of the Church of England. That is so unless, I might add, one belongs to a sect of the Church of England that thinks that homosexual relationships are within scriptural canon.

Then we have the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a difficult issue, but we have to face up to the fact that he said some rather controversial things. What he said may have been tampered with or altered subsequently, but John, chapter 8, verse 44, contains unflattering references that relate directly to the Jews whom he was addressing.

The whited sepulchres.

Not just those.

“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie,   he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because you are not of God. Then answered the Jews, and said unto him”— and so it continues. My point is simply that that is one illustration—perhaps not the most extreme even within scriptural texts in the New Testament—of sayings that could be preached and reproduced and could be construed as inciting hatred against others. Indeed, I regret to say that it has undoubtedly been used in the past for that very purpose.

We cannot get away from the problem. Take Psalm 139. Admittedly it is Old Testament, but some people give great scriptural significance to the Old Testament:

“O God, if only thou wouldst slay the wicked! If those men of blood would but leave me in peace—those who provoke thee with deliberate evil and arise in vicious rebellion against thee! How I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee! I am cut to the quick when they oppose thee: I hate them with undying hatred; I hold them all my enemies.”

That is the very thing that we were discussing when we mentioned intense dislike and enmity. If a priest taking that as his scriptural text on a Sunday morning were to use it to refer to people of no religious belief, or of a religious belief that he believed to be wholly incompatible with the scriptures, and his audience were incited to religious hatred, he would have committed the offence. One is never sure what sort of audience one is going to get.

I simply say to the Minister that these are serious matters. The Government seem to be labouring under a delusion that religious faith is all-inclusive and cuddly. In fact, religious faith is not particularly inclusive and cuddly, although many of its modern manifestations and the tolerance that underlies it have enormously benefited humankind in general, and there is, of course, a great deal of interpretation by people who say without difficulty that statements such as the ones I read out should not be taken literally.

We have the same problem with the Koran. I tread slightly more warily here because I am extremely ignorant of the Koran, but I have had the opportunity of reading it and find it to be full of texts of a kind that some people might find extremely offensive. It is impossible to get away from that. Some of those texts have been used in the recent past to justify acts of violence of an extreme and unpleasant kind. For example, Sura 5:33 states:

“The punishment of those Who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive With might and main For mischief through the land Is: execution, or crucifixion, Or the cutting off of hands And feet from opposite sides, Or exile from the land: That is their disgrace In this world, And a heavy punishment is theirs In the Hereafter, Except for those who repent Before they fall Into your power: In that case, know That Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.”

The scriptural interpretation at the bottom, which I read some time ago with interest, puts some interesting and very moderate glosses on the interpretation of that text, but it is idle to pretend that it has not been used to justify terrible things.

I say that to the Committee because one of the difficulties with which we have to grapple is what I call the circularity of the problem. Why do people hate   religions or other people’s religious beliefs? In some cases, people hate other people’s religious beliefs because, as we discussed earlier, they allow certain sexual practices that they do not like. However, in many cases, people come to hate other religions because they believe that those other religions hate them. Applying my mind to the recent past, that seems to me to be a common theme. That struck me quite forcefully when, some time ago, I received a text from a person unknown to me, albeit that I have his e-mail address. Produced after 9/11, the text runs to four pages and it is fairly inflammatory stuff. It starts:

“The Muslim Menace to Britain: 33 Questions about Islam Answered.”

It then goes on to provide answers to those questions about Islam. To avoid any misunderstanding I want to make a couple of points. It contains sections such as the following:

“Are any Muslims speaking out against this racism and religious persecution?”

It then cites examples, so whoever the author is—an unknown person on the net—he clearly acknowledges that Muslims are speaking out in different ways. However, a lot of the text is a pretty devastating polemic against Islam and its practices. I should be happy to circulate photocopies of it, rather than read it all out in Committee. The person making the remarks thinks that Islam is a revolting faith founded on a fraud perpetrated on credulous people at its inception.

Reading the text leads me to suspect that those views are held with utter sincerity by its maker, although his ability to perceive some good aspects of Islam does not suggest to me that he approached the subject with a completely closed mind. The text does suggest to me that the maker was very angry at what he perceived to be the beliefs of Muslims, and their behaviour which led from those beliefs. As a result, there can be no doubt that he was encouraging people to think very ill of Islam and Muslims in Britain generally.

That is a classic example of the sort of person whom the Government may intend the Bill to catch. However, at no point in the four pages of discursiveness is there the merest suggestion that anyone should do anything unpleasant to a Muslim. That does not feature, but it is a polemic, clearly deeply felt, about practices that the writer regards as abhorrent. The main point is that I think that if I were a Muslim and I read the text I should pretty quickly feel insulted. It does not threaten. It might be described as abusive, but that depends on whether one considers that any of the points being made have a rational basis. It includes accurate quotations from the Koran, but there is no doubt that the writer places different interpretations on them from those given in the Koran that I have in my room, which was kindly supplied to me by the Muslim community after 9/11 and which I have always read with interest.

I have serious doubts about what we are doing if we are saying that the text that I received should be made criminal. If so, we are not creating a new freedom but imposing a new regime of orthodoxy on every religious group by telling people, “You can think what you like, but if your thought does not accord with the inclusive   criteria that we think are appropriate, you will be criminalised for expressing it—even if your conscience tells you that that is what you should say.”

I hope that the Committee will excuse me. I suppose that I could have focused on another example, but I have highlighted this one because of the circularity of the issues. It is true that hatred may sometimes have no rational basis, but often it does have a basis. If one looks at Muslim websites, as I have done, it is sometimes not difficult to perceive at least a basis to some of the criticisms of the west and Christians, even if the extremism of the thought is disturbing. Those are not necessarily sites that call for holy war or violence. We simply have to face up to the fact that such things exist.

Will my hon. Friend expand his argument slightly? Some of the things promoted, for example, by the Catholic religion may be deeply unattractive to many people, such as its view on birth control, which has had an impact on the spread of AIDS in Africa, where literally millions of people are dying from what is, basically, a preventable disease. I feel very strongly that such beliefs are wrong and that millions suffer because of them. Would I be caught by the Bill if I put my belief in writing?

It depends. If I have understood the Minister’s approach, I suppose that the Government would say that such opinions were all right as long as they were expressed with moderation. However, if one were encouraging people to hate Catholics because of their beliefs, as opposed to attacking their beliefs, one might be caught. If my hon. Friend were to say that Catholics should be shunned because their beliefs cause a great obstacle to the eradication of AIDS in the world and they are therefore nasty people who have no respect for the integrity of human life and are an obstacle to progress, he might be caught, if the language he used was sufficiently strong. I cannot say.

We are treading on eggshells. The Government seem to believe passionately that the eggshells will not break—that the dividing line can be clearly established. All I can say to the Minister is that I hope that I have provided some material for the Committee to discuss. I acknowledge that there are problems to which I do not have simple answers. However, I return the polemic against Islam: it is certainly insulting and it may well incite hatred, yet I suspect that that is not what the author intended. That example highlights the huge difficulties that we are likely to face.

The hon. Gentleman has made a good and interesting argument and I accept his point that the way in which laws are interpreted and implemented has a psychological effect in our society. I simply ask him, what is wrong with a new orthodoxy of restraint against incitement to hatred?

The hon. Gentleman puts a clear case which, if it were the one that the Government were making, would give rise to some interesting debates in the Committee and in the House. If, however, he accepts the logic of his own argument, as I am sure he does, there is absolutely no reason why it should be   restricted to religion. It could be extended to politics. As I have mentioned before, I believe that the division between religion and politics is, in practical terms, absolutely non-existent, and that to find a dividing line is impossible.

One could say that the Bill proposes a prohibition of hatred, whereby people will not be allowed to express intense dislike of anybody else in any circumstances because society will not permit such a thing. Such a provision is slightly Orwellian and runs contrary to a long tradition of human development. One reason why I do not believe the legislation is a good idea is that if the state tries to suppress deeply held beliefs, all that happens is that such beliefs are pushed underground and actually cause far more trouble in the long term than what we have—or have had—in this country, which is a degree of self-censorship brought on by the mixture of ridicule, censorship and criticism that comes from within groups against people who offend others excessively. My understanding is that one reason why the Government have introduced the Bill is that they believe that that system has broken down under the pressure of religious pluralism and multiculturalism. It is a rather sad state, but I do not think that the solution lies in what the Government are trying to do.

May I ask the hon. Gentleman, for the benefit of those of us who are new to the House, whether he held that same view when the religiously aggravated offences legislation was introduced? As he will be aware, it brought in offences to do with religious aggravation, such as harassment, violence, criminal damage and so on. The protection extends to adherents of all religious groups. The term “religious groups” has not been defined, but has been left to the courts to define should the occasion arise.

Will the hon. Gentleman also give examples of problems involving the cases of Satanists—or even of Jedi Knights and the other people he is talking about—who are the victims of religiously aggravated offences that have been before the courts?

The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly good point. I was perfectly happy to support that measure, because it puts a more severe penalty on somebody who commits a criminal offence and seeks to justify it on the basis that it is against somebody of another religion.

Let us say that I decide to set fire to a mosque, and my motive is Islamophobia. Under the law as it stands, I am allowed to harbour Islamophobia, but if I set fire to a mosque that should be taken into account as an aggravating factor. I do not have any difficulty with that; I think the state is entitled to do so. Judges, of their own motion and without Parliament passing laws, have historically adjusted penalties. Indeed, if they think that Islamophobia is giving rise to criminal offences against Muslims, they ought to do so. The Lord Chief Justice would send out a letter saying that this crime is becoming far too prevalent and the judges,   usually of their own accord, would pass stiffer sentences. That has been going on, whether it be in the cases of Muslims, gays, women or whoever else.

Can the hon. Gentleman not see the contradiction in his argument? He is saying that it is perfectly okay to dislike someone intensely because of their religious belief or lack of it, not because they are gay or because of their race, in which they have no choice. He is saying it is rational and okay to do that. If that is the case, I can see the point if someone who intensely dislikes someone commits a criminal offence, is found guilty of the offence and then punished. But why should the person who is allowed to dislike someone intensely be doubly punished, or given a harsher punishment, because the intense dislike was the reason and the aggravating fact behind that offence?

It is perfectly appropriate for Parliament to say, “I have no reason to criminalise your words, your intense dislike or your encouraging people to dislike other people intensely.” However, there is a complete difference between that and carrying out hostile acts, whether acts of violence or—as we have discussed and are moving to consider with respect to another Bill, which I support—acts of discrimination.

I may think a Satanist a horrible individual, but if I was a shopkeeper and a Satanist came into my shop and wanted to be served, and if I said, “You cannot be served in this shop because you are a Satanist,” unless that person was about to commit a criminal offence, the good order of society would dictate that we should exercise a measure of tolerance towards each other. There is a very clear dividing line.

The hon. Gentleman may have a better point—we debated this when we looked at religiously aggravated offences—on the historical aspect. For example, someone might say, “I threw a brick at the man, but I did it because I thought that he was a Satanist. He’s a horrible person and I was goaded beyond belief.” I suspect that that might have been used as a mitigating factor 50 years ago, but times have changed.

I feel that the needs of society should make this an aggravated offence. If someone is otherwise law abiding and doing nothing wrong, even if people find his belief revolting, it is not right for them to take hostile action against such a person. If they do, they must face the consequences, including the offence being treated as aggravated. I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that I think there is a clear distinction.

This brings us to the nub of the issue. Perhaps there is a new orthodoxy. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the reason for that is perhaps that we have moved on. We are in the 21st century, in a multicultural, multiracial society. On behalf of society, this Parliament has said that it is an aggravating feature to assault someone because of their race or religion. The same should be true of encouraging us to hate one another because of our racial or religious   background. That is why the Bill needs to be passed. We are simply moving into a modern world. As a representative of a multiracial constituency, I welcome the measure because it will help the society that I represent. On behalf of my constituents, I say that the Bill should be passed.

I disagree fundamentally and profoundly with the hon. Lady. Protection is given to race because, as we discussed, race is immutable and is, in any case, a characteristic irrelevant to a person’s being. Religion, as I said, is a matter of choice, just as politics is.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

If the hon. Lady will be patient, I shall give way to her in a moment.

The logic of the hon. Lady’s argument must lead to the extension of the measure to political discourse. That has worried me more and more about the Government in a number of contexts over the last eight years. The road is clearly signposted. I do not wish to sound anti-European, but, because of the changes in society that she highlighted, we in this country are moving inexorably towards being offered a zone of peace and security—or peace and tranquillity, or whatever it is—but the return for that is that we must all behave in a way that is completely conformable with what the received wisdom of the state dictates. The Bill is another step in that direction.

I hope that the hon. Lady’s words are taken up by the Minister, as I am interested to hear his views. The logic of those words is inexorable: we will end up in a society in which there are norms of conformity. Lest we doubt that, we can see it happening in other countries. I am half-French.

I am sorry.

This may mark the end of my political career in this country, but I must accept that.

As an example, the French have clear cultural views on the cultural norms of what it is to be French. That is what led them to ban the wearing of turbans and scarves in schools. One of the things that I said at that time was how much I rejoice in the fact that—by chance and circumstance—my upbringing and my life have taken place here, because I live in a country in which imposing a cultural norm on the population is not part of the political culture.

The French believe, with great passion, that what they are doing in that area is right and that they are doing it to protect the secular values of republican life. I disagree profoundly with that philosophical belief, but this afternoon the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Ms Thornberry) has put forward the absolute argument for going down that road. I shall give way once more and then finish my remarks.

What I am arguing is simple. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman understands that in today’s society we should not be encouraging one another to hate each other. That is the issue, not the   nature of cultural imperialism and a comparison between the French and British empires, which is an interesting subject, but not appropriate here.

To suggest that, in some way, it is excusable to encourage other people to hate someone because of their religion because that religion is a matter of choice is, frankly, nonsense. Although it is possibly open to someone born in a village in Gloucestershire to become a Sikh, it is highly unlikely that they will be given the proper opportunity to do so. I hear what the hon. Gentleman said about a white German Sikh he once met—

Order. This intervention is becoming a speech.

To wind up, then, I simply say this: although a woman in a village in Gloucestershire has a choice about whether to be a Conservative, clearly she does not have the same open choice, in practice, over religion. To encourage people to hate one another because of their religion is clearly wrong.

The hon. Lady says that she does not like hating people, and I must say that we should be very careful about hatred. Several members of the Committee are Christians who profess Christianity, and we know what a difficult issue that can sometimes be. On the whole, however, there are people in the western canon of demonology whom we are encouraged to hate. We hate Adolf Hitler, and any suggestion of his rehabilitation, which is sometimes made when academics say something slightly different about him, is usually visited with vitriolic condemnation immediately afterwards, as well as with huge criticism of the person concerned.

I have heard many expressions in the House of hatred of the British National party, and frequent expressions of hatred of the individuals in it. The logic of what the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury says is that all that should be sanitised down to a moderate criticism. On that note, I look forward to the debate continuing.

This has been a fascinating hour. I crave the indulgence of the Committee, because although the question of a new orthodoxy of restraint, to use the term used by the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen), may get to the heart of the Bill, it is not strictly relevant to the proposals we are discussing.

I listened with interest to the remarks made by the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) on hatred of Roman Catholics. For six years, I lived in Glasgow, where sectarianism and the hatred of Roman Catholics are very real. I was reminded of a man called Pastor Jack Glass—he is now dead, but he had his own church in Glasgow for many years—when I attended the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland a few weeks ago. His residual followers still picket the General Assembly on church and nation day, although with rather less panache than when Pastor Glass was alive.

I particularly remember Pastor Glass for two reasons. First, he was a candidate at the Hillhead by-election, following which Roy Jenkins entered Parliament in 1982. Secondly, because he was based in the west end of Glasgow, he was frequently rolled on to speak at union debates at Glasgow university, where I was briefly a student in the early 1980s.

Pastor Glass used to tell us with fiery determination that the Pope was the Antichrist and that Catholics were responsible for a raft of things, the very least of which covered the issues raised by the hon. Member for Broxbourne, and that all manner of legislation, including the Catholic Emancipation Act, whichever year it was, should be repealed.

Pastor Glass was listened to and some people would debate with him, but, in large part, I believe he was humoured or ridiculed. That brings us to the broadest possible question of this new orthodoxy of restraint, because that way of dealing with someone like the late Pastor Glass is eminently preferable to trying to bring such a person within the ambit of this new orthodoxy, if it is to be constructed on the basis of legislation such as the Bill.

Whether or not there is this new orthodoxy is a massive question, but, as it is not particularly relevant to the amendments, I shall not develop the theme any further, except to say that hon. Members who make points such as this should be mindful of their full import.

The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) spoke to his proposals at considerable length.

Every word was a golden one.

There were golden words every step of the way, as is usually the case with the hon. Member for Beaconsfield. Everything has been said, but not everyone has yet said it, so I shall favour the Committee with a few thoughts on the subject. [Interruption.] I hope that that is what the hon. Member for Rhondda is suggesting when he gestures to me like that.

The hon. Member for Beaconsfield raised the issue of a religion not necessarily consisting of a group of people. If we are dealing with worst-case scenarios, he makes an interesting point, and I would be interested to know what the Minister has to say about that. I worry about the hon. Member for Beaconsfield sometimes, because he is the only person I know who can consider an expression such as “lack of belief” and manage to come up with such tortured logic as he did. However, although it is tortured, it is logic, and one can see a possible extrapolation of the law.

We have spoken a lot in Committee and on Second Reading about the manner in which the 1986 Act has been extended by judicial interpretation. Judicial legislation is by no means a novelty within our common law jurisdiction, and it is right that we should anticipate different ways in which the law may be extended. Although the amendments are probing, the Minister would do well to consider the points that the hon. Gentleman makes.

The hon. Gentleman’s definition of religion has rather more to commend it than he initially suggested. With regard to amendment No. 24, which, if I may use the shorthand, is the inclusive definition, as it lists those religions that will be covered, I cannot improve on that list. I cannot think of any other religion that could be included.

The Minister may also be aware that it is a practice much beloved of this Government to add a rider to just about every measure, saying that they can change lists and add to them by statutory instrument. That is a practice that the hon. Gentleman and I have in the past been known to deplore, but on this occasion it might have some merit. As the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead said, religions come and go, and there is an element of fashion about them. If an event were to arise that meant a religion should be added to the list, it would be open to the Government to add the religion in a brief and perfunctory manner. From my knowledge of how secondary legislation goes through this House, I should expect the addition to be guaranteed largely all-party support; I should not expect that to be particularly difficult.

I turn now to the exclusive list and to amendment No. 25. The Minister will have seen some of the press comment on the Bill. I do not normally read The Daily Telegraph, but I think I picked it up, as is normally the case, when I was stuck in an airport lounge. It had a front-page headline along the lines of, “Now we have to be nice to Satanists”. A reasonable amount of comment has picked up on that fact, and I think that the Minister has been reported as having accepted that the Bill could in theory apply to Satanists. He must realise that that causes considerable concern, and if he wants to maintain the Bill’s standing in the wider community, there is a considerable benefit in including a proper definition, such as that in amendment No. 24. In fact, it would assuage a number of the concerns that are felt outside this place. It would be wrong if we were to afford Satanists or, more likely, Scientologists, protection under the Bill. It was put to me earlier today that, because of this Bill, mainstream Christians who want to preach to and convert Scientologists might feel constrained from doing so.

I do not believe that the Government want to protect the advancement of Scientology. At best, I would hope that they would be neutral towards it as a religion and that, more realistically, they would be prepared, if not always expressly, to thwart it. However, if they end up inadvertently—through the law of unintended consequences—protecting the Church of Scientology, the Minister will find that a wide public policy has been defeated. I urge him to consider the elegant solution that the hon. Member for Beaconsfield has offered the Committee by way of a definition of religion. It could be altered by addition or subtraction by statutory instrument if he were to accept it. Parliamentary draftsmen are ingenious at creating lists and finding ways of maintaining flexibility. Although I do not necessarily want to improve the Bill—I would rather see the end of it—I   suggest to the Minister that that may be a way to improve it and, at the risk of sounding slightly patronising, it is in his best interests to accept it.

The hon. Member for Beaconsfield made a fine speech and raised issues that it is important for us to discuss. However, he ended up being dragged into a discussion about new orthodoxy, which was not as helpful as the rest of his speech. Let me tell my hon. Friends the Members for Leyton and Wanstead and for Islington, South and Finsbury that I do not agree with the idea of a new orthodoxy. There have been too many orthodoxies in the past that have been entirely repressive of other people.

If it does not sound a little odd for me to say so, I believe in heterodoxy as much as is possible. I also happen to believe, none the less—I was taught at my mother’s knee, in school and in church—that one should not judge another person by the colour of his skin, nor according to his religion. That is important for many communities in this country in which sectarianism has been profoundly divisive and has led not only to people not being able to advance because of their religion but to their suffering discrimination and violent abuse. One should not judge people according to those criteria, nor according to their sexuality. We have had some discussion about whether one chooses one’s religion. We could have exactly the same discussion about whether one chooses one’s sexuality—in fact, I think that I had that debate with the hon. Member for Beaconsfield in another Committee.

However, that is not the point before us now. We are considering whether one should put a definition of religion in the Bill, which sounds as though it should be a good idea. We are saying that there should be an offence of incitement to religious hatred, so it would seem to be obvious that we should have, as we discussed yesterday, definitions of hatred, of religion and of incitement. Perhaps we will come to incitement later. Until now, the law has not required a clear and enacted version of what religion is, despite the fact that, since the Reformation, the law has tried to address many mischiefs through a series of enactments that relate to religion.

Originally, that was because there was no need to define religion; religion was the religion of the land and it was seditious to advance anything that opposed the religion of the land, the Church of England. We have moved on since then. However, most people in this land would accept that it is a good idea to have a specific offence of disturbing religious practice, attacking a religious building or attacking a cemetery or churchyard. The legislation that created that offence is the Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860, a rather curious Act that was designed to prevent brawling, not only by lay people but clergy in church. The Act has been amended subsequently and in the Segerdal judgment early in the 20th century it was made clear that a place of religious worship included not only a Church of England or Church of Wales building, church or cathedral, but

“a place of which the principal use is as a place where people come together as a congregation or assembly to do reverence to God. It need not be a God which Christians worship. It may another God, or an unknown God, but it must be reverence to a deity. There may be exceptions. For instance, Buddhist temples are properly defined as places for meeting for religious worship.”

Many hon. Members may think that that law is hardly used any more. In fact, there are prosecutions every year, most of which are entirely successful. The incidents of Jewish cemeteries being vandalised have been prosecuted under that legislation. There has been no problem for the law in terms of an explicit definition of what is, and what is not, a religion. I would argue that that there is no need to specify in the Bill what is, or is not, a religion—not least because that would lead to some complex situations.

The argument advanced by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield is that we should have Christianity as a single religion in the Bill. I would argue that many of the difficulties that we face are sectarian issues between branches of Christianity. There are many expressions of religion, as the hon. Gentleman said, that are not inclusive. He made the point that Jesus had his moments, when he was not entirely inclusive, although one could point to different versions in Matthew’s gospel and Luke’s gospel as to whether Jesus though it was a good idea to take a sword along and to use it in the garden of Gethsemane. That might indicate that some people thought that he had an inclusive attitude and others thought that he had an exclusive attitude.

None the less, the real point is surely that it must be possible to hate a belief while not necessarily hating a person. I say that as someone who had profound disagreements with Mrs. Thatcher, such as her interpretation of the parable of the good Samaritan. When she advanced her view on the sermon on the mount in Scotland, that the good Samaritan was only really famous because he was rich, and that the point of the parable was that we should all become rich, she had come to a fundamental misunderstanding of the parable of the good Samaritan. I hated the fact that she advanced that argument, just as I hate the fact that many people advance a prosperity-teaching argument that if one is rich, one must be good, and that poor people, because they are not blessed by God, must by definition be bad. That does not mean that I hate those people; I can draw that distinction between hating a belief and a belief system and hating a set of people.

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s argument, and I am sorry that I missed his opening remarks. If the new orthodoxy of restraint were Thatcherism, would the hon. Gentleman be so comfortable in pursuing that argument? One of our worries is that the great joy of our democracy is diversity, and the fact that it is entirely open to people to hold silly views or otherwise. The danger of seeking to use the crude hammer of legislation to try to create one conformity is the weakness of this Bill.

There is a danger in intervening late in my speech, because I have already said that I dislike the concept of a new orthodoxy, whether one advanced by Mrs. Thatcher or, for that matter, one   advanced by the current Prime Minister. I would have difficulty saying that one should adopt a religious orthodoxy in the land.

Careful Chris.

I think that that lies just within the boundaries of what a Parliamentary Private Secretary is allowed to say.

Would the hon. Gentleman disagree with the Prime Minister’s statement in 1997 that he did not understand how one can be a Christian and a Conservative? I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we found that pretty distasteful.

I call Chris Bryant.

I think, Mr. O’Hara, that there was a slight sigh in the way that you said “Chris Bryant” then, in which the hope might have been expressed that I would not rise to that bait; I shall not do so. I am happy, however, to provide the hon. Gentleman with several copies of the books that I have written on the issue, if he really wants to peruse them. They are not available in any good book shops—or any bad book shops. Or any book shops. [Laughter.]

Order. I, at least, am interested in what the hon. Gentleman has to say.

You are generous, Mr. O’Hara.

The point on which I want to end my remarks is that it would be a disservice to the Bill and to the hon. Gentleman’s arguments to include clear definitions of what does or does not count as religion. It is unnecessary in law.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will not, because I want to terminate my comments, and the hon. Gentleman has already suggested from a sedentary position that he has had quite enough of my speech already.

The key point is not whether one hates another religion or profoundly disagrees with it; it is whether one intends to incite hatred against a group of people who hold another set of religious views. That is the point that we shall come to in later discussions about amendments that I have tabled, and other relevant amendments.

I appreciate the points that the hon. Gentleman makes. If he thinks that it is acceptable for an individual to hate a religion, and, indeed, individuals within that religion, why should not such an individual be allowed to encourage other people to think as he does? That is surely the point that distinguishes the matter from the Minister’s very correct point about ecclesiastical courts jurisdiction.

There was a recent case of some fundamentalist Christians—evangelical Christians—who went into a Hindu temple and pulled down the idols in the face of the congregation, and disrupted the religious service, because they felt that they should do so. Their   behaviour was utterly and completely unacceptable, but surely that is the distinction: it is the acts, not the encouragement to people to have particular thoughts.

I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point about the attack on the temple. Indeed, I would argue further that if someone went to the Conway hall in Camden, for instance, which belongs to a humanist organisation in which people worship—they congregate, anyway—and hold a form of ritual, and tried deliberately to disrupt that ritual, protection should be given by the 1860 Act.

I want only to point out that, in discussing these matters, the hon. Gentleman has fairly regularly not been as precise as he sometimes is, in that he has lapsed into saying that it is all right not only to hate a belief but to hate another person. I was trying to say that much as I dislike many things that Mrs. Thatcher did to this country, and much as I fundamentally disagree with the way in which she adopted her Christian belief, I never doubted her sincerity in that belief. Neither would I want to incite other people to hatred against her. I might want to incite people to vote against her, but that is a quite different matter.

I want to make a point about amendment No. 24 in a moment, but I also have a comment to make on the debate, especially as I made the point about the new orthodoxy, to use the words of the hon. Member for Beaconsfield. His speech was excellent and interesting, and something for us to get our teeth into. It raised some of the issues extremely well.

Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), I am not opposed to a new orthodoxy; I am not quite sure what a new heterodoxy would be. However, I want to define, to an extent, the new orthodoxy. It is at the margins that this is needed. We always have an orthodoxy as to a vast expanse of what is or is not acceptable. Law is crucial in setting some of the boundaries and determining orthodoxy. It is perfectly reasonable for us as law makers to adjust that new orthodoxy at the edges. That is what I am saying is acceptable, and that is what the Bill is doing. It is acceptable to have a new orthodoxy at the edges that says that there must be restraint in relation to not inciting—I almost said preaching, but let us not confuse the matter—hatred that can lead to violence. That is what the legislation is about, and that is what I meant by saying that a new orthodoxy at those edges is reasonable.

Should we not place a restraint on those religions that go around preaching that people should not wear condoms? If such religions were more restrained in their preachings, fewer people would be dying in Africa. Can we not apply the rule to religions as well? I am slightly confused by the hon. Gentleman’s argument.

That is a matter of argument. I would criticise such religions for that particular policy, but that is a proper argument, not a reason for creating   explicit law. Inciting hatred that leads to violence, however, is a good reason for acting. We do that all the time in relation to other matters, and it is reasonable in this case. Altering things at the edges does not alter the policy of the dissent, which is in the main body of the orthodoxy and which I strongly support.

I am interested by the hon. Gentleman’s analogy, and I accept that there is force in what he says. Let us take another analogy—paedophilia. We criminalise people who download pornography off the internet, but as we know from previous debates, it is possible to obtain paedophile cartoon material, which falls within the ambit of the Obscene Publications Acts 1959 and 1964 because it consists of drawings. In reality, that legislation is a dead letter. Although such material will be seized and destroyed if found, it is not something for which someone will be prosecuted for having in their possession. It is possible for a group of paedophiles to meet and share their fantasies about such material and exchange views about it. They would not be committing any paedophile offences, but they would like to do so if the law would allow them. Such activity would not be subject to criminal law unless it involved an incitement to commit a criminal offence.

We are not just talking about religion, and that is another example of conduct that some people might say would tend to demoralise society or lower its moral thresholds, but which we are reluctant to interfere with. That is so for some quite good reasons, although we might have to consider such conduct. I make that point because there are a number of examples of such activity, but I have not heard it suggested that we ought to do something about them.

Order.

I am hesitant to follow that argument, because I was ruled out of order when I used it in relation to free speech and the backlash, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). Far from there being all sorts of freedoms in relation to such matters, there are not, and quite rightly. Parliament has made tough new laws against paedophilia. In that sense, we have set a new orthodoxy or, to use the other phrase, norms of conformity. We have done that, and quite rightly so.

Is this not getting to the heart of the matter? For the hon. Gentleman and no doubt for many Labour Members, the Bill is about restricting free speech. He has made that abundantly clear. The Government have gone around banning people from doing things that they do not like, and they are now banning people from saying things that they do not like. That is an assault on free speech. He does not want to be specific about what a religion is, because he is quite happy for people to feel unable to speak their minds. He has made it abundantly clear that he is quite happy to restrict free speech in that way. No doubt that is the view of many Government Members and perhaps of the Government themselves.

No, that is certainly not the case. My next point is that the Minister and I agree that dissent is essential in the main orthodoxy in this country. That is best preserved by democracy, and by promoting and enhancing democracy. Democracy therefore needs to be strengthened, not weakened, and that includes allowing for dissent. The Bill is not an assault on free speech. We set laws all the time that limit bad behaviour, and that has a psychological effect. If the psychological effect of this law is that it creates a form of self-censorship against hatred that creates violence, that makes it a good law.

In this country, law supersedes religion; if religion incites violence, it can be punished under the law. In my view, that is right. On the point that was made about Pastor Glass, I agree that ridicule is preferable and should be used as the main weapon against incitement and sectarian sentiments. It will still be used, even with the Bill on the statute book. However, if there were sectarian riots and Catholics and Protestants in Glasgow were being hurt or killed on the street and Pastor Glass came to a meeting and said, “You would be perfectly justified to go out and get ‘em,” then it should be possible for him to be held to account under the law.

Order. This is a very interesting speech, but it is going beyond the terms of the amendment.

I apologise, Mr. O’Hara. I did say that I would come directly to amendment No. 24, which seeks to set out in the Bill a list of religions. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury wittily but effectively pointed out that the missing one was “materialism”. That was a good point, and worth making.

I do not think, however, that it will work to list religions explicitly. If we did so, we would then hear from the leaders of each religion—some of them self-appointed—saying that different sects are not a part of their religion. The courts, as they consult the Charity Commission and others, will go to those leaders and that will lead to all sorts of complications. It is much better to have the flexibility in the system envisaged by the Government, under which the courts will consider the matter and decide on the definitions.

This has been a very interesting debate. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield said at the start of his contribution that he wanted to stimulate a discussion, and he can certainly be congratulated on having succeeded.

The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) urged me to listen to the hon. Member for Beaconsfield. I always do that; he always makes an interesting contribution, and today’s was one of his best.

It was still wrong.

I will come to that.

It was certainly interesting that the hon. Member for Beaconsfield led us to consider the definition of religious belief, which I shall deal with shortly. One issue on which he did not comment—I half expected him to do so; I shall certainly comment on it—was the extent to which the language of the Bill is consistent with that in other legislation. That is an interesting area, and I shall touch on it in a moment. At the start, he raised the question of whether the offence should apply to individuals. Amendment No. 3 makes that proposition in what is a clearly well-intentioned probing.

I shall not comment on the case of a naval officer in an isolated position, but I want to emphasise that individuals are already protected by law, under the harassment provisions in sections 4, 4A and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. In the Bill, we seek to extend the protection for groups of people. The current legislation covers the incitement to hatred on grounds of race for groups of people, and by changing the law as we propose, we want to protect groups of people from incitement to hatred based on their religious belief. Groups can be of varying sizes—a family, a neighbourhood or larger—but I assure the Committee that protection of the individual already exists in the Public Order Act 1986.

The hon. Member for Beaconsfield led us into a major discourse about what was meant by religious belief and, in particular, by a lack of religious belief. As far as the offence is concerned, lack of religious belief will need to be a belief similar in nature to a religious belief. What do I mean by that? A clear definition of religious belief has been provided by the courts; it has to have

“a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance”,

and it must be worthy of respect in a democratic society and not incompatible with human dignity. That definition was given in the Campbell and Cosans casein 1982, and the same must apply to a lack of religious belief.

The hon. Gentleman asked whether homosexuality might be a religious belief or lack of religious belief. The answer is clearly no, because homosexuals belong to all religious traditions, whether or not their particular tradition cares to recognise that. The same test applies in law to lack of religious belief as applies to religious belief.

The hon. Gentleman also asked whether lack of religious belief includes just secularists or people who do not share all the beliefs of the perpetrator. That was an interesting question, and the answer is that it would apply to both. The definition would cover secularists and Christians who do not share all the beliefs of other Christians.

That explanation is very helpful, but it must mean that a Christian group that took the view that homosexuality was acceptable in the canons of Christianity—a view that is vigorously disputed by   some others—would be covered under lack of belief or religious belief if such groups were exchanging anathemas on each other.

The question whether homosexuality is a tenet of faith in a religion is an interesting discussion, if not for now, then for some time in the future. Some may hold that view, although I do not.

At the risk of exciting the hon. Member for Broxbourne, let me give an example. If Catholics were inciting hatred of Protestants on the grounds of a lack of belief in transubstantiation, that would be an example of people who broadly share a faith with another group inciting hatred because of a difference between them. That example might have applied in practice a considerable time ago, but none the less it is an example of how one group could seek to incite hatred of another group in the same broad religion.

I would have thought that that more frequently works the other way around. The 39 articles effectively pour ridicule on the Catholic Church for believing in transubstantiation, as does the Westminster confession of 1646. The point is that one can have a difference of view and hate a belief, but that does not mean that one is inciting someone to religious hatred.

My hon. Friend again makes a powerful point, which I will come to shortly. Before I do so, I want to make a point about context. Much as I set my remarks about Catholics and transubstantiation in the context of a period some time ago, so the hon. Member for Beaconsfield needs to be encouraged to put some of his quotations from the Koran and the Old Testament into context. He will remember that in my Second Reading speech I quoted from Jeremiah. I do not deny that there is some pretty fiery stuff in the Old Testament. I do not see religion as a cuddly business; it is a very sharp-edged business, both personally and more generally. However, all the quotes must be put in context, not just repeated, because the context is crucial to whether a person has attempted to incite hatred in someone because of a religious belief.

That brings me to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda. He reminded the Committee of something that we need to keep reminding ourselves of in our discussions: the Bill is about protecting the believer, not the belief. Even careful contributions frequently confuse belief and believer. We may disagree, but it is important that the message goes out strongly from the House that the Bill is about protecting the believer; it is not an enhancement or furtherance of a blasphemy law.

The hon. Member for Beaconsfield quoted from an e-mail that he had received, which was clearly couched in very strong terms, although I think that he said that at times it was also thoughtful and reflective. Even if a Muslim person reading it felt insulted by it, that would not be caught by the offence. The offence is someone   inciting hatred of a group of people because of their religious belief. Someone can feel deeply insulted, but the action will not be caught by the offence.

I will try to ensure that the e-mail is photocopied and circulated so that members of the Committee can see it. Reading it, I was not incited to hatred, but I hope that I would not have been incited to hatred in any event. I have to accept, however, that as a piece of criticism of the Koran and a historical analysis, it is a document that in the hands of many would easily incite them to hatred of Muslims. That is the problem, although it may not have been the intention of the person who wrote the e-mail. That is why the Bill worries me so much. Quite apart from my philosophical anxieties, I am worried by the double whammy whereby someone can be guilty if they intend to incite hatred and also because the material is likely to be seen by someone who is likely to be incited to hatred.

I was very careful in what I said. I said that the fact that a Muslim reading the document felt insulted would not in itself be covered by this offence. The hon. Gentleman invites me to do something that I will not do, because if I did so, you would rule me out of order, Mr. O’Hara—move on to discussions about intention and the likely limb. We shall move on to those in due course.

That is something that we will come to, but how is it decided whether something is insulting? My understanding is that the jury is asked, “Do you consider, members of the jury, that what is being said could be construed as insulting?” Usually, people put themselves in the position of the person on whom the insults are being heaped. They should do so, and they will say, “Yes, of course it’s insulting to say those things about someone.” That leaves aside the question whether the comments are true or false or whatever, and it must be the starting point. So I think that I am right in saying that it is the Muslim reading the material who would be insulted or the right-thinking person reading it who might be insulted, even if the incitement is in fact directed against others.

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?

In one-to-one contact in life, one should still treat people whom one intensely dislikes with courtesy. That is the point. We are going back to the issue of what hatred is. As it is defined in law, we would, as I understand it, be fully entitled to say, “You must serve somebody in your shop whom you intensely dislike.” Indeed, that is clearly what the race relations legislation says, and rightly so. We cannot be privy to the secrets of men’s hearts, but it is possible for people intensely to dislike those of other races and yet to live in conformity with the law, for which we should be heartily glad.

It would seem a trifle inconsistent if the law made it an offence for the hon. Gentleman not to serve that individual in his shop, but then allowed him to go out and start inciting hatred towards that person and others because of their religious beliefs. Much as I admire the hon. Gentleman’s decency and support him in his approach, I urge him to extend it into the area that we are discussing.

On Satanism, I know that the Minister does not want to comment on the individual case that has been mentioned. However, the case that we have discussed was big news in Plymouth because it involved part of a submarine base port. When I was asked for a comment, I said that I would not like to go down in a submarine with a Satanist. The remark was widely applauded in the locality. [Interruption.] That is the case because Satanists pray for the destruction of our country. However, I had a letter from a lady who said that she was a Satanist and that my remarks were outrageous. She wondered how I dared to stir up public hatred against Satanists and Satanism. If the Bill had been in force then, would I have fallen foul of it?

The hon. Gentleman may have noticed that I do not seek to take the role of the jury in deciding what is and what is not captured by the Bill, but I would be very surprised if his statement was so captured.

It cannot be guaranteed.

In the end, it will be for the police to investigate incidents, for the Crown Prosecution Service to see whether it is in the public interest to proceed and whether the evidence is there, and for the Attorney-General to satisfy himself that a prosecution is in order. It is not for a Home Office Minister to decide whether the law has been broken. My job is to put the law in place, not to determine whether an   individual has transgressed. I am sorry if hon. Members do not find that explanation satisfactory, but that is the position of Ministers vis-à-vis the courts.

It would be staggering if the expression used by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter)—“I would not want to go down in a submarine with a Satanist”—were viewed as incitement to hatred. I would not like to go down in a submarine with a member of the Labour party, because I would find it very boring. Does the Minister really think that my hon. Friend’s statement would be incitement to hatred? Of course not. It is staggering that he cannot tell my hon. Friend, “Don’t be so ridiculous. Of course that wouldn’t be covered.” If he said that, he would greatly reassure us all. The fact that he cannot do so, even for something as innocuous as my hon. Friend’s statement, naturally gives Opposition Members cause for concern.

The hon. Gentleman, his colleagues and the Committee need be under no illusion. I was asked for my view of that story, and it would be complete nonsense to say that the hon. Member for South-West Devon was stirring up hatred towards people—that is self-evidently nonsense. What I was putting clearly on the record, lest anybody be mistaken about it, was the fact that it is not for Ministers to decide whether somebody has broken the law. That is the job of those involved in law enforcement, such as the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. I will always preface any remarks about particular incidents with that caveat, because it is important.

We have discussed new orthodox-ism and other matters; my point is that the Bill is not a protection-from-hatred measure for all shapes and sizes, but a narrow piece of legislation to get rid of the inequity in the law, which protects Jews and Sikhs but not other religious groups. This narrow Bill goes no wider than that, and it is important for hon. Members to keep reminding themselves of that. The police have said that they believe there is a gap in the legislation, and we want to fill that small gap. The Bill is not writ large across all groups; it is about ensuring that all religious groups share the same protection under the law.

The hon. Member for Beaconsfield did not spend much time discussing amendments Nos. 6 and 7, which would substitute “religion or” belief for the word “religious” in the Bill as drafted.

Will the Minister give way?

Prior to my making any point at all?

I wanted to help the Minister. As I hope I explained, I did not dwell on the proposals because they were merely teasing out measures to encourage a debate on the difference between religious and any other belief.

I simply made the point to prove that I think seriously before coming to Committee and during debates about the issues raised in the amendments. I am satisfied that the Bill as drafted is   consistent with other criminal law—with the Criminal Justice Acts and the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. However, the wording that the hon. Gentleman wants to substitute is the wording that is used elsewhere in civil law, not least in the Equalities Bill which we shall debate in due course. My commitment to the Committee is nothing more than the following: to ensure that we are as consistent as we possibly can be. There may be good reasons why the wording needs to be different in civil law from criminal law and we will consider that carefully. Who knows, something may change and something may not change, but at least the hon. Gentleman will know that we have looked at it.

Amendments Nos. 24 and 25 would provide for the Bill to include a list to define which religious groups are covered by the legislation and which are excluded from its protection. I repeat, Parliament has never decided which groups are religious and which are not; that is a matter for the courts. It is not something that we have suddenly started to argue for; we made that clear when we introduced aggravated offences and it will also be clear in the Equalities Bill.

It appears that there are groups missing from the list, notwithstanding the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland that there should be a mechanism for adding to the list from time to time. Taoism and Shinto are not mentioned and there may be others. One can immediately see the difficulty of having a defined list: that list may change, especially over time, which is why we are happy to leave it to the courts to decide who should be in and who should be out.

European case law has given us a tight definition of the characteristics of a religious group: cogency, seriousness, cohesion, worthy of respect in a democratic society and not incompatible with human dignity. That is a good description of what we would look for in a religious group, but we leave it to the courts to decide.

In the long list of groups that should be excluded, some relate to heinous and illegal practices. Lest anyone be in any doubt, human sacrifice is a criminal offence of the highest magnitude and should be dealt with appropriately by the law.

I am grateful to the Minister and to the Committee, because the debate has been extremely interesting.

Yes, of course, human sacrifice is against the law, but believing in human sacrifice is not. We have to decide whether it is permissible to hate people who, if the law allowed it, would conduct human sacrifice. That was the illustration I was trying to give.

I should like to deal with one or two points. The first, which struck me very forcefully, was that the Minister said that an individual does not need protection because the protection is already afforded by the Public Order Act in respect of harassment. Section 4A of that Act states:

“A person is guilty of an offence if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress, he uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.”

That is not quite the same thing. If that were the mischief we could rely on that section to cover the problem that we are now trying to deal with under the Bill. If it applies to an individual, it can apply to a group. I found the Minister’s response rather revealing. It almost suggested that the Bill is not necessary. I will go away and mull that over. The Minister might like to mull it over too.

There is a clear distinction. Under section 4A of the Public Order Act it is possible to define and identify a specific victim. That is a crucial difference. The offence that we are introducing in the Bill may not have a specific victim. The group may be known or it may be unknown. That is the point. We have to have an offence that is capable of covering people who may not be named: people in vast numbers, people in small numbers. The provisions of section 4A concern individuals who are named and identified as victims.

I understand the Minister’s argument, but the point about section 4A, which is why I have no dispute with it, is that the end result of the activity that is being criminalised is causing another person harassment, alarm or distress. The Bill criminalises incitement to hatred even though there may be no evidence that the end result was causing an individual or a group “harassment, alarm or distress”. If that were the case, I should have expected the Minister to have included that phrase in the Bill. One would have to show not only that someone had incited religious hatred or done something that was likely to cause people to be incited to religious hatred, but that there were victims of that process—individuals who had been caused harassment, alarm or distress.

If that is what the Government want to do, it might put a very different complexion on the legislation. At the moment that is not what the Bill says. The Bill makes it clear that the end result is not a matter for the court. The court is concerned with deciding whether the material was intended to incite hatred. Hatred, and I am still worried about this confusion of terms, does not include causing people harassment, alarm or distress. I may be hated by a number of individuals but, mercifully, at present nobody is causing me harassment, alarm or distress. That is an extra stage down the road, which is excluded from the Bill. The Minister may want to think about that.

Another matter that came up was insult. I may have misunderstood and so this is another area where the Minister may wish to correct me or write to me. It seems to me that the definition of what is insulting will be the same whether or not the insult is delivered to the person who is being insulted, as under the Public Order Act today. It can be insulting even though that person does not hear it, if it is likely or intended to stir up religious hatred. If I am wrong about that, and the   Government think that there are two different sorts of test for what is insulting, it would be useful for the Committee to know about it.

I used the example of the case of Hammond, precisely because when poor old Mr. Hammond stood up on his street corner saying, “Stop immorality, stop homosexuality, stop lesbianism, Jesus Christ is Lord”—I think that I have got it right—it was held that he had said something that was likely to insult people in the street. If it is the case that such a statement could be construed to be insulting in that context, it must also be capable of being construed to be insulting in the context of stirring up other people to dislike the people who are being insulted. We need to clear up that matter, and I am grateful to the Minister for allowing us to tease that out.

I may be wrong, but my understanding is that the definition of what is insulting—the question to a jury, for instance—would be identical in both cases. That is why I made the point that the material in the e-mail that I had, which I outlined to the Committee, was in my view deeply insulting, or likely to be deeply insulting, to a person of the Muslim faith. That surely must be the test: such material may not be insulting to me—it is certainly not. One does not normally insult the audience that one wants to stir up to hate other people, although I suppose that it is possible. The people who are being insulted are the people whom one intends to have hated, just as one might threaten or abuse them.

I am grateful to the Committee for listening to those two remarks; there is much food for thought in that area. I shall not press the amendment to a vote. If the matter needs to be returned to, we shall do so on Report. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

I beg to move amendment No. 10, in schedule, page 2, line 16, at end insert—

‘(1A)For subsection (1) substitute—

“(1)A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting in the case of racial hatred; or uses threatening or abusive words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening or abusive in the case of religious hatred, is guilty of an offence if—

(a)he intends thereby to stir up racial or religious hatred, or

(b)having regard to all the circumstances racial or religious hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.”.’.

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 11, in schedule, page 2, line 16, at end insert—

‘(1A)For subsection (1) substitute—

“(1)A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting in the case of racial hatred, or uses threatening words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening or abusive in the case of religious hatred, is guilty of an offence if—

(a)he intends thereby to stir up racial or religious hatred, or

(b)having regard to all the circumstances racial or religious hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.”.’.

I can be brief on this matter as we have already covered some of the ground. These are both probing amendments. Amendment No. 11, although it tweaks the matter in a slightly different way, is valueless, so I shall confine my remarks to amendment No. 10. The purpose of the amendment is to suggest that we should have different tests for racial and religious hatred. In the case of racial hatred it is established that threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour likely to incite racial hatred must have occurred. Or, at the moment the law is in all the circumstances incitement was likely to have taken place.

The suggestion in the amendment is that the word “insulting” should be taken out of the equation. I suggest that to the Minister because I think that most people would say that the word “threatening” must imply in it that someone is saying something that suggests a physical threat to people, albeit that it might be physical in the sense of “we will turf you out of the country” or “we will smash your windows”, although the latter threat would be caught by the existing criminal law.

I think that the term “abusive” is clear. People, even if there is an argument, and even when they hate other people, should not abuse them. In court, I have prosecuted horrible people in my time, but even there I am not allowed to abuse them in the witness box or use abusive language to them. It is possible to do the job, if I may put it that way, without being abusive in the process. Judges are not encouraged to be abusive to people that they are sending to prison for life for revolting offences; in the past that may have happened, but it is certainly not the practice today. It is the word “insulting” that worries me so much. As I said earlier to the Minister—although I do not want to labour the point—“insulting” seems to me to be asking people to decide whether they would be insulted by particular words, and it is possible to be insulted by all sorts of things.

On a number of occasions I have been insulted in the Chamber of the House of Commons by things said by hon. Members in the course of debate, because I thought that a remark was in bad taste or disgraceful. I remember one remark well—I know the MP who made it—which was insulting about my late father, made some two weeks after he died, although I do not think that the MP actually knew that that had happened. I remember being surprised and being approached by another Member of that person’s party, who said that it was a disgraceful comment. It was undoubtedly insulting, but I hesitate to agree that the word insulting should be in the legislation.

Although we may disagree on the generality of the legislation, I suggest to the Minister that we should consider this matter. Insulting comments about a person’s race are inherently nonsense because, as we have discussed, race is immutable and on its own signifies nothing, whereas insults about people’s religions may well have a great deal of force,   particularly if they are barbed and have an element of truth, as insults can have. I ask the Committee: should insult be an ingredient of this offence?

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.

I listened carefully to the Minister and must say that I did not pursue amendment No. 11 regarding “abusive and insulting”. I wanted to offer a range of options so that we could consider each, but for the reasons that I gave, I was more focused on insult than abuse and threat, because it is possible to put together a coherent argument in which one can express one’s point of view without ever being abusive or threatening—certainly threatening, which comes close to a breach of the criminal law quite outside of the Public Order Act 1986—but insulting is a different matter.

I have handed my famous e-mail to Hansard, but when I get it back I shall circulate it as quickly as I can. It should certainly be available for tomorrow morning. I should think that its content and terms would be insulting to someone of the Muslim faith, because it produces a dissection of that faith and, probably, a distortion of what Muslims believe, and puts a gloss and the writer’s interpretation on those beliefs. Someone might say, “This is outrageous; I feel really offended that this is being said about me.” Is that the test of what is insulting? I think that it is, but the Minister may be able to help me later in our proceedings or on Report, or by writing to me, with what insulting means and the test for determining it, and whether it is the same in other sections of the Public Order Act as in this clause. Assuming that it is the same, I think that people can be insulted because anybody can say, “That is insulting,” if one goes to the nub of their beliefs and trashes them in an unreasonable way.

I am always happy to write to the hon. Gentleman and I shall do so, although I cannot promise that he will receive my correspondence before our next sitting.

What is emerging from our interesting debate is that the courts will judge whether a particular word is insulting. They have been able to make such judgments in race hatred cases for almost 20 years, and will continue to be able to do so, but it is perhaps too loose a belief that the same test will apply to an individual who interprets a particular comment about themselves. That individual will have their own subjective understanding of what a word or term means and its impact on them, but a more objective test in law is perhaps that of the jury in court. So the hon. Gentleman would not necessarily expect the same answer from an individual asking that question of themselves about something that they had seen, as he would from a jury considering something that someone had done that was alleged to be an offence.

I understand the Minister’s point, but I simply cite the example of “The Satanic Verses” in response. I have no difficulty in seeing objectively that the “The Satanic Verses” is a very insulting book to a believer in the Koran. We cannot get away from that. It might not have been intended to incite religious hatred, but it is an insulting work, just as any work that is blasphemous is insulting to people of that religion.

That raises interesting and difficult questions about the jury’s objective standards, which might be dictated by their being or not being believers, by their belief that all religion is rubbish, or by a whole host of other things. I must ask whether insult on its own should ground this offence against religion, although I do see the logic of it in the case of race. Sikhs and Jews are protected on the basis of their race, not their religious belief. I shall, however, mull over this matter and return to it later, if necessary. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

I beg to move amendment No. 46, in schedule, page 2, line 17, leave out ‘subsections (1)(a) and (5)’ and insert ‘subsection (1)(a)’.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 47, in schedule, page 2, line 23, at end insert—

‘(3A)After subsection (5) insert—

“(5A)A person who is not shown to have intended to stir up religious hatred is not guilty of an offence under this section if he was not aware that his words or behaviour, or the written material, might incite religious hatred.”.’.

No. 78, in schedule, page 2, line 23, at end insert—

‘(4)For subsection (5) substitute—

“(5)A person who is not shown to have intended to stir up racial or religious hatred is not guilty of an offence under this section if he did not intend his words or behaviour, or the written material, to be, or was not aware that it might be, threatening, abusive or insulting.”.’.

No. 79, in schedule, page 2, line 31, at end insert—

‘(4)For subsection (2) substitute—

“(2)In proceedings for an offence under this section it is a defence for an accused who is not shown to have intended to stir up racial or religious hatred to prove that he was not aware of the content of the material or did not suspect, and had no reason to suspect, that it was threatening, abusive or insulting.”.’.

No. 80, in schedule, page 3, line 13, at end insert—

‘(4)For subsection (3) substitute—

“(3)In proceedings for an offence under this section it is a defence for an accused who is not shown to have intended to stir up racial or religious hatred to prove that he was not aware of the content of the recording or did not suspect, and had no reason to suspect, that it was threatening, abusive or insulting.”.’.

No. 81, in schedule, page 3, line 21, at end insert—

‘(4)For subsection (6) substitute—

“(6)A person who is not shown to have intended to stir up racial or religious hatred is not guilty of an offence under this section if he did not know, or had no reason to suspect, that the offending material was threatening, abusive or insulting.”.’.

No. 82, in schedule, page 3, line 31, at end insert—

‘(4)For subsection (3) substitute—

“(3)In proceedings for an offence under this section it is a defence for an accused who is not shown to have intended to stir up racial or religious hatred to prove that he was not aware of the written material or recording or did not suspect, and had no reason to suspect, that it was threatening, abusive or insulting.”.’.

We want to delete the reference to subsection (5). Amendment No. 46 applies only to the subsection on religious hatred, not to the subsection on racial hatred, which retains the original wording.

We aim, without deleting the word “insult”, to say that one can be aware that certain words are abusive, but that that is not the problem. One is usually aware that certain words are abusive, but one might not be aware that they would incite people to religious hatred, even though they are abusive and potentially insulting. That is the essence of the amendment. I shall not labour the point. The Committee will be able to tell that I do not have a legal background, because I am briefer.

The Minister will see that as well as amendment No. 46, which follows on logically from part of our debate about whether the test should be the same for race hatred and religious hatred, there are a couple of amendments that I tabled, which, although differently worded, are aimed at securing the same debate.

In the time available, I would be grateful if the Minister responded to my amendments as well as to those tabled by the hon. Lady.

I shall also try to keep my remarks as brief as possible, although the amendments are starting to take us into likely limb territory. I shall say more about that when we get more substantially into it.

Amendments Nos. 46 and 47 would undermine the application of the likely limb, so we are unlikely to accept them, because the likely limb is an important part of the provisions.

Amendments Nos. 72 to 82 would require a higher level of proof than is necessary and certainly than is currently required.

I make the same point that has been made in earlier debates this afternoon that we cannot afford to have a two-tier system, under which we apply different tests to racial hatred and religious hatred. The implication of the amendments, taken variously and together, is that we have such a system. They would render unworkable the likely limb, which has worked well for 20 years. We want to make changes to it—we are doing so in this Bill—but they will be to improve its operation. I am sure that the Committee will take the opportunity to discuss that in more detail when we consider these matters further.

The point is that there should be different tests for racial hatred and religious hatred. The argument that is ping-ponging between us is that we on these Benches do not see religion in quite the same context.

Perhaps I could I press the hon. Lady a little about how the measure would operate in the courts if the test for Jews and Sikhs were different from that for Muslims and Christians. It would not work—or can the hon. Lady convince me otherwise?—to apply different tests to different religious groups. That is why we want, within a narrowly focused Bill, to align all religious groups, so that each has the same protection as the others.

My understanding—this may or may not be correct—is that Jews and Sikhs are different, in that the law protects them on the grounds of race. If there were a religious accusation, that would be a different matter under the law.

I agree that Jews and Sikhs are currently protected under the racial hatred legislation, but it is an anomaly that they are and that Muslims and Christians are not. What we seek to do in this legislation—

My understanding from Lord Lester is that they are protected due to race, not to religion.

I am sure that we will have a deeper discussion when we come to the likely limb issue. At this point, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Further consideration adjourned.—[Mr. Alan Campbell.]

Adjourned accordingly at eighteen minutes to Seven o’clock till Thursday 30 June at Nine o’clock.