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Lord Triesman: My Lords, I recall that in a recent sequence of Questions in your Lordships' House my noble friend Lady Symons made the point that more political will is needed. Were it in our gift, we would do so. But the critical point made by the Economic Commission on Africa is that African nations should take greater responsibility for determining the outcome of matters in their own continent, with all the forms of assistance that the commission report quite rightly refers to.

We will continue to press on the issue of Zimbabwe. That is without question. But it is plain that we have a new platform for trying to achieve a consensus for action, which is based on a systematic and sustained view of aid over a long period with fewer ad hoc arrangements, as I said in the Statement. We believe that we are seeing signs of change. It is not a wholly pessimistic view although, in some areas, it is still a very difficult one.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, what happened to the proposal—which I think was advanced by Mr Gordon Brown when he was on his tour of Africa—that the debts that are to be forgiven should be paid into a virtual fund and only used to make the increases in health and education that are necessary to help African countries attain their Millennium Development Goals? Secondly, will the UK play any role in the increased investment needed to develop treatments and vaccines for AIDS, TB, malaria and parasitic diseases, which the report talks about eliminating?

Lord Triesman: My Lords, the proposals made by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer during his tour of Africa will be among the centrepieces of the EU presidency and the G8 discussions. Right at the heart of them is the concept of a new fund that would be leveraged so as to assist in the forgiving of debt—if I may use that expression—on the understanding that moneys raised would be invested in health and education and would certainly assist in making sure that they are both free, rather than charged to those who use them.

On the second question, I am glad to say that the United Kingdom is at the forefront and a great deal of research work is going on here. There is a big research
 
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budget: £16 million for the development of microbicides, in which the Medical Research Council and the London medical schools are involved; £18 million for the international AIDS vaccine initiative; and £35 million for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization initiative, on which Liverpool and London universities are working. For AIDS, a great deal of experimental research work is being done at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Work is being done by Jonathan Webber at Imperial College, and development work on HIV/AIDS is being done at St George's Hospital. Vaccine development work is being done at Oxford University. Malaria work is being done at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and vital work on TB is also being done there and in Liverpool. I mention this work because it is first class, alpha-rated, United Kingdom science. If we can drive it forward, it will give a huge amount of hope for cures for those diseases.

Lord Elton: My Lords, so that we can get the scale in focus, can the Minister tell us whether the correct figure is £25 billion, as stated in the resources paragraph in the executive summary on page 16, or £75 billion as in the exemplification of it on page 353? What proportion of that figure would be produced by 0.7 per cent of GDP as proposed? Does he recognise that if the corresponding benefits to us do not immediately flow from the output payment, the effect on our economy will be negative? Is a concordat therefore required between all political parties on what the quantum should be so that it does not get eroded in election after election?

Lord Triesman: My Lords, I can answer the first question; the second is in some ways much more difficult. We have pledged ourselves to the £25 billion in an immediate sense. We believe that the figure needs to be doubled; we need more than that to accomplish the whole programme. The point about the IFF proposal is that it would get us closer to the £50 billion by almost halving the time to get to our 0.7 per cent commitment. It would concentrate that period of time by leveraging money through the international bonds that would be issued.

So, those sets of figures are to do with the timetables. The difficulty in answering the question about the 0.7 per cent is that with another mechanism we can do it even faster by, as I said, halving the time. It is always possible that if we do not tie the aid that we give to, for example, contracts for the United Kingdom's own companies, some of them may lose out. However, I emphasise that the process of tying aid to contracts is discredited in the international arena. We have to ask what our ethical obligations are and make sure that we work on them. That is the first thing that we need to do.

I hope that in the EU and G8 discussions under our presidency we will persuade other countries—as I believe we will—that they should not tie aid to their own national advantage. If they do so, the processes
 
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will be slower; the millennium development goals will be more difficult to achieve—and goodness knows, we know that they are difficult to achieve in Africa on anything like a human timescale.

Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, will the Minister tell us which African countries are making satisfactory progress and what are the conditions under which they are doing so?

Lord Triesman: My Lords, satisfactory progress is being made in different respects. I am not sure how best to answer the question. In economic terms—rather than going through a list—a number of countries now have economic growth rates of above 7 per cent. A big batch of countries have growth rates in the 5 per cent to 6 per cent region. Some countries are doing far worse than that, and some, we believe, are going backwards.

We have seen movements away from wars and civil wars in Angola and other countries; I could mention a number of countries. We know that in countries such as Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo progress is still desperately needed. Progress on health and education is far more complex, but the data that the noble Lord seeks are in the commission report. Those cover different issues and different rates of progress.

Baroness Flather: My Lords, as we all know, the poorest of the poor in Africa—

Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness, but the time is up for Questions.

Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill

Second Reading debate resumed.

The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: My Lords, I want to concentrate on the offence of incitement to religious hatred, which is once again before us. I do so partly because I had the privilege of serving on the Select Committee on Religious Offences set up following the removal of the clause on religious hatred from the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Bill of 2001 and the subsequent production of the Religious Offences Bill by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury.

Although our committee agreed that,

we were unable to recommend how that gap could be filled. I suggest that disagreement arises because people have very different perceptions, for obvious reasons. Some believe that equal protection should be given to the cherished beliefs and practices of all religious groups—I shall return to that point later. The gap that the Bill addresses in Clause 119 and Schedule 10 is narrower, but the Bill is to be commended in its implications for the protection of religious as well as non-religious groups.
 
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The Bill proscribes actions which, by inciting hatred on grounds of religion, constitute a threat to the safety and wellbeing of those who find themselves the object of hatred. We are dealing here not with religious argument, which causes controversy or offence—and perhaps requires what is sometimes called a theological sense of humour, with which some of us are better endowed than others—but with words, behaviour and material that generate acute feelings of fear, insecurity and humiliation and which damage the fabric of society. That threshold is not always easy to define.

There is a sense of injustice at the legal anomaly that while Jews and Sikhs are afforded protection from incitement to hatred by their status as racial groups for the purposes of race relations legislation, members of other religions are not. It is important for the justice and cohesion of our society that protection against incitement to hatred should extend not only to adherents of religions but to people of all beliefs. That is offered by the definition of religious hatred in Schedule 10.

Some believe that the measure is unnecessary because existing public order legislation, including provision for religious motives to be taken into account as aggravating factors in various offences, already prohibit religious hate crimes. I confess to some perplexity about the apparent ineffectiveness of this battery of laws. However, experience shows that many minority groups, particularly in our cities and especially, though not exclusively, in Muslim communities, suffer intimidation and feel vulnerable because of a persistent stream of vicious verbal attacks on their religion—a point made to me in conversation by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham, Vincent Nichols, reflecting the minds of his local faith leaders' forum.

According to the Association of Chief Police Officers, religious identity is often being used as a cover for attacks on racial grounds that would be illegal if mounted in those terms. I am aware that an amendment to the schedule devised by the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, attempts to meet that point by introducing the notion of religion as a pretext for racial hatred. On balance, although I am prepared to lock horns with his silver tongue—if that is not mixing metaphors—I am not sure that the amendment covers all the cases with which we should be concerned. Incitement to hatred on grounds of religion is always wrong, whether or not religion is functioning as a proxy for racial antagonism.

Some people, both inside and outside the Churches, believe that the provision will seriously inhibit freedom of speech and induce self-censorship on the subject of religion. That is an understandable concern which has received recent press comment. It is for the health of society, and for the health of religions themselves, that religious beliefs and practices should be subject to criticism, debate, humour and satire, even where that is deemed unfair or even offensive whether by the religious adherents in question or in a changing climate of public opinion—they are not always the same thing.
 
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I am encouraged by the recent conclusion of the eighth report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights that the measures proposed in the Bill are unlikely to give rise to any violation of the right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention, partly because Article 17 denies the right to engage in acts destructive of the rights and freedoms of others.

The committee also noted that the definition of the offence in the Bill sets a higher threshold than the equivalent Danish legislation. I add that the threshold is also higher than that in the Racial and Religious Toleration Act of the state of Victoria, which has caused anxiety as a result of the conviction of Christian pastors for anti-Islamic statements. That law proscribes words or conduct with the effect of inciting not merely hatred but,

That threshold is dangerously low, and I am relieved that the proposal as drafted takes us well beyond that, though it could do with being higher.

There is one further matter on which I must touch in conclusion. The existence of the laws on blasphemy, which apply only to Christianity, and in particular to the Church of England, is a product of history that has become an anomaly in today's society. The notion that the blasphemy laws should be extended to protect all faiths is incoherent, because blasphemy has meaning only within the context of a particular religion, or a society with a single religion, and it is inappropriate, because it is not beliefs and practices that should be protected from attack, but people. That is a distinction cogently argued by the British Humanist Association, which I am delighted to quote on this particular occasion.

Repealing the laws of blasphemy and blasphemous libel at the same time as we pass this measure, suitably amended—I made my position on this clear in a helpful conversation with the Home Secretary—would send a clear signal that incitement to religious hatred is not about shielding religion from criticism, vilification or mockery, but defending people from real harm done in the name of religion. That is why I regard this part of the Bill as meriting our attention and scrutiny, rather than being dismissed out of hand.


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