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Lord Baker of Dorking: My Lords, there are several things in this Bill that I support. I strongly support the creation of the Serious Organised Crime Agency where police, immigration and Customs officers and the National Crime Squad will come together. When we set out on this path a long time ago there were a lot of turf wars. It took a long time to get to that stage. The time was then not ripe, but it is ripe now. I congratulate the Government on that.

However, I do not congratulate the Government on their proposals for religious hatred. I agree entirely with the comments made by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern. It is not often that a former Home Secretary and a former Lord Chancellor agree if they come from the same party. Certainly, as regards the Labour Party, I do not think that Mr Blunkett and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, would find much to agree about. But I agree with my noble and learned friend, and I
 
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liked his article in the Times today which reminded me of the difference between Pharisees and Sadducees. It is a distinction that, sometimes, I miss on a Monday morning. I was glad to be reminded of it.

First, as regards the argument that racial hatred and religious hatred are different sides of the same coin—they are not. Incitement to racial hatred is rightly a crime because race depends on habits and customs, and, perhaps, colour, habits of dress and eating. If you are born into a race, you cannot abandon it and change it: you have it for life.

That is not the case with religion, which is a set of ideas that, in some cases, are reinforced by faith. Like any set of ideas, it can be challenged, criticised, vilified, satirised and mocked. It is capable of being changed—there is a choice. That is the important and vital distinction, which, I believe, is supported by the Select Committee, chaired by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville.

So why are the Government doing this? The noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, has teased out of the Home Office two extraordinary examples, which are so extraordinary that to have legislation to meet them is ridiculous. I am drawn unfortunately to the conclusion that the real reason why we are having this debate is because there will be an election in about eight weeks' time. Very clearly, the Bill will not make progress in this House. Therefore, the Labour Party in its manifesto will be able to say, "We intend to bring in a law to change the law on incitement to religious hatred".

That will go down very well in those constituencies where they are trying to regain the Muslim vote. The noble Baroness sighs and signals her disagreement, but she has never stood for elective office. Some of us have done that repeatedly and we know perfectly well the importance of an election address that appeals directly to an important group in one's constituency. I am quite sure that that is the main reason.

I have many objections to this legislation. As the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, said, the phraseology is extraordinary. The Bill states that an offence will be created,

As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth said, there is no definition of religious hatred. Religious hatred will be in the eye of the beholder. It is the beholder who will say, "I consider that to be an act of religious hatred".

To the Front Bench opposite, I say that any group of people who are passionate and devout about a religion, who have been brought up in the framework of that religion, who have been taught to respect the leaders of that religion, who worship the leaders of that religion and who accept every word from the holy books of that religion will believe that any attack on their faith is an attack on that group. Many members of such a group will define their personalities and shape their lives in relation to that religion. So I do not believe that a distinction can be drawn by an attack on a faith and an attack on a group of people who follow
 
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that faith. The courts will not be able to do that. Many Muslims, in particular, will see it that way and their hopes will be dashed. That is the sort of trouble you can get into when trying to criminalise a state of mind.

The other problem is that expectations will be raised. In all fairness to the Minister, she touched on that in her speech and recognised that it was a possibility. But those expectations will be dashed because the Director of Public Prosecutions, in evidence to a Select Committee in the other House, said that this Bill will keep the freedom to insult Islam. Many people who observe Islam in this country, particularly the fundamentalist Islamists, will not accept that.

The Minister referred to a leading member of the Muslim Council who said that he does not think that he has changed his view on that. But he is on the record as saying,

Whether he is resiled on that, I do not know, but I know that many Muslims feel that. Their expectations will not be met. This is a measure that will create tension, dissention and frustration, and will leave a belief that the Government who bring it in are deceiving the country.

This is a bad law in the same sense that the law against pornography was a bad law. Your Lordships might remember that the definition of the word "pornography" under the old legislation was that a matter was pornographic if it depraved and corrupted. No one could decide what that meant, because everyone had a different view of depravity and corruption. As the Home Secretary, I had to pick up the last remnants of that Bill, which proved totally and utterly unworkable because depravity and corruption are in the eye of the beholder. Religious hatred is also in the eye of the beholder. So the same confusion and dissatisfaction will arise.

The Bill will encourage extremists because they will believe that they now have what they want. Perhaps I may say something about the way in which Christianity has treated this issue over the centuries. I am a mild, middle-of-the road Anglican—not too enthusiastic, but there on the important days. Over the centuries, Christ has been described as a paedophile and a homosexual. In The Da Vinci Code, the very basic concept of Christianity—that Christ did rise from the dead—is denied. In fact, it suggests that he kept on living and married a harlot.

Last year, there was an exhibition at the Tate where there was a picture of the Crucifixion made out of discarded Marlboro Lights cigarettes. Perhaps I may remind noble Lords what Nietzsche said:

I shall not ask the Minister whether Nietzsche would be arraigned before the court, because she may say, "Of course, no. He is just attacking a faith. Of course, he would not be. No, no, no".
 
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But if the word "Islam", instead of the word "Christianity", was inserted today, would the Minister be quite so sure? I do not think so. I regret to say that this is an erosion of the free speech of our country. We should be free to say things that cause offence and that many people find distasteful. That has been the tradition over the past 300 years in our country. More than three centuries ago we stopped torturing and burning people for their heresies against the Christian faith. We have moved on. Voltaire came to live in this country in the 18th century to escape persecution for scepticism in France. We have a very long tradition. This law will create a straitjacket on the freedom of expression. It will make people very anxious about saying what they intend to say. Will they be arraigned before a court?

Censorship is on the march. I deplored what happened in Birmingham when certain Sikhs stopped a play being performed earlier this year. I thought that it was an absolute outrage. I was amazed that no Minister of the Crown stood up to condemn it—not one Minister did that. It was an outrage against free speech. Under this law, performance is specifically mentioned in Schedule 10. I am quite sure that some of the more resolute, determined or extreme Sikhs would certainly use this law to try to stop such a performance being put on again. My remedy for such Sikhs would be to make them sit through several performances of "Murder in the Cathedral" to realise—

Lord Avebury: My Lords, Sikhs are a racial group and if they had wanted to, they could have sought to invoke the incitement against racial hatred provisions, but they did not do that.

Lord Baker of Dorking: My Lords, it is very difficult to prove racial hatred when a Sikh playwright writes a play about a Sikh community and performs it in a Sikh community. I would have thought that rather astonishing.

I conclude by saying that western liberal society has to accommodate itself to Islam and it is doing that slowly over Europe and in our own country with scarves, turbans and all the other issues. But at the same time Islam has to accommodate itself to western liberal societies. The acceptance of criticism and of things which may sound very repugnant, is all part and parcel of living in our country.

I believe that over the past 300 years we have built up a general tolerance in our country. I remember Matthew Arnold's phrase,

That has been one of the things which have made us less extreme in this country. Many immigrants come to this country because they like our religious toleration, the way in which we treat women equally, our rule of law and our freedom of speech. Let us not lose the last.


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