Racial and Religious Hatred Bill
From Democracywiki
Central Lobby
December 2005
The Racial and Religious Hatred Bill is currently in its Committee Stage in the House of Lords. The Bill extends existing laws against incitement to racial and religious hatred to protect people of all faiths. Religious minorities such as Jews and Sikhs who are considered as racial groups are already protected under existing legislation. The proposed law deals with offences involving stirring up hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds and amends Part 3 of the Public Order Act 1986 (c.4).
The House of Lords voted by 260 to 111 to introduce safeguards that were proposed on October 20 2005 by a cross-party group of Peers. The proposals are:
- For someone to be found guilty of new religious hate crimes, an intention to stir up hatred must be proved
- The bill should ban threatening words only and not abusive or insulting ones
- The bill should state that the law should not restrict discussion, criticism of expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or beliefs
The Government has previously said it would use the Parliament Act to force the legislation through if necessary, but peers have emphasised that they are only seeking to amend it.
In Prime Ministers Question Time on October 12 2005, John Baron MP (Conservative, Billericay) asked the Prime Minister to define the term religion and to provide one example of an act that would be caught by the new legislation that would not be caught by existing legislation. The Prime Minister stated in his response that the problem with existing legislation was that incitement to hatred against a religious grouping that did not constitute one ethnic grouping, for example Muslims, was not a crime.
Concerns that have been raised that the Bill impinges upon freedom of speech and civil liberties, that there may be prosecutions for mocking or criticising a religion, that it may worsen community relations between different faith groups and that religious groups may not be able to preach freely. Criticism has come from different quarters including comedians and Christians such as the Chief Executive of the African and Carribean Evangelical Alliance, the Reverend Katei Kirby, Lord Carey, members of the Lawyers Christian Fellowship, the Church of England and the Catholic Church.
The Protestant evangelical pressure group Christian Voice, which previously campaigned against the BBC broadcasting Jerry Springer The Opera, opposed the legislation and said it would use it to try to prosecute bookshops selling the Qur'an if it were passed, its Director referring to the Islamic holy book as hate speech. The group was among other evangelical organisations that protested in a 1,000-strong demonstration outside parliament during the Second Reading of the Bill by the House of Lords.
