Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

I should say that unless the Minister was minded to accept our amendments and new schedule, it would be my intention to seek to test the view of the House by way of a Division at the conclusion of our proceedings on this group. In this short debate, we have already had significant references to the work of Voltaire and John Stuart Mill. I should place on record that at different stages of my academic career, such as it was, I have been a student of moral philosophy and of jurisprudence. I should add that sufficient time has passed for me to be candid and to state that I slept through most of my lectures on both subjects, but I did learn one thing from them, which was not to get involved in arguments that one was not qualified to argue. With all due respect to the hon. Members for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) and for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), I hope the House will forgive me if I take a more practical rather than philosophical approach to the amendments. Implicit in what the Minister said in relation to the earlier group of amendments was that although we have had Second Reading and Committee and are now on Report, we have never got over the real issue that lies at the heart of the Bill and the difficulty it causes me and others. That issue is the fundamental distinction between the nature of religion and the nature of race and the very different views that should be taken to hatred that is stirred up on the basis of one’s race and one’s religion. That stems from the immutability of one’s racial characteristics, which is quite different from the changeable nature of one’s religious views.