Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

I have to say that I do not think that that is controversial at all. Men and women are equal. They should be equal under the law and, for that matter, in religion. We look forward to women being ordained as bishops and the Church agreeing to that. This, I know, strays some considerable way, Mr. Deputy Speaker, from the purpose of the Bill and the amendments before us. I start from the fundamental belief that freedom of speech and freedom of religion are absolutely intrinsic to the democracy in which we all want to live. I want to live in a society in which nobody feels cowed or timid in the expression of their freedom of speech or their freedom of religion. One of the points of debate here is that many of us on the Labour Benches perceive that not everybody in this country equally enjoys the right to express their religious belief, and to join in that belief by association with others. That is the problem that we are essentially trying to address. We believe that there is an injustice in the law as drafted, which allows protection, as many Members have mentioned, by race and, therefore sort of, by proxy, allows for those whose race and religion so overlap that the overlap is almost complete. Therefore, Hindus and Jews are allowed protection under the law—