Religious hatred bill

The price is not right

No true liberal, however rational or sure of themselves they are, should argue that it is always right to assault religious beliefs in every way. Down that path lies a doctrinaire Soviet-style intolerance towards something which is inseparable from the way that billions of human beings see the world. But no true liberal can deny either that there must always be a right to make such an attack. It is this sometimes difficult bedrock principle of a tolerant and free society that MPs will again debate today, when the government's Racial and Religious Hatred Bill returns to the House of Commons after being significantly amended in the Lords. Those Lords amendments should be defended and MPs must not allow themselves to be tricked into reversing them today.

The government's original bill - its third attempt to outlaw religious hatred since 2001 - was far too sweeping. Like its failed predecessors, it mixed up too many things. It conflated threatening behaviour and material, from which religious people deserve protection, with insult and abuse of religious belief, which is a necessary part of an open society. It mixed up race, which can never be a rational basis for insult or abuse, with religion, which sometimes can. And above all it failed to distinguish properly between the believer, who should not suffer for what he or she is, and the belief, which others must be entitled to attack, question and ridicule, even to the extent of causing offence to believers. Last October, the House of Lords overwhelmingly endorsed, by a majority of 149, a set of amendments moved by the former Conservative cabinet minister, Lord Hunt of Wirral, which disentangled all of these issues and placed the vital principle of freedom of expression at the very heart of the bill, something ministers had notably failed to do.

The government will try to overturn these defeats today. To do so, ministers have been forced to make compromises, including an acknowledgement that freedom of expression of writers and performers should be better protected. This has divided their erstwhile opponents, some of whom now welcome the compromises as a victory for free speech, while others think it is no such thing. The government's movement, as far as it goes, is welcome. But throughout this saga the government has been motivated more by fear of losing Muslim votes than by concern about essential liberties. There is a compromise to be struck, but MPs must not sell our right to criticise religions for too low a price just so that Labour can try to rebuild its credibility with Muslim voters.

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