Institute Update Issue 2 - May 2002

Religious incitement plans defeated

A major victory was won in December last year when the government abandoned its plans to criminalise ‘religious incitement’. The proposals which would have introduced state regulation of religious debate, were dropped by the Home Secretary following two resounding defeats in the House of Lords. The Bill proposed to criminalise ‘incitement to religious hatred’, and included giving the Attorney General the power to decide what constitutes a “legitimate expression of religious belief”. This was a serious threat to freedom of speech, and could have criminalised religious debate. The Christian Institute produced a briefing raising these concerns, and argued the Attorney General and judges should not be required to adjudicate on peoples’ beliefs. We argued it is already a criminal offence to incite any crime against another person, whether it is religiously motivated or not, and that the Bill would hurt those it intended to protect. The Christian Institute sent the briefing to members of the House of Lords, and we encouraged supporters to write to the Lords raising these concerns. The letters obviously made a difference, one peer said in the debate that she had received 35 letters. The debate was clearly influenced by the concerns raised by supporters and the Institute’s briefing. The Christian Institute wishes to thank again our supporters who wrote to Peers and prayed about this issue. This was crucial and led to an excellent result.

Personal view from Jonathan Phillips

For the crucial ‘religious incitement’ vote in the Lords, Humphrey Dobson and myself attended the debate. Deputy Director Simon Calvert briefed senior Peers. It was a tremendous privilege and great encouragement to see at first hand how all our work and campaigning, along with supporters’ letter-writing, influenced the debate at the highest level.

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