COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 22 July 1998)

§ The Lord Advocate (Lord Hardie)

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 9. In speaking to this amendment I shall, with the leave of the House, speak also to Amendments Nos. 10 to 13, 82 and 83.

These amendments relate to racially aggravated offences in the Bill. Amendments Nos. 9, 10 and 11 relate to Clause 25, which is the provision affecting England and Wales. Amendments Nos. 12, 13, 82 and 83 relate to Clauses 30 and 88, which are the equivalent provisions for Scotland. All these amendments are designed to clarify the test of what amounts to "racially aggravated" for the purpose of these offences.

I am sure that no one would wish a perpetrator of racist attacks to be let off the hook because of the attacker's ignorance about the victims' racial group: for example, because the attacker thought that his victim was Pakistani and the victim was from Bangladesh. These amendments will put that issue beyond doubt. They make clear that, regardless of which racial group the perpetrator believes the victim to belong to, an offence will be "racially aggravated" if racial hostility or motivation is proved.

The Government are aware of the concerns of some noble Lords and religious groups as to whether these offences will cover an attack made, for example, on a Moslem. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has met Moslem community leaders to discuss this issue. We believe that in practice most cases which may appear to have a religious element will also have a racial element. We do not believe that when the perpetrators of these offences attack Moslems they do so because of hostility towards the tenets of Islam. They do so because of racist hostility towards the victim and towards the ethnic minority groups that are associated with the Moslem faith in this country.

The test of what amounts to "racially aggravated" for the purposes of these offences requires that the racial hostility is wholly or partly a motivating factor. It follows that if part of the hostility is racist, then the offence is covered by these provisions, even if there is 935 also a religious hostility. This amendment is designed to make that absolutely clear. The religious element is immaterial where racism forms even a part of the motivation of the offence. We believe that this provision will cover the vast majority of cases which involve the Moslem community. I beg to move.