Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)

But my argument was against the proposal that these offences in their entirety should be rejected by this House—that the Government’s proposal in its entirety should be rejected by this House. I was not engaging with my noble friend’s argument. I have some sympathy with his point, and in particular that merely misgendering someone should not become a criminal offence. It might be a thoroughly unpleasant thing to do but whether it should be an aggravated offence is worthy of discussion. My concern is that we may be getting ourselves into the position of opposing an amendment that makes an aggravated offence in relation to disabled people, as well as to LGBT people, and we reject that and yet we do not for the other offences. There is also a danger of attempting to trivialise this matter and a confusion with the debate on non-crime hate incidents. We will come to that. I have taken the strong position that we need a much higher bar in relation to those incidents and that the whole regime needs sweeping away. We will come to that. However, we are not talking about that. We are talking about potentially very serious criminal offences. We are talking about GBH and criminal damage, and are saying that where those offences are motivated by hostility against a group, it does not make sense that the offence can be aggravated in relation to racial or religious hostility but not in relation to disabled people or to LGBT people. That is the argument. We are not talking about whether people should be able to say disagreeable things on Twitter. This is not the moment for that debate. We are talking about serious offences and whether they should be aggravated, which would result in a more serious penalty and would send a signal to wider society. There has been a quite concerning increase in hate crimes in relation to LGBT people, particularly transgender people. I have taken for some time a position, which finds me out of step with most of the groups in the LGBT lobby, that there is a very legitimate discussion to have about how women’s rights are affected by transgender rights and that there needs to be a recalibration of the law and the movement’s positions on this. I happen to take that position. However, I know that the way in which this debate is being conducted outside of this Chamber is resulting in an increase in hate against transgender people. That is deeply concerning. It is vilifying people because of ideological positions that are being taken. It is particularly wrong when people in positions of responsibility start using this debate for political purposes. I have great concern about the climate in which this debate is being—