Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)

I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention. I was just about to get on to that in my second point, which is that the whole idea of an aggravated crime increasingly weaponises and politicises the concept of hate. In the previous debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, made some very affecting comments. I was able to talk with her about the incident that she also mentioned this evening outside the Chamber. Over the years, my very long-standing and noble friend Lord Shinkwin has told me some very harrowing things that have happened to him. The disabled protected characteristic having an aggravated crime is possibly the most difficult of these to speak against. But whatever that protected class is, it is exactly the point that the noble Baroness was making. This is an aggravator to a crime that exists. If the crime is committed, it does not matter why it was committed; it can still be prosecuted. If it cannot be prosecuted, you cannot prosecute the aggravated aspect of it either. Weaponising hate and making it into a thing ignores the fact that these are merely aggravator laws. They are not laws that in and of themselves create a crime; they merely aggravate an existing crime. That has received very little attention in the debate this evening. Thirdly, it further creates and promotes the concept of society as identity groups. I have the view that we are all human beings and the way to have a coherent and well working society is for us all to work together, whereas with aggravated crimes, people with one or another protected characteristic are encouraged to say, “I’ve been discriminated against. They are the things against me. These people are hateful”, instead of saying, “Let’s all join together and just stop crime”. I would like to lean on two actors who I very much respect and think of as very thoughtful people: Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. They have both been quoted on numerous occasions as saying, “How do you stop hate crime? How do you stop racial hatred? The answer is you stop talking about it”. If they believe that, and I happen to agree with them, what is it about what they say that noble Lords disagree with? My final point is on this idea of looking into people’s minds. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, talked about a case where the difference between committing a bad crime and committing it because you dislike the gender or whatever it was of the individual was a wrap on the knuckles or going to jail for six weeks. How do you know exactly what was in that person’s mind? Was it just an off-the-cuff remark, or was it some deep hatred that deserved society’s censure? You do not know. Queen Elizabeth I said, “I do not want to look into men’s souls”. It has been a fundamental part of British jurisprudence since the 17th century—I do not know why the noble Baroness thinks that is funny; it is fundamental to the way we conduct our society.