Baroness Brinton (LD)

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, set out the principles that he believes are important to secure freedom of speech by removing the words “abusive or insulting” from a number of pieces of legislation. From these Benches, we absolutely accept freedom of speech. But I want to pick up on the point that the noble Lord, Lord Young, made when he quoted John Stuart Mill. There is a second half to the sentence about the right to free speech. Mill says that “the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”. It is on preventing harm to others that this entire debate is balanced. I am sure that there are many justifications for feeling that freedom of speech is being curtailed for people who just want to express their opinion. But the reason that we have the laws we do at the moment, particularly since the 1950s, is due to the harm that has been done to others. I think there was reference made earlier to the Race Relations Act of 60 years ago; that was in the consequence of very overt racial harm done to entire communities in our society. John Stuart Mill would have absolutely supported that legislation to protect. That is what the balance is between our freedom of speech and our responsibility as parliamentarians to protect those, particularly the most vulnerable, in our society. That is why I want to go back briefly—not quite as far back as the Race Relations Act 1965—to when the original provisions on hate crimes were first introduced by the Blair Government in 1998. There is no doubt that this was partly in response to growing concerns relating to the ineffective policing of and legal responses to racist violence, which, again, was then very evident on our streets. The noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, and her family had campaigned for this more robust legislative framework, and not just because it was much clearer that, as a society, we did not and should not accept hate-motivated crimes, especially towards particular communities and those with protected characteristics.