Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)

I thank noble Lords for what I hope everybody felt was a stimulating and useful debate, with a great number of differing views expressed by different noble Lords. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for her eloquent support of the amendment. It was so depressing to hear her point out that we, the original home of free speech, are now seen around the world as one of the worst countries in suppressing it. My noble friend Lord Blencathra presented the case for the amendment rather more eloquently than I was able to and, equally, with eloquent personal experience, which I felt was interesting, as indeed—I will talk about this in a minute—did the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. My noble friend Lord Young, again in far more eloquent terms than I, gave stark evidence of the dysfunctionality of the law, with the huge numbers of interventions by the police. Some 12,183 arrests was one statistic he quoted, in one year alone for just one act. I add to the various mentions of where the police were forced to pay £10,000 or £20,000 in compensation that we should remember that that is not police money; it is our money. I would rather like to see that money spent in better ways and police time to be spent in better ways. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, for his brief intervention and move on to the very affecting speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. She was talking about how hate material should be legislated against. I will address that in the next amendment, which comes immediately after this. By the way, I can assure her that I played no part in the degrouping of my amendments from those of my noble friend Lord Young. I was deeply sorry to hear of that awful and appalling incident that the noble Baroness had to suffer at the railway station. I entirely agree that the people there should have intervened and supported her. It must have been just dreadful to have been sitting there with no support—until, of course, after the event, when there was plenty of it. The noble Baroness may want to look at Hansard tomorrow, but my amendment would leave in place the ability of the police to go after that dreadful person who abused her because she was threatening imminent violence with that kick. Whether it was accurately placed or not, that was violence. I agree with that law, which should have gone after her. Facial recognition might have helped.