Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 09 September 2020
I, too, welcome today’s debate on the Government’s Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill. I thank Liam Kerr for enabling it, although I regret the Tories’ last-minute decision to move to a position that is more intemperate and, I believe, wrong. However, I hope that the amendments to the motion reveal a growing acceptance that the bill needs urgent and, in places, radical surgery.
When we see debate in the political and social sphere being dragged to the extremes, when we consider the extent to which social media and the internet empower individuals and groups to reach ever-wider audiences with whatever hateful views they may hold and as we reflect on all forms of hate crime appearing to be on the increase, I think that it is fair to conclude that now is not a bad time to be checking whether our laws in this area are fit for purpose, not least in protecting the rights and freedoms that we hold to be most important. As BEMIS points out,
“Scotland is not immune to racism or prejudice”.
As legislators, we must tread with care. After all, without freedom of speech—what philosopher, John Milton described as
“the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience”—
our other fundamental freedoms are devalued and diminished.
Of course, freedom of speech is not and should not be an unfettered right; indeed, it would be irresponsible to act as if it were. Therefore, in the bill, as with so much else we do in Parliament, balances must be struck.
As a liberal, I was rather taken by a quote from Lord Justice Sedley, which was referred to in the Law Society of Scotland’s submission to the Justice Committee on the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill. He argued that
“free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative ... Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”
However committed I am to measures that robustly confront and tackle hate crime—and I most certainly am—I agree with Lord Justice Sedley.
I do not take issue with the need to update the law in relation to hate crime, nor the motivation of the Scottish Government in wanting to do so.