On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Members on both sides of the House and, indeed, a number of national governing bodies for sport were expecting today a major announcement from the Government about the future of sport. It was trailed extensively on the Central Council for Physical Recreation website. Apparently, it has been pulled, and no explanation has been given. Have you any guidance to offer us on what has happened? Have the Government communicated to you any time when they might make that announcement in the near future?

I have not had any contact with any Minister regarding this matter.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

When I spoke a week ago yesterday in the debate on the Queen's Speech, I indicated that much of the Bill will be non-controversial and have the support of the whole House. We are dealing in the main, therefore, with issues of detail, clarification and, in some cases, interpretation. There will undoubtedly be party political differences about some aspects of the Bill, particularly in Committee, but on the whole people agree that we are right to set up the Serious Organised Crime Agency and to underpin it with the changes in powers, thereby building on the reforms and modernisation that we have already put in place in relation to policing in this country and through the proposals in the police White Paper.

We published "One Step Ahead" as part of the consultation process on the Bill and on the Serious Organised Crime Agency. I remember that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), the shadow Home Secretary, said a week ago yesterday that we were not always one step ahead in dealing with organised crime. He might be surprised to hear that I agree with him. There is a real problem in taking on the most sophisticated criminals in the world, who understand the tenets of capitalism a lot better than capitalists do. Their grasp of how to deal with a market internationally, how to change their methodology and how to use new techniques is breathtaking.

Although the massive increase in police numbers, the reduction in crime and the creation of community support officers, which are referred to in the Bill, are critical in building the infrastructure—I notice that Bill Bratton, the former commissioner of New York and now of Los Angeles police, referred this morning on the "Today" programme to the critical importance of interlinking neighbourhood policing and tackling antisocial behaviour in building confidence and then helping with organised crime—the challenge of the decade is undoubtedly to get grips with cross-border international crime.

All nations are considering the interrelationship between organised crime and terrorism and the relationship between trans-national travel and improved communication, by which I mean the use of satellite, the internet and mobile phones, as well as arrangements in terms of people's ease of communication when they travel. All of that has transformed, within the past few decades, the nature of criminality and the way in which people exploit the previous understanding of what was necessary.

If the methodology and the sophistication of techniques have changed, we need to change rapidly with them. That will be the case year on year. There will have to be changes in the way in which the service operates, even as a combined entity, linking investigation, intelligence and its work with the prosecution services. Of course, there must also be the methodology of developing the technology that matches that of the organised criminals.

Organised criminality costs our economy and commercial life at least £20 billion each year. Some £1.3 billion of that is the result of identity fraud alone, never mind the massive investment in hours that it takes to sort that out, not just in terms of policing and the criminal justice service, but of everyone else whose productivity and lives are affected by it.

We have been getting better at getting to grips with that. In the 18 months to the end of 2003, which are the latest figures, we have disrupted and confiscated 11 tonnes of heroin and 26 tonnes of cocaine. The sophistication of the work with other countries to disrupt the supply of cocaine from Colombia and the work that is taking place in the Caribbean is impressive. Just three weeks ago, I was talking to Dominique de Villepin, the Interior Minister in France, about how we might step up that work by sharing resources and by sharing the task across the Caribbean with the Americans in the light of what is happening in central and south America and the West Indies.

We have not been as successful in dealing with trafficking and organised criminality in terms of the poppy supply and heroin from Afghanistan, which is a primary concern for this country. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs spoke yesterday about getting to grips with the problem. On the day that President Karzai is inaugurated, I think that we would want to work with a new democratic and strong Afghanistan in taking additional steps to ensure that we get to grips with what is literally a disabler and sometimes a killer on our streets.

These days we have to think internationally about the way in which change takes place. I am proud that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development is on the Front Bench, because it emphasises the importance not only of tackling the causes of criminality and of putting in place preventive measures to give people alternative livelihoods but of clamping down on enforcement. Unless we do so, organised criminals will pay the subsistence farmers, whether in south America or Afghanistan, sums that they could never get by growing existing crops. Development aid, development of trade and tackling the causes of drug production are therefore critical.

The Home Secretary makes an important point. I was at the UN last week with a cross-party group. The head of drug enforcement told us that the amount of land under opium cultivation in Afghanistan will rise by 64 per cent. this year. Given that NATO is in control there, why should we believe that things will get better next year when the situation has patently got a lot worse in the past 12 months?

The steps that are put in place take time to work. The installation of a democratic presidency and government in Afghanistan makes an enormous difference. I am sure that the meetings that the hon. Gentleman attended at the UN would have reinforced the long-term nature of what needs to be done. We are not going to solve this problem next year. We can start to tackle it, but it will be a decade before we see substantial change—not because we want it to take that long, but because enormous forces are against us.

I was about to move on to pay tribute to the work that has been done since the creation of the National Crime Squad and the National Criminal Intelligence Service, which are themselves quite new. Good work has also been done with the immigration service and part of Customs and Excise. Together, those organisations will form the new Serious Organised Crime Agency. We are grateful for the work that people have done in pulling together towards that goal.

The Secretary of State mentioned work with the immigration services. The Bill contains some welcome provisions on witness protection in hideous people trafficking cases, but does he share my concern that there are very few safe houses for women who have been trafficked? According to a presentation in the House last week by Amnesty International, there are no safe houses for children who have been trafficked; the last two such places recently closed.

I am happy to look further into that as a matter of urgency, particularly in respect of the point about children. There are 6,000 young people under the age of 18 in this country who have been trafficked or, in some cases, sent dangerously by their families across the world in circumstances that none of us would wish to see. Safe accommodation here for those who are prepared to bear witness and help us follow the line in tracking organised criminals should also be matched by safe accommodation in the countries of origin so that people can be returned to their families. The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration and I are both looking into that as a matter of urgency.

In paying tribute to the organisations, I want to say how difficult it has been, even with good will, to exchange the necessary intelligence information and to link investigation, intelligence and prosecution. The added value of the Serious Organised Crime Agency will be measured by its ability to do just that and put together the different activities of the agency in order to produce materially improved results. The new chairman, Sir Stephen Lander, spelled out on the radio this morning the critical importance of getting that right. With his intelligence background, I believe that he will be able to provide a substantive guiding hand for the organisation.

In paying tribute to recent action, I want to mention two or three events over the past 18 months that have demonstrated how, before the agency comes into being on 1 April 2006 after the Bill's passage through both Houses of Parliament, we can and must step up the work to avoid any interregnum or pause in activity.

The Home Secretary is right to say that there will not be much between us on many aspects of the Bill. One important thing that he must do is bring together the powers, as well as the intelligence, of the three different agencies comprising the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Those powers are different and sometimes intrusive. The excise powers, for example, are very intrusive: they have been designed that way over the course of a long time. The Bill will, however, amalgamate all the powers—police, immigration and excise—effectively under one man. Sir Stephen Lander is used to parliamentary scrutiny of his activities, but is the Home Secretary considering how best to keep an eye on the use of the powers in the first few years of the new agency?

Yes. That was a helpful intervention. Unlike the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Home Affairs Committee will have open access and scrutiny. The Cabinet Committee on Organised Crime will be responsible for determining overall priorities.

In a moment, boring though it may be, I intend to examine the Bill clause by clause to clarify issues before speeches are made, and I hope that that will help.

I want to be absolutely sure of what the Home Secretary has just said, because it is critical to our understanding. Will all the new agency's activities fall within the remit of the Home Affairs Committee, and will it examine the various aspects of the agency's work?

Substantially, yes. The Intelligence and Security Committee may ask to examine aspects of the intelligence work, but we do not intend that to be the norm. The agency is a non-departmental public body, so scrutiny will be conducted through the House in the normal way. I know that Sir Stephen Lander and Bill Hughes, the director general, will want to facilitate such scrutiny as readily as possible.

Briefly, 500 officers from the National Crime Squad raided drug dealers in London, Huddersfield and Jamaica a few months ago, which resulted in a large number of arrests and 10 convictions, including one individual who got 25 years. Under Project Reflex, work has taken place to deal with a Midlands-based gang that smuggled people in from India using routes through Ethiopia. Development and support, which involves my right hon. Friends the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for International Development, who is on the Front Bench, are crucial. That gang charged individuals £8,000 per person to facilitate their being smuggled into the country, which destroys the lives and well-being of those who are left behind. In deprived and growing countries, £8,000 is a massive investment that can transform the life chances of a family as a whole. Instead, it is being used to facilitate the well-being and profits of organised criminals. The current agency is doing a good job until the new agency takes over.

Linkage is so important. When we discuss cross-border agencies, we are talking about linking with colleagues in Scotland on drug administration and working with agencies in Northern Ireland, as well as working across Europe. A lot of work is now taking place in south-east Europe to disrupt organised crime in Bosnia, Kosovo and other south European countries.

New powers, which the shadow Home Secretary has referred to, and new ways of working are crucial. I promised to bore the bottom off the House.

The Home Secretary said that he would do that last week.

I shall try harder this week. Clauses 1 to 4 are about the functions of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, and clause 5 concerns the general powers that underpin SOCA. Clauses 6 and 7 are about the annual report, which relates to the intervention by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) on accountability—as an NDPB, the new agency will be responsible to both the Home Secretary and parliamentary scrutiny in the normal way. I mentioned the Home Affairs Committee, but other mechanisms will also be used.

The co-ordination of the tasking, prioritisation and resourcing will take place through the Cabinet Committee, which will draw together a number of Departments. That will ensure that a balance is struck and that work is done with the Revenue, because none of us wants to undermine the Treasury's resources and income, not least in the lead-up to the Budget in March.

Clauses 8 to 17 set out the relationships involved in different forms of accountability between agencies. I stress the critical importance of keeping the link with activity by police authorities across the country on level 2 crime. If we lose that link, and confidence and focus are undermined at a local and regional level, that will in turn undermine the activities of the agency in operating primarily nationally and internationally but supporting and working with and behind the 43 forces in England and Wales and, where appropriate, the eight Scottish forces.

I have to tell my right hon. Friend that there appears to be a blurring around the edges. As he well knows, immigration is undoubtedly a reserved matter, yet crime in Scotland is a devolved issue. On issues such as serious organised immigration and Customs crime, the Bill seems to suggest that the lead agency will be the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Does that take away the devolved element of dealing with crime in Scotland?

The Scottish Drugs Enforcement Agency is to remain. As part of the protocol, the Serious Organised Crime Agency will have to work out its relationships with that agency and others to ensure that where overlaps occur there is a role for the Scottish Executive. I am happy to talk to Westminster Members of Parliament from Scotland, including my hon. Friend, about any concerns that they have. It is important to get things right in what is inevitably a situation requiring co-operation and good will. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and to the Executive for their co-operation on this matter.

Clause 11(4) provides that codes of practice should be laid before Parliament. Is it anticipated that there will be any form of affirmative procedure?

Yes. As my hon. and learned Friend is aware, where matters are technical and non-controversial we generally opt for the normal prayer. Where we are dealing with more controversial issues— I am happy for my hon. Friends to address this in Committee—I am willing to accept an affirmative procedure so that there can, where appropriate, be a debate on the Floor of the House in conjunction with the usual channels.

Clauses 22 to 30 deal with the operational responsibilities of the director general. The autonomy of the operation is absolutely crucial in providing the confidence that people are able to do the job properly in drawing together the various elements, including those who had the powers of the constable.

The Home Secretary will be aware that concerns have been expressed in Scotland about clauses 24 and 25, which appear to mean that an officer from south of the border could be seconded to a Scottish police force and given the powers of a police constable in Scotland. The concern centres on the fact that, as the Home Secretary is aware, Scots law and procedure can differ in important respects from English procedure. Will any person so seconded be given proper training in Scots law and procedure beforehand?

It is important that people are able to work together through mutual support. For instance, we shall work with the French through Project Reflex. Let me put it as gently as I can: if we can demonstrate that we can work well with the French, we must surely be able to work even better with our Scottish colleagues. There is already common ground through working arrangements that allow for cross-border mutual support. I have assurances from Sir Stephen and Bill Hughes that that will be a priority in making things happen on the ground. The director general will be in charge of the operational side.

Clauses 31 to 34 deal with information sharing and the proper exchange of vital data. A year or two ago, there were problems in and between existing agencies. We must ensure that the Serious Organised Crime Agency is not subject to those problems. That is underpinned by recognising the importance of oversight, including by the Home Affairs Committee, of what is done in respect of data sharing and information. I wanted to put that on the record. Issues to do with gateways and information sharing are critical to doing the job, but also raise in all our minds issues that we must address.

Clauses 38 to 49 cover the conferment of the combination of powers held by the existing, separate offices that are to be brought together—as the shadow Home Secretary said—subject to the appropriate training and accreditation. Training and accreditation will be critical if people are to be able to take on the differing roles that have existed, from those in Customs to those of the constable, and will enable them to do the job, wherever they are and in whatever circumstances, much more effectively than has been possible in the past. The chairman and the director general of the new agency have been explicit in saying how crucial that will be and how vital it is that we reassure people about it. The Police Federation has expressed concern, so I want to reassure it that we are mindful of that and happy to continue the consultation.

Clause 50 is about agency staff being subject to the scrutiny and appeal mechanisms of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. During the consultation on the White Paper, concern was expressed that there would be no scrutiny and appeals mechanism where things go wrong. We want to be explicit about those procedures. In Northern Ireland, the Police Ombudsman will take on that role.

Will the Independent Police Complaints Commission be responsible for complaints only against officers of the agency who are acting in the role of constable, or will it take complaints in respect of any capacity in which an officer acts?

Once they have been designated with the powers that exist in all the agencies that are being drawn in, they will be subject to the mechanism of scrutiny by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. There is no other sensible way of doing it, and people will be reassured to know that no one can exceed or misuse their powers without being subject to that scrutiny.

Clauses 54 to 64 ensure that witnesses and others involved co-operate in the provision of documents. They extend to SOCA existing Serious Fraud Office powers that have been used sparingly by the SFO but are absolutely crucial to doing the job. Those powers will be available, in relation to organised crime only, to the police services. That will overcome the nonsense that has existed whereby agencies attempting to get to the truth by accessing documents, including those held on disk, have experienced enormous blockages when people are not prepared to hand over the information. These powers are exercised with the consent of the prosecutor and only where the evidence will be "of substantial value" to the investigation, and parameters and restrictions are in place to avoid their misuse. It will not be possible for someone to incriminate themselves. Moreover, there will be safeguards in relation to professionally privileged material; that will secure the confidence of the legal profession.

I agree entirely with all the disclosure powers, but there is a provision in clause 56(2)(c) for the director to deliver a disclosure notice where

"there are exceptional circumstances making it expedient to do so".

Those circumstances do not appear to be defined. Will they have a definition in due course?

Yes, they will. If my hon. and learned Friend is lucky enough to be on the Committee—although I am not sure whether he would feel lucky to be there—we should value his contribution to getting this right.

Clauses 65 to 68 are about what we colloquially call turning Queen's evidence, and will put a common-law power on to a statutory footing. To give an example, similar powers are used in Australia in about 15 per cent. of convictions for drug trafficking, and in about a quarter of such convictions in the United States. In Britain, the figure is 1 per cent. There is therefore scope for us to look at this issue, with great care. I know that Members will want to examine in Committee how these provisions can operate without encouraging criminals to commit criminal acts to get themselves out of a spot. Obviously, we need to ensure that the proper powers are put in place to ensure that that does not happen.

Clauses 69 to 73 are about financial reporting orders. These measures will close the absurd loophole in which people are able to return to organised crime after they have served their sentence and, in some cases, pick up the assets that they have stashed away so that they can continue to fund and invest in their criminality. As with supervising those coming out after long sentences in other ways, the power will now be available to supervise the use of the resources still held by those individuals, including their bank accounts and other financial holdings, so that we can monitor what they are doing and link it to the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and any further activity can be dealt with and any resources obtained by criminal activity can be confiscated. I am sure that hon. Members will agree that this should have been done a long time ago. The Assets Recovery Agency will be intrinsically involved, and we shall also be able to use the new powers to undertake monitoring.

Clauses 74 to 86 are about witness protection. We need to put on a statutory footing provisions involving the duty to co-operate of agencies such as housing authorities, housing associations and education authorities—in terms of being able to place the children of families who have had to be rehoused, for example. Further provisions include measures to tackle the ridiculous situation involving the disclosure of names, addresses and whereabouts of witnesses, and to ensure that this is simply about witnesses and jurors, rather than about people who have been involved in criminality.

Clauses 89 to 100 are about amending the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, and about the faster disposal and execution of cases involving civil assets. These measures will get rid of a situation that we did not foresee—it has to be said—when the massive Proceeds of Crime Bill was going through Parliament. The situation arises when, if we have not released some of the assets that an individual had, we end up having to pay legal aid in order to be able to prosecute his or her case.

The Home Secretary might not have realised that that situation would arise, but if he reads the Hansard report of the Committee stage of that Bill, he will see that I did gently point this out to the Government at the time.

I would not for a moment want to take away the hon. Gentleman's success in this regard. At about 11 o'clock tonight, I shall browse through Hansard and check the exact wording, just to make sure that that happened. I congratulate him on spotting that.

We must also deal with the issue of receivers, and with the fact that, in order to be able to get at someone's assets and to dispose of them, we need to be able to use some of the existing assets being held by the Assets Recovery Agency to pay them, rather than having to pay them from the agency and then trying to recover the cost afterwards. We shall make considerable use of these new powers, including those relating to low-value activity being dealt with through the magistrates courts and to dealing with other issues such as freezing orders, which are also contained in these clauses.

I shall touch on only the key elements of part 3—clauses 101 to 115. They include the extension of the police powers that clarify the powers of arrest. There was a very odd situation, in that certain people had to be facing a sentence of at least five years for the constable to be able to work out—through the police and criminal evidence code—whether they could engage in an arrest. In clarifying that issue, we have made the powers explicit and built in the necessary safeguards in terms of exercising them, including revisions of the PACE code and the clarification of the term "necessity" in relation to arrests. We will publish the revised PACE code on these practical issues shortly.

The Bill will also deal with the interesting issue of a criminal who moves from place to place, or who moves assets or documents from place to place, necessitating a warrant to be taken out for every single premise owned or used by that person. These measures will overcome that problem because the authorisation will relate to the purpose of the warrant, rather than to the premises.

The Home Secretary intends, in proposed new section 24(a), to give powers of arrest without warrant to other persons. According to my reading of that, if I see my neighbour parking his car with a defective rear light and I know that he is about to fly off to Spain on holiday, I will have the power to arrest and detain him until I can summon a constable to the scene. Is that really what the Government intend to achieve?

After the hon. Gentleman's earlier demonstration of expertise, I shall be very careful about how I answer his question. If the provision could be interpreted in that way, we shall make sure that the wording rules out such an interpretation. There will be an interesting debate in Committee about citizen's arrest more broadly, whether the person involved is going to Spain or elsewhere—[Interruption.] I am just waiting for my learned Friends behind me to help me out on this issue. Perhaps the Committee would be a more appropriate place for that discussion, however.

We then come to the issue of police staff and civilianisation. We are introducing the sensible measure to allow civilian support staff to have a role in custody suites, freeing uniformed staff to perform their tasks more sensibly out in the community.

I am hugely enthusiastic about the use of civilian staff in custody suites, but will my right hon. Friend tell us what safeguards he will put in place if he extends that measure to cover the role of the custody sergeant? One of the huge gains of the past 10 years has been the fall in the number of deaths in custody suites. While we shall make many economic gains by using civilian staff in a general role in custody suites, is my right hon. Friend absolutely certain that now is the time to extend that role to cover the duties of the custody sergeant?

I am happy for us to explore this question. The issue here is the nature of the oversight involved, either by a uniformed sergeant or by the inspector based in the substantive station.

Obviously, there will not be a custody suite unless the place involved is a substantive police station, as opposed to one of the many outposts that have been developed in shopping centres, civic centres and elsewhere to oversee what is happening. My right hon. Friend, who has great knowledge of these matters, not least as a former police Minister, will be welcome in informing us about the safeguards that might be built in under such circumstances. It is true that there has been a fall in deaths and dangerous activity and in appeals in terms of how people are treated. We would want to retain that at all costs.

That brings me to police community support officers and the powers to be designated by a chief constable. These are about traffic offences and traffic direction, as well as the enforcement of licensing offences relating to antisocial behaviour driven by drink, and include being able to take details and the power of entry to off-licences. Where we are talking about pubs and clubs rather than off-licences, they would have to do this in conjunction with, and when accompanied by, a uniformed officer. Obviously, the issues involve what needs to be done to amend the law in other areas.

The Committee will want to deal with and introduce measures on the seizure of alcohol and tobacco. These relate to how we need to deal with the aftermath of Customs investigations. Furthermore, when drugs are found, we must empower police community support officers to do something about it, rather than merely note that fact, so that that can be incorporated as well.

I welcome the measures in the Bill, particularly those that will stop the chilling impact on ordinary communities of the activities of local drug dealers and kingpins. Will the Home Secretary, not least in Committee, be cautious as we advance down the welcome road of PCSOs and neighbourhood wardens so that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater—the beat officer should be the central pillar of neighbourhood policing in a constituency such as mine, where beat officers are not being replaced and vacancies are not being filled—and PCSOs and neighbourhood wardens are complementary to, not a substitute for, effective deployment of police officers on the beat?

It is absolutely crucial that PCSOs complement and work to support the neighbourhood beat teams. They are part of those teams. Where this has been shown to work best is precisely where we have a number of constables—often led by a sergeant—with the PCSOs as part of the team, undertaking the roles most appropriate to them. We can give that absolute reassurance.

Part 4—clauses 116 to 128—is about the critical area of getting the balance right. If I have learned anything over the past three and a half years—I like to think I have, although I hope I still have quite a lot to learn—it is that we must get the balance right. We must recognise that, where there are new threats, we need new forms of acceptable input to get acceptable behaviour. However, there also needs to be a balance in securing those powers.

Will my right hon. Friend, in considering whether he has the balance right, look at the concerns of some of us about legislating on religious belief? Most organised religions claim that they have an exclusive truth that has been given to them. They usually say some pretty harsh things about other religions and there is a genuine danger that if one reads religious tracts one will find many reasons in the Bill to prosecute people for their religious beliefs.

I will return in a moment to clauses 116 to 118 on animal rights, which I was about to deal with, so that I can answer properly my hon. Friend and others who have intervened on this issue. It is absolutely not our intention to engage in preventing people from exercising free speech. On 19 November 2001, when we were debating a measure similar to clause 119, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), then shadow Home Secretary, said, quite rightly:

"I put it on record that Conservative Members recognise that the Home Secretary has a noble motive in introducing"

part 5 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Bill. It is not often that such wonderful terms as "noble motive" are used about me, so I savoured it at the time and I thought I would take the opportunity to repeat it. The right hon. Gentleman continued:

"He wants, as we want and as every Member of the House wants, to protect vulnerable religious communities. That is not an issue."—[Official Report, 19 November 2001; Vol. 375, c. 43.]

I hope it will not be an issue in Committee or when this Bill returns to the House.

rose—

I promise to give way in a moment to Members from both sides of the House, because this is an important issue. It is about reference to incitement, religious belief or lack of belief, and groups of persons defined by reference to religious belief. That is what we are seeking to deal with in extending what exists already in terms of those groups that can be defined in relation to their nationality.

I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way. I do not doubt that he has a worthy motive—now and in November 2001—but is there not a question of ensuring that we do not infringe legitimate freedom of speech? Can he confirm what appears to be the case from the notes on clauses, which is that this offence may be committed not just with intent, but without?

No, I do not think we can infer that. I have made a written statement to back up the debate on Second Reading, so that Members will have it for consideration in Committee. This is about the preservation of the right to legitimate freedom of speech and freedom of religion. It is also about and includes the right to engage in free and vigorous debate on religion, including the right to criticise religious beliefs and practices. It will not criminalise material just because it stirs up ridicule, prejudice, dislike, contempt, anger or similar causes. It is about inciting people in a way that will damage those individuals because of their religion, not because of their beliefs.

rose—

I promised to give way behind me.

I am still perplexed because there is no definition of religion. On the 2001 census form, 5,015 people in Sheffield gave Jedi knight as their religion. I hate "Star Wars", so should I be worried?

If someone incited people because of their love of "Star Wars", or against people with a love of "Star Wars", they would be caught under existing law, but not in terms of religion. That is the whole point—

That is the point!

No, that is the point of having to bring in the new measure to provide equity of treatment in relation to faith.

I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way, but is there not a genuine risk that the courts will misinterpret an attack on someone's religion as an attack on the person who holds that religion? There is a real problem here as people have deeply held religious beliefs that some things, such as evil and some religions, should be hated.

Look, where there is mono-ethnicity in terms of faith and race, we apply these powers. We are attempting to ensure that the powers are available in cases where that is not the situation—that is, Muslims and Christians.

There is nothing sinister about this; people can crack jokes. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Caroline Flint) and I took a look at the jokes that appeared in the Evening Standard and The Guardian. Well, they might not have been very funny, but they would not be caught by this measure. People can ridicule for all they are worth, but if we genuinely want to address the issue sensibly—we need a sensible debate in Committee to ensure that we get it right—let us not have ridicule of a measure by silliness. It must be addressed philosophically, politically and practically.

It is sometimes said that there are two things about which people should never argue: one is politics, and the other is religion. That might strike some of us dumb. Is not there some similarity between politics and religion, in that they consider belief systems, seek to interpret and are concerned with values? If there is to be a law against religious hatred, does it follow that there should be a law against political hatred? Does not that illustrate the danger of such a law in connection with religion?

The crucial issue is incitement. Incidentally, I agree with my hon. Friend about what we were taught when we were little: my grandfather and my mother instilled in me that I should never argue about politics and religion. I got involved with the Methodist Church and became a lay preacher, and argued so much that they said that I would be better in politics than in the pulpit. I am afraid that I am therefore inflicting myself on the House rather than on the Methodist Church.

It is crucial that we home in on incitement to attack, hurt or damage people because of their faith. We are talking about incitement to hate, which leads to that hate damaging those people. We are not talking about all the things that we would expect in a free society, which I read out a moment ago: criticising beliefs, criticising practices and having a really good argument. Three years ago, we discussed these matters and nearly reached an agreement—we were within a whisker of it. In the other place, the argument was that that Act was an inappropriate vehicle for passing this clause. [Hon. Members: It was."] People are saying that it was, and that is fine. This is another vehicle, so those who said that they objected to the vehicle as opposed to the principle will now be with us, and those who objected to the principle will need to be persuaded.

To help me in my approach to clause 119, can the Home Secretary explain what menace he is seeking to address? What is happening in society today in the United Kingdom that he wants to stop happening? That is what he has not explained, and that is what I do not understand.

We are trying to stop groups of people who are prepared verbally, communicating through writing or the internet, to incite others to hate because of someone's faith. That does not relate to the argument about their faith. For instance, we will not stop anyone proselytising—I emphasise that point, because I met those of all parties, including those in the House who have both a political and religious role, about that. It is important that we do not make a mockery and a monkey of the law, and I would not want Parliament to engage in such debate. I just want to ensure that people out there who feel threatened, which they do, who feel that society is not embracing them, which they do, and who feel that the existing law relating to mono-faith, in terms of nationality and faith, protects such people—those who incite hatred—but does not protect them, are covered. That is why we are seeking to extend the law.

I apologise to the Home Secretary as I have not heard all of his speech. On this point, however, is it not important that the clause puts right an injustice? No Muslims have available to them the present redress which members of other faiths have because their faith coincides with their ethnicity. Putting right that injustice is a fair reason for the clause.

That is exactly what we are attempting to do. I can feel the differences of opinion that will exist within political parties in the House as well as between them. [Hon. Members: "This is cross-party."] That is what I have just said. I can hear the differences that exist within as well as between political parties.

rose—

I shall give way to the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley)—I was going to call him learned as well, although I do not think that he has a law degree. He came to see me and we had a vigorous conversation, which did me far more good than it did him.

The Home Secretary is dealing with the issue of interpretation. Who will interpret whether a statement that is contrary to the views of people who think differently religiously is incitement? Were a Protestant to look at the Book of Common Prayer, he would see many things that would be absolutely anathema to a Roman Catholic. Are those things incitement? I advise Members to read the Book of Common Prayer and see that, because some people who think that they have read it have never done so. We must be careful that we do not put the courts into a position in which they must be interpreters of what is and is not incitement. I would think that incitement would be a clear call from a person to attack others if they had a certain belief, which is already covered in the law.

The issue is incitement to hate. The things to which the hon. Gentleman has referred would not be caught. I was thinking about this last night as I went to the Archbishop's Advent service. We were singing a hymn, which begins, "Thy Kingdom come, O God, Thy rule, O Christ, begin". That includes the verse,

"Men scorn Thy sacred Name,

And wolves devour Thy fold".

We are not talking about the issue of a particular faith's expression; we are talking about people using the faith of individuals to incite hate by others, so that they take actions that are unacceptable.

We all agree that right-thinking people should express themselves in moderate terms about others, including individuals whom they might heartily dislike, but the Bill as drafted will cover devil worshippers' sects and satanists. Why should people not tell others that they should hate and dislike people who have cruel or depraved religious beliefs?

We can deal with satan worshippers quite easily through the law. What we would not want to do is to incite people to do something themselves against them—[Interruption.] This is about upholding the rule of law. It is about ensuring that where there are loopholes that exclude a particular group because they are a faith group, as opposed to a nationality, they can be included. I do not want people going out inciting others against devil worshippers; I want to deal with the devil worshipping in whatever form it takes.

It is probably best that we deal with the detail in Committee. [Hon. Members: "The devil is in the detail."] The devil is in the detail. Game, set and match.

For the avoidance of doubt, I respect absolutely the Home Secretary's integrity and good motives in relation to this clause. What my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), the former shadow Home Secretary, said on that subject is very sound indeed. We must be specific, however. Can I put it to the Home Secretary that were the offence narrowly defined in terms of incitement to hatred to practise violence, that would greatly assist matters? Narrowing down the matter in that way, which, periodically, sub-clauses of his sentences suggested, would aid us. If it is too broad and amorphous, however, it does not aid us at all.

The difficulty with that is that we are talking about incitement to hate, which causes others to take the action. If the action taken were the issue, the other clause that we passed in the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, which was about aggravation, would apply. It is incitement to taking the action that is the crucial issue.

I did not answer the hon. Member for North Antrim on the issue of the gateway or lock, and I should have done. As a filter, through the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Attorney-General will have a hand in determining the way in which this operates. Of course, we will test case law in the courts in any case, in relation to how it would operate, should the House pass the clause.

I have tried to respond directly to questions rather than simply going through the Bill, but I now wish to return to clauses 116 to 118. They will enable us to deal with an important issue on which I think there is unanimity: animal rights extremists, or rather the protection of those going about their lawful business—including commercial business—under the very strict licensing that we have. As we have said before, the issue of economic sabotage is under discussion. I have lumbered my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State with further meetings about it, which I am sure she has set in train.

I welcome the measures to deal with animal extremism, which is very damaging to many of my constituents working in the biotech industry, but I was reassured by my right hon. Friend's statement that other measures would be considered. I do not think that the measures in the Bill will be sufficient to ensure that important medical advances will not be damaged by animal rights extremists.

We must not only consider what additional powers may be required, but use existing mechanisms, such as the national co-ordinator. We must not rely purely on changing the law; we need much more effective enforcement and immediate action. I think that there has already been a transformation.

I pay tribute to Members on both sides of the House with constituency interests, who have been extremely helpful in working with us, and to outside organisations, including the companies involved. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, who has worked extremely hard with my colleagues in the Department of Trade and Industry. The experience of getting two Departments and their Ministers to work together has been very instructive.

Harassment, alarm or distress will be dealt with by directing protesters and banning them from the locality for up to three months. The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 will be amended to cover two or more connective persons. All that will make a big difference, and we look forward to discussing it in Committee.

Clauses 120 to 122 deal with trespass. They arise from the investigation that followed an intrusion in Windsor castle. Clauses 123 and 124 follow recommendations by the Procedure Committee. They have been described by some, including me, as a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but sometimes a sledgehammer is needed for that purpose, and this is a tough nut. It is important for people, including protesters, to be able to go about their business, and for people coming to our capital city to be able to enjoy the environment surrounding the Palace of Westminster. It is daft that we should have to pass a law for the purpose, but that is what happens when people make a monkey of the existing law.

Clauses 125 to 128 are an extension of work on antisocial behaviour. They allow local communities to be involved in the justice system by ensuring that breaches of antisocial behaviour orders can be publicised, so that people can see who is doing what and where it is being done. Proposals for civil compensation orders will be presented in Committee. Such orders will require parents to pay compensation when young children—children under 10, say—have deliberately committed criminal damage and caused harassment and damage to other people. At present nothing can be done in such cases. Our measures will reinforce parental responsibility and the importance of taking the consequences of one's actions.

Will the Home Secretary ensure that the legislation can adapt to new information? That is relevant to the new community justice centre that is being established in my constituency.

Our proposals are very much concerned with ensuring that the community can not only monitor justice, but participate and be a positive force for justice. I hope that the new community justice centre, which I think will start functioning on Thursday, will prove to be an exemplar, showing that vigilante justice can be replaced by genuine neighbourhood and community justice. I saw that happening at Red Hook, and the Lord Chief Justice, who was enthusiastic about Red Hook when he saw it, agrees entirely with what we are doing. I believe that it will make a real difference to people's lives.

The clauses dealing with trespass and extending antisocial behaviour orders are welcome, but does either of them, or any other clause, constitute a peg for action to deal with something that concerns a great many members of all parties—the continuing difficulties caused by some Travellers when they alight in our constituencies? Is there any possibility that that could be dealt with by means of amendment or further Government proposals during the Bill's progress?

It falls under the auspices of my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, but we are considering the unique situation that has arisen. As my hon. Friend knows, existing powers were extended in the antisocial behaviour legislation and the Housing Act 2004; but the purchase of land and the subsequent unauthorised encampment and building on it has been almost unique to the past two or three years, and has changed the perspective. I shall be happy to discuss ways of tackling it with the Deputy Prime Minister.

The miscellaneous measures in the Bill include powers to seize uninsured vehicles. It is a remarkable fact that one vehicle in 20 is uninsured, adding £30 to the premiums of other vehicle users. That is an absolute scandal. Our provision is linked with a Bill that will shortly be presented by the Department for Transport.

My right hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. I am grateful to him.

I welcome this measure. My right hon. Friend will know of my campaign to bridge the gap between the offences of careless driving and causing death by dangerous driving. Would he consider introducing a new charge, such as causing death by driving, to achieve that, with the possibility of aggravated offences to apply to those driving without insurance or without having ever passed a driving test?

I want to link the review that we have been undertaking to further substantive consultation early in the new year, alongside the DfT's Bill, with the aim of securing a definition. I was pleased to be able to discuss the matter with my hon. Friend at length. Like a number of other Members on both sides of the House, he has been campaigning for a change in the law, and a revision is clearly necessary. However, as with so much to do with the Home Office, getting it right is not the same as having the right intention.

The Home Secretary knows that I have a great deal of sympathy with what was said by the hon. Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight), but may I return him to the impounding of uninsured cars? It worries me that police authorities do not always pursue prosecution for non-insurance when other charges are pending, or when the associated bureaucracy seems onerous. Will the Home Secretary associate himself with a general condemnation of that approach? Police constables should prosecute in such cases, not just through impounding but through the full force of the law.

I am a great enthusiast for the picking up of all offenders. If it is possible for us to make the process of dealing with them through the prosecution service more sophisticated, and make it as easy as possible for the police to deal with prosecutions together rather than separately, we should try to do so. The right hon. Gentleman has made a very reasonable point.

The miscellaneous provisions also deal with the minimum information to be given to the public about their police authorities, and bring the royal parks into the Metropolitan police family.

All those measures bring together the necessary powers, local changes, the structures that oversee them, the new arrangements for accountability and the linking of the international with the neighbourhood. I believe that they will make a substantial difference in protecting us from organised criminality, engaging people positively with the criminal justice system and bringing confidence to everyone—

Will the Home Secretary give way?

Yes, even in the middle of a peroration.

I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way; I sensed his peroration and I wanted to ask him a final question. He has generously suggested that in considering this important Bill in Committee, many important debates should take place and many important matters should be considered in detail. Indeed, amendments might even be made to it; who knows? However, is he satisfied that the time allowed in the programme motion will be remotely sufficient to enable the taking place of the process that he himself has suggested should take place here in the House of Commons?

As far as I am aware, we reached an agreement on the Bill's programming, and we introduced Second Reading as quickly as was humanly possible. I am offering the opportunity for such debate, and where measures can be improved, we should do so. I make that offer in respect of consideration both in Committee and on Report.

I shall not go back to my peroration, in case someone else decides to intervene. This is a practical Bill with a practical application. It is about making a difference to people's lives, and I am very happy to recommend it to the House.

During last week's debate on the Queen's Speech, I told the Home Secretary that the Conservative party supports the establishment of the Serious Organised Crime Agency. I shall attempt to follow him as best I can, although not, the House will be happy to know, in considering every clause in the Bill.

The Opposition have advocated the creation of such an agency for a long time, so I repeat our support for it today, but the Government must not fudge this proposal as they have some other Conservative ones. The establishment of an effective agency is fundamental to Britain's ability to fight organised and serious crime. I am always concerned that a policy that enjoys all-party support might turn out very badly if it does not get rigorous scrutiny.

Hear, hear. It is true.

I knew that I would get support from my right hon. Friend for that point, at least, which is particularly true where civil liberties are concerned. So although my party supports the establishment of SOCA, we will consider parts 1 and 2 of the Bill very carefully.

The agency takes up only some 50 per cent. of the Bill, and it is perhaps appropriate that a so-called SOCA Bill is a Bill of two halves. [Hon. Members: "Oh."] I knew the House would like that one. But we are pleased to see the inclusion of clauses aimed at stopping harassment by animal rights activists, and we hope to have a sensible discussion on them in Committee, and to add further to such provisions to ensure that communities, companies and individuals have adequate protection against pernicious activists.

But the rest of the Bill is an exercise in tidying-up Labour ideas that have failed to deliver the anticipated results. It also lumps together proposals that we support with some that we do not. It gives more power to community support officers, out-sources antisocial behaviour orders, attempts to stop the breaching of ASBOs, expands police powers, introduces new traffic and insurance offences, provides powers to stop and search for fireworks, introduces an offence of incitement to religious hatred, stops trespassing on a designated site, and—Members seem to be very interested in this one—directs behaviour in the vicinity of Parliament. There is more, but that shows the range of initiatives that the Government are trying to smuggle through in this Bill. The title of the Bill suggests a focus on organised crime and the police, but it does far more than that.

SOCA is much needed, but it is going to have its work cut out, as the Home Secretary himself seemed to recognise. Let us consider drug trafficking, which is one of its prime targets. An estimated 35 million tonnes of heroin and 45 million tonnes of cocaine are smuggled into the United Kingdom each year. The Bill may well attack the racketeers, but—at the risk of giving a Blairite sermon to the Home Secretary—it is an attack on the symptoms of crime, not the causes. The Home Secretary himself said that criminals are better capitalists than real capitalists. He will of course understand that I would not put it that way, but it is certainly true that the international trade in drugs is a fluid and fast-changing marketplace. It is therefore hard to stamp out the supply chain: when one importation route closes, another opens. As The Economist recently said,

"against Mafia-style cartels, the police might have succeeded . . . they are less likely to prevail against the invisible hand of the market".

Again, that is not the phrase I would have picked, but it makes the point.

So although SOCA will be useful in breaking up the cartels, that by itself is not enough. That is why I raised with the Home Secretary on various occasions my concern at the Government's abject failure in eradicating Afghan opium crops. To stop the drugs trade, one has to disrupt supply as well as demand; however, that job will be made much harder as a result of our porous borders. Many of our points of entry currently lack the rigorous security measures that would make organised crime much harder to carry out. This issue has been raised with the Home Office, in the context of SOCA, by various senior police officers, so I hope that we will see more work on that front later this year.

Following decades of abject failure in Colombia—all the efforts there have not reduced the production of drugs; in fact, they have reduced that country to bloody chaos and permanent war—are we not doing the same thing in Afghanistan, where drug production has increased? Even if we were successful in decreasing production, it would then spread to Pakistan, Myanmar and Kazakhstan, just as production in Colombia has spread to Peru and Bolivia. Is not trying to solve the problems on the streets of Birmingham and Chicago by disrupting the economies of third-world countries futile, and is there not a grave danger that we are embarking on the "Colombia-isation" of much of central Asia?

The hon. Gentleman has an honourable but very different view of drugs management from mine. He is a liberaliser, and he knows that I disagree with him, although I respect his view. I did not intend to dwell on this point, but the simple fact is that the British Government accepted responsibility for eradication of the drugs trade in Afghanistan, and having done so they should pursue that responsibility. However, I am told by American drug officers, among others, that last year, Afghan heroin flooded the British market and that this year, because of our lack of action, it is flooding the world market. That disastrous outcome is the result of the Government's taking responsibility but not carrying it through. If the hon. Gentleman believes in his argument, he should have made it to his own Government at the beginning of this process, so that somebody else could have taken responsibility for dealing with the problem.

People trafficking was described yesterday by Sir Stephen Lander as a bigger problem even than drug smuggling. In truth, that has been apparent for at least five years. He admits that the UK is at or near the top of the list of targets for people smugglers, as it is for drug smugglers. We all know of the vicious criminal networks that people traffickers feed, using illegal immigrants in the drugs trade, the sex trade and many other illegal activities. The Home Secretary doubtless does not disagree with that, although he admits to not knowing how many people are in the country illegally. Any number of initiatives, new organisations and schemes can be concocted, but the most effective measures would surely be 24-hour, fully manned surveillance and embarkation controls.

We are now told that SOCA will not be the British FBI that some feared, but as I pointed out to the Home Secretary during his speech, we are concerned about the rights and powers of those who will work for it. Civilians who work for it will be given police, Customs and immigration powers. Traditionally, Parliament has given police, Customs and immigration officers specific, often very intrusive, powers that are needed for their particular tasks. Now, they will all be under the direction of one man—the director-general—and in theory, under his control any agent can exercise any one of a wide range of powers.

I was going to ask the Home Secretary what guidance will be given in that regard, but he elaborated on the issue somewhat in his speech and discussed the restrictions with respect to accreditation. However, I hope that, in winding up, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), will explain whether civilian agents will have the same training as a police, Customs and immigration officer combined. That would be a pretty onerous load, but such training is implicit in what the Home Secretary said.

The Bill's provisions make the agency accountable to the Home Secretary, and in that regard my initial reading of the Bill was a little different from the Home Secretary's description in his speech. SOCA will be required to submit an annual report and will be inspected by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary. But given the agency's range of powers and its importance, would it not be wise to have specific arrangements for parliamentary scrutiny—I am thinking beyond just scrutiny by the Home Affairs Committee, because in the first few years of SOCA's existence such a requirement will be fairly onerous—and to get Parliament to debate SOCA's work annually, at least for the first few years, so that we can see how this very important agency beds down?

We are still concerned about whether the agency will lead to a skills loss in the national police force. We share the Police Federation's concerns that SOCA might be considered an elite unit that creams off all the best policemen. There are a large number of extremely dedicated and talented people in conventional policing, and portraying them as second class would damage police morale. We will look in detail at the way in which SOCA co-ordinates its work with the police—the Home Secretary has recognised the importance of that. In particular, we will look at the impact of the new agency on the autonomy of chief constables, which is vital to the independence of our police forces.

The Home Secretary has previously pointed out in the House that organised crime plays an important role in feeding terrorism. I accept that the new agency does not have a specific role in relation to terrorism, but I should be grateful if, in her winding-up speech, the Under-Secretary provided more detail on its role. How, for example, will it work with the counter-terrorism agencies, which cover an enormous amount of the same ground? In connection with that, when the Home Secretary published the White Paper on SOCA earlier this year, there was much talk of changes to the intercept rules, which would make it possible to lift the ban on phone intercepts in court. That is as useful against organised crime as it is against terrorism. The House of Commons library notes that

"a proposal to allow the use of intercept material is still under consideration. Ministers are expected to announce their conclusions on the findings of a Home Office review before the end of the year, which could make it possible to add new clauses".

I told the Home Secretary that we would support the use of intercepts as long as there was proper scrutiny of the measure to ensure that steps are taken to protect innocent people from being convicted on intelligence that turns out to be wrong. However, I warn him that we will not tolerate the insertion of clauses that pose a fundamental challenge to civil liberties at the last minute and without scrutiny. That is an extremely important point.

The Bill proposes an overhaul of police powers. It moves away from consent-based policing towards policing by discretion. Amendments to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 extend powers to search premises to seize evidence. Section 8 of PACE is changed to introduce a new all-premises search warrant in addition to the existing search warrant for specific premises, thus allowing constables to search all premises "occupied or controlled" by the person named on the warrant. That it is worth while, as it will clearly help to solve problems faced by the police when dealing with criminals with multiple premises, but are the Government not concerned that the measures put a great deal of discretionary power in the hands of the police? The Bill outlines plans for civilian staff to be designated as staff custody officers for the purposes of PACE. Subject to the obvious practical concerns about training and supervision, some of which the Home Secretary dealt with in his speech, I support the proposal. We need more police on the streets and less paperwork, and I believe that it will help to achieve that.

Moving on to measures to deal with illegal animal rights activism, the clauses themselves are not contested at all by the Conservative party. We welcome the fact that something is finally being done, even though it is a little late and is not enough. The Bill should include provisions to protect companies against a targeted campaign and to protect shareholders or names from publicity when a company is being targeted. We can make constructive proposals to tackle such problems. The legislation must be effective, and fighting against such offences requires determination, skill, and a proper range of powers. We believe that the provisions should be expanded, and we will table amendments to that effect.

There are some parts of the Bill with which do not entirely agree or with which we disagree. We are concerned about the increased powers for community support officers—a group of people whose effectiveness has yet to be assessed. In his contribution to our debate on the Queen's Speech, the Home Secretary admitted that assessments of CSOs are still under way, both within and outside the Home Office. It may be premature to provide CSOs with more powers, as that may put them into situations for which they are not prepared. The chairman of the Police Federation said:

"The role of CSOs must be fully clarified before a national roll-out, and there must be national standards for their training, which is commensurate with their responsibilities".

I agree.

We respect and support the concept of visible policing, but with more power comes more responsibility along with more duty which, under this Government, means more paperwork, thus cutting the cost-effectiveness of CSOs—their primary attraction, it appears, to the Government so far. That "powers creep" is taking place at a time when forces such as Hampshire have turned down the extra CSOs ring-fenced for them. The chairman of Hampshire Police Authority said that

"we want properly-trained warrant holding police officers . . . we do not feel that these individuals are value for money".

Hampshire wanted the 13 police officers that that money would have provided. In Question Time last week—and I do not know whether the Home Secretary chastised him afterwards—the Prime Minister made an unusually interesting comment, when he said of policemen that

"we shall continue supplanting them with community support officers."—[Official Report, 1 December 2004; Vol. 428, c. 628.]

That may have been a slip of the tongue, but it was certainly revealing. The public do not want policing on the cheap, which is precisely what the Bill is trying to encourage. They want fully trained police officers whom they can trust to cut crime.

The right hon. Gentleman quoted the Prime Minister correctly, but at the time we all took it—he clarified it for me afterwards—that he meant "supplementing". [Interruption.] Well, he did.

I accept the Home Secretary's correction. He obviously chastised the Prime Minister, but he will forgive me for using the word that appears in Hansard, not the word that he was given later.

Was it not a Freudian slip, because as I recall, it was the policy of the Conservative Government to employ civilians to release police to go out on the beat? However, it appears to be the policy of the Labour Government to employ quasi-civilians to release police so that they can spend their time in offices doing paperwork.

My right hon. Friend is partly right. One of our concerns about CSOs is that they should not be there to supplant but to supplement or complement police officers.

Harking back momentarily to clauses 116 to 118, on the protection of individuals engaged in animal research, of course, the Government are absolutely right to act, and two of my constituents who work at Huntingdon Life Sciences will be delighted that the Home Secretary has done so. However, does my right hon. Friend not accept that his brief exchange about language underlines the important point that sometimes Governments should be concerned not simply to legislate, regulate and act but to speak out alongside legislation in support of valuable work? Animal research is not an evil to be tolerated—it is something of profound benefit to the country. The more speeches from the Home Secretary and his right hon. and hon. Friends in support of that proposition, the better.

My hon. Friend is quite right, and puts it better than I could. As I have said, the Government need to show determination and resolution in public as often as possible. Indeed, this is probably the only occasion on which I shall encourage the Home Secretary to make more speeches rather than fewer.

Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves the issue of CSOs, could I entice him to south Wales, so that he could talk to police officers who, two years ago, were profoundly cynical and sceptical about the introduction of CSOs in areas such as the Rhondda, where there is a low level of crime but quite a high level of antisocial behaviour? Those officers are now universally in favour of CSOs.

I am tempted to tell the hon. Gentleman that I will do so only if he comes with me to Hampshire, but I might be misunderstood. However, I told the Home Secretary that we need a full review, which will consider the sort of evidence that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. I do not object to CSOs, as long as they are additional to the police—that is the point that I was making about the word "supplanting". [Interruption.] Well, they are not. In Hampshire, for example, there is a ring-fenced funding for CSOs, and the force will not get police officers instead. We must look at the way in which CSOs work and identify their strengths and weaknesses before delivering change. In the run-up to an election, the Government appear to be in a devil of a hurry to make a series of changes that do not appear to be based on fact but on their wish to be seen as tough on crime, whatever the evidence of the past seven years.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

I am afraid not, as I want to turn to the most contentious part of the Bill. The measure is about 220 pages long, but I have serious difficulty with two pages—the rest, one way or another, we can broadly support. As the Home Secretary knows, the part on which we fundamentally disagree is the provisions dealing with incitement to religious hatred. I understand and have considerable sympathy with the Government's aims in trying to prevent religious hatred. I associate myself at the Dispatch Box with my predecessor's comments, which were quoted by the Home Secretary, about his noble aims.

There is no dispute over the aims, but I sometimes wonder whether the Government understand the implications of their proposals. A simple change to previous legislation it may be, making it an offence to stir up religious hatred, but its impact will be profound, wide-reaching and not necessarily that intended. Indeed, the effect may be the opposite of that intended, as I shall explain.

For centuries the United Kingdom has had a tradition of religious tolerance, and at the same time a tradition of extremely robust religious disputation. That has produced a healthy society in which religious freedom and free speech have coexisted to the advantage of all. These joint freedoms have contributed in no small measure to the intellectual vigour of our society over those same centuries. They spawned the creativity that fostered a wealth of talent in many areas, from science to satire. Freedom of speech is one of the great virtues and simultaneously one of the great strengths of our society. The danger is that the Bill will curb that freedom of speech without any benefit being realised from the legislation.

The Bill curbs freedom of speech where free speech is entirely appropriate. Unlike race, religion is a matter of choice—choice of beliefs, values, practices and behaviour. It is quite proper that such things should be debated and contested, and the proposed curb is almost entirely unnecessary. Words intended to provoke violence or cause alarm, distress or harassment are all caught by existing laws. The Bill would sacrifice freedom of speech for little or no gain. The drafting is so ill defined that it is not even clear what is meant by religion. The provision is drafted so widely that any sect or cult could be covered by it.

Religion and race should not be put in the same category. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), the shadow Attorney- General, commented to the Home Secretary earlier, what if an individual made remarks about a sect, cult or religion such as satanism, attacking it for cruelty or deviance? Will such groups have a case against the individual? They would, so far as I can tell, under the Bill. The two examples cited in today's written ministerial statement would be covered by existing laws if they led to violence or harassment, so why do we need to introduce new provisions?

I am sure the Home Secretary is aware that similar—not identical—legislation was introduced in Victoria, Australia. At present two Christian pastors are on trial for holding a seminar on Islam. The seminar was designed to educate Christians about the concept of jihad. Three Muslims came to the seminar and afterwards filed a complaint against the pastors, saying that the seminar vilified Muslims. People who initially supported the law in Australia have now realised its disastrous consequences. The Government may say that the Bill states that cases will have to be approved by the Attorney-General, but does the Home Secretary not understand that in the highly politicised environment in which the decision to prosecute will have been made, the impartiality of the Attorney-General will be undermined?