The British government yesterday dropped its attempt to make incitement to religious hatred into a crime, after the House of Lords forced the proposal out of anti-terror legislation. But the Blair government will consider changing Lords procedures to ensure such a defeat is not repeated.
As the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act received royal assent yesterday, three months after the September 11th terror attacks, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said that, due to pressures on parliamentary time, MPs had missed their chance.
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, together with some Muslim groups, said they would support a fresh attempt, with greater parliamentary scrutiny, to create the offence. But Home Office sources said that opposition peers had rejected the measure on principle and would never approve it. Peers twice threw out the clause, leaving the Home Secretary, Mr David Blunkett, a choice of either dropping the clause or seeing the entire Bill fall.
Mr Blunkett will look at how to prevent the upper house inflicting such damage on future legislation. One Home Office source said: "It would be fair to say that reform of Lords procedures has a very willing advocate in the Home Secretary. It is an absurdity that the will of the Commons can be frustrated in this way." Government critics will see this as an example of Labour's tendency to subjugate parliament to the will of the executive.
The Tories and Liberal Democrats said yesterday that they had opposed the measure only because it was ill-suited to emergency anti- terror legislation and deserved greater scrutiny.
The Act includes police powers to demand disclosure of files, phone calls and emails, and additional powers for the security services to detain suspected foreign terrorists.
Police yesterday got an immediate go-ahead to pick up a handful of suspected terrorists in the UK.
Mr Blunkett said the powers were "proportionate, and targeted to safeguard our way of life against those who would destroy it".