Ludford Welcomes EU Race Hate Law

7.23.55pm UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 20th Apr 2007

Liberal Democrat European justice spokeswoman Baroness Sarah Ludford has welcomed agreement reached today by European interior ministers to make incitement to racial and religious hatred a criminal offence throughout all EU countries, as Britain has had for many years.

She said: "At long last EU governments have delivered the legal tools to fight race hate across the EU, whether an attack on a black person in the street, the daubing of threats on synagogues or mosques, or a website calling for the murder of a particular ethnic group. It does not criminalise insults to or disagreements with a particular faith."

"My London constituents, who have sometimes faced abuse or worse when travelling in around the EU, will now have the confidence that they will have similar protection abroad to that at home, although we will have to be vigilant to ensure enforcement."

Sarah noted that press reports suggesting the measure makes Holocaust denial or displaying of swastikas in itself a crime are mistaken. Genocide denial would only be a factor in an offence if it reaches the threshold of incitement to violence, as in existing UK race hate laws.

"I am glad that the German Presidency's determination to make Holocaust denial as such a criminal offence in all EU member states was rebuffed, though I would have preferred no mention at all. We must be careful, in the name of free speech, to ensure fulfilment of the UK government pledge that British laws - which do not provide for a Holocaust denial crime - will remain in practice unchanged."

"I deplore the attempts, whether by David Irving or by the President of Iran, to write the Holocaust out of history. But the way to tackle that is to ridicule the ignorance of those people and make the incontrovertible facts even better known through education and discussion."