Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Peter Grant and Jeremy Wright

Thursday 16th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

Across the United Kingdom, the volume of cases and convictions is going up all the time. It is important that we recognise that the volume of cases reflects a genuine problem—a problem not just of terrorist acts, but of those who encourage or glorify terrorism. We must make sure the law keeps pace with that in terms of substantive offences and the sentencing regime.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Following on from that answer, has the Attorney General seen the content published online yesterday by the Leave.EU campaign, in which a number of his hon. and right hon. colleagues were denounced as traitors and as a cancer, simply because they disagreed with the views held by the billionaire owner of that company? Will the Government consider amending legislation so that such clear incitements to hatred can be prosecuted through the criminal courts?

[The Attorney General]

I agree that incitement to hatred is reprehensible, from wherever it comes and whatever subject it is based on, and it is important that the criminal law is available to deal with that conduct. The hon. Gentleman is right too—he has heard me say this before—that conduct online should be treated no less seriously than conduct offline. No one should imagine that they are immune from the criminal law if what they are doing is online instead of in what we might call the real world.