Thank you.
This amendment proposes to keep a portion of section 54. The House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, states on page 767: “The committee's decisions concerning a bill must be consistent with earlier decisions made by the committee.”
Section 54 of the act deals with orders relating to hate messages and is therefore dependent on the existence of section 13, the offence of hate messages. As the committee has already voted in favour of the elimination of section 13, the chair is of the opinion that it is inconsistent to maintain an order for an offence that no longer exists.