LONDON, Oct 19: Britain is taking a new look at its old laws of blasphemy and blasphemous libel with a view to replacing them with a socially more liberal but judicially extremely prohibitive law against inciting religious hatred.

The British lawmakers seem to want to bring in a law which, while not barring criticism or lampooning of religions, would make it a punishable offence to incite hatred against them.

The over 130-year old blasphemy laws were last used in 1921 when a person was sentenced for nine months of hard labour and then in 1976 when a newspaper editor was given a nine months suspended sentence and a fine of £500. The sentence was upheld on appeal in a judgment in which Lord Scarman urged that the blasphemy law should be updated to cover all religions.

The laws invoked in these cases reportedly had their origins in medieval courts and defined blasphemy as "the publication of matter which vilifies or is contemptuous of or which denies the truth of the Christian religion or the Bible or the Book of Common Prayer." Furthermore, the blasphemy has to be couched in indecent, scurrilous or offensive terms likely to shock and outrage the general body of Christian believers and it carries a maximum life sentence.

Britain's law commission had already recommended the abolition of the blasphemy laws in 1985.The case to scrap the blasphemy laws received a boost in 1997 when the report from the Runnymede Trust's commission on British Muslims recommended that a new offence of incitement to religious hatred should be created rather than extending the blasphemy law to all religions.

Many in Britain also seem concerned about a section of the 2001 emergency anti-terrorism legislation which they believe comes close to creating an all religions' blasphemy law, allowing judges to impose a sentence of up to seven years if an offence is found to be aggravated by motives of religious hatred.

According to newspaper reports, the Muslim Council of Britain has strongly welcomed the decision to introduce a new offence of incitement to religious hatred, saying it closed a loophole in the law exploited by far-right groups who the council believed adapted their old racist rhetoric into virulently anti-Muslim invective.

Meanwhile, the government has made public a draft bill that purports to further liberalize gambling in Britain. The draft law proposes to regulate internet gambling but allows foreign companies to own gambling houses in Britain. Critics of the law believe that the gambling giants of the United States would take over Britain's gambling business in due course of time if this law is adopted by the lawmakers. They also fear that the law would help spread further the gambling habit in Britain and increase its addiction.

While Britain's annual turnover of gambling is said to be only £8.5 billion, fraud and corruption--the so-called white collar crimes- are reportedly costing British business as much as £40 billion annually.

According to a report published by a local consultancy, RSM Robson Rhodes, which carried out a survey of 100 companies in conjunction with the Home office and the Fraud Advisory Panel, embezzlement, fraud, money laundering and corruption cost companies £32 billion last year, as they spent a combined £8 billion trying to tackle the problem.

The amount, equivalent to about four per cent of Britain's gross domestic product, could be just the tip of the iceberg, the report said.

In another development, the debate on the minimum fees to be charged from persons seeking information under the Freedom of Information Act, scheduled to come into force in Britain from Jan 1, 2005, seems to have reached its logical conclusion.

At the time of passage of the bill through parliament, the government had said that the public offices from where the information would be sought would charge 10 per cent of the marginal cost of assembling the information.

But now the government is believed to be thinking of charging no fees at all except in those cases where the costs go up to £1,000.

Under this law it is the information commissioner or the information tribunal who decide whether the government has a right or not to disclose information on the grounds that it is exempted.