Irish President Mary McAleese has signed into law the Defamation Act, which includes clauses that create the offence of "blasphemous libel". Civil rights campaigners are dismayed.

Senior Baptist theologians have joined other church figures and civil rights groups in calling for an end to the existing blasphemy laws in Britain, which are now seen by a wide cross-section of the public as an unjust anachronism.

Replying to questions on a BBC TV programme today, Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has publicly agreed with the Christian think-tank Ekklesia that it is time for Britain's archaic blasphemy law to be abolished.