Lord Lester writes to the New Statesman (7 February 2005):

“Nick Cohen purports to describe a meeting in my chambers. The meeting, held at the request of the Muslim Council of Great Britain [sic], was to discuss the government’s proposed offence of incitement to religious hatred. The views attributed to me are not what I said.”

For Cohen’s article see here.

But it seems that the only other Lib Dem present at the meeting was leading National Secular Society member Evan Harris (see the MCB’s letter to Charles Kennedy). So who could have provided Cohen with his distorted account of the proceedings? You, as they say, do the maths.