New Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is set to increase the burden on police officers to keep records of ‘hate incidents’ which are not criminal offences.
This reverses the previous Government’s policy, where former Home Secretary Suella Braverman told the police not to interfere with a person’s freedom of expression “simply because someone is offended”.
Mrs Cooper now wishes to make it easier to record such incidents, saying it will help address antisemitism and islamophobia.
No investigation
Guidance on ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (NCHIs) previously stated that when someone claims they have been a victim of hatred, officers must keep a record against the name of the accused person even where no crime was actually committed. No investigation of the claims was required.
Under Mrs Braverman, College of Policing guidance was changed last year to emphasise that the police can only include someone’s personal details in an NCHI if the event presents “a real risk” of either “significant harm” or a “future criminal offence”.
“Offending someone is not a criminal offence”, she announced at the time, adding the police will only record NCHIs “when it is absolutely necessary and proportionate and not because someone is offended”.
‘Proportionate and necessary’
But this week, a Home Office source said: “The Home Office has committed to reverse the decision of the previous government to downgrade the monitoring of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate, at a time when rates of those incidents have increased.
“It is vital that the police can capture data relating to non-crime hate incidents when it is proportionate and necessary to do so in order to help prevent serious crimes which may later occur.
“We are carefully considering how best to protect individuals and communities from hate whilst also balancing the need to protect the fundamental right to free speech.”
Gender-critical beliefs
The Christian Institute’s Director Ciarán Kelly warned against the change, saying: “There is a reason the previous Government drew up new guidance with the College of Policing – far too many people were being written up by the police, their details kept on permanent records which would show up in DBS and employment checks, for some of the most trivial of reasons.
“This is what happened to street preacher Angus Cameron. An unsubstantiated complaint saw his good name associated with ‘hatred’ and potential criminality in police records. It look legal action to get this record deleted.”
Mr Kelly told The Daily Telegraph that Yvette Cooper’s new ‘zero tolerance’ measures should “give pause to everyone who values free speech”, coming “hot on the heels of the scrapping of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act and calls to ‘toughen up’ the 2023 Online Safety Act”.
Unsound
He added: “Hopefully we can all agree that hating others is wrong. But previous attempts to properly define ‘hatred’ have proven both elusive and divisive: just take a look at the Hate and Public Order (Scotland) Act. Such restrictions can come at great cost to freedom and do not deliver the benefits that are claimed for them.
“‘Something must be done’ is not a sound basis for clamping down on free speech”.
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