Scots may be missing out on jobs because Police Scotland is recording ‘non-crime’ hate incidents, an MSP has warned.
Former police officer and MSP John Finnie is expected to officially complain that such cases can appear during criminal record checks, and that logging them could impact human rights.
It follows a High Court ruling in England that police had unlawfully interfered with the free speech of Harry Miller after he opposed transgender ideology online.
Ruling
Ciarán Kelly, a Deputy Director at The Christian Institute, said: “When George Orwell wrote 1984 on Jura, I doubt he imagined Scotland’s police officers would be acting it out so literally decades later.
“Recording potentially career-damaging non-crime ‘hate incidents’ for holding opinions that someone, somewhere takes exception to, is a sinister use of their powers.
“There’s no right not to be offended in life. The idea that police officers are perusing the Twittersphere for imagined infractions of political correctness and blacklisting those who make them is chilling. It suppresses free speech and enforces politically correct views.
“Instead of policing people’s opinions, officers should focus their limited resources on more important things – like actual crime.”
Nineteen Eighty-Four
General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, Calum Steele, said: “We should be policing crime, not feelings. It adds to the police workload and smacks of George Orwell, Big Brother and Nineteen Eighty-Four.”
More than 3,300 ‘non-crime’ hate cases have been recorded in Scotland over the last five years.
Such incidents include jokes and other behaviour “perceived” to be motivated by “malice and ill-will” towards a person because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity.
So-called ‘hate incidents’ must be recorded irrespective of whether there is evidence of “malice and ill-will”, according to Police Scotland’s Hate Crime Standard Operating Procedure.
Harry Miller
Earlier this month, the High Court ruled that the police had unlawfully interfered with the free speech of Harry Miller after he opposed transgender ideology online.
A police officer visited Miller’s place of work after receiving a complaint about a ‘transphobic’ tweet, leaving Miller with the impression he could be prosecuted.
However, the judge did not challenge the College of Policing guidance that led to Miller being told he had committed a ‘non-crime hate incident’. As a result he is to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.
An overall 119,934 hate incidents were also recorded in England and Wales from 2014-2019.
South Wales Police recorded the most hate incidents at 13,856, over 4,000 more than Britain’s largest police force, The Metropolitan Police.