New Home Office Guidance to Stop Police From Recording Non-Crime Hate Incidents ‘Because Someone Is Offended’
Home Secretary Suella Braverman is to order police to only record non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) when absolutely necessary, which campaigners say is a major win for free speech.
Braverman said the draft guidelines, which will go before Parliament on Monday, will prevent police “wrongly getting involved in lawful debate.”
British police have been encouraging the public to report NCHIs, described as “any non-crime incident which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice,” on official hate crime sites.
But critics have called NCHIs an “Orwellian device” that encourage conduct that violates freedom of expression.
According to the new guidelines, police will only record non-crime hate incidents when it is “absolutely necessary and proportionate” and not “simply because someone is offended,” the Home Office said in a release.
Braverman said personal data will only be recorded for incidents “motivated by intentional hostility” and where there is a “real risk of significant harm.”
Braverman said officers must have freedom of expression “at the forefront of their minds.”
“I have been deeply concerned about reports of the police wrongly getting involved in lawful debate in this country,” she said.
“We have been clear that, in recording so called non-crime hate incidents, officers must always have freedom of expression at the forefront of their minds.
“The new code will ensure the police are prioritising their efforts where it’s really needed and focusing on tackling serious crimes such as burglary, violent offences, rape, and other sexual offences.”
Harry Miller
Mentioned in the guidance is the case of former policeman Harry Miller.
Miller brought a judicial review against the professional body for the police in England and Wales, the College of Policing (CoP), and Humberside Police after an officer visited him at work to “check his thinking” over reposting a gender-critical limerick on Twitter.
Miller also set up Fair Cop in response to what it calls “Big Brother” overreach of various police forces and other authorities in England.
In 2021, a top court ruled that CoP’s guidance on recording NCHIs violated Miller’s freedom of expression as set out in Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
Miller told The Epoch Times that the Home Office stepping in was “the right thing to do.”
Miller previously told The Epoch Times that the justification for recording NCHIs is based on a theory of escalating hate as set out by American psychologist, Gordon Allport, in 1954. The Allport Scale has five stages: antilocution, avoidance, discrimination, physical attack, and extermination. Hate speech is included in the antilocution stage.
During Miller’s legal challenge, Police Superintendent Paul Giannasi, who is developing and delivering the England and Wales Hate Crime Policy, described Miller’s reposted limerick as a “staging post on a five-step journey” that leads to genocide.
Miller said he believed Braverman’s intervention was the start of a “great unravelling.”
“Because what we [Fair Cop] did, we put a hole beneath the waterline and what Suella has done has basically sunk the ship,” he said.
“We have a right to be offensive. It [the guidelines] says that we have a right to be gender critical, it removes police from recording school children, it’s an absolute overwhelming victory,” he added.
‘Clear Threshold’
Crime, policing, and fire minister Chris Philp said the guidelines create a “clear threshold” that must be met for hate incidents to be recorded.
However, Labour shadow policing minister Sarah Jones said that the home secretary is “trying to pick fights” instead of “providing serious solutions.”
“We will wait to see the details of these guidelines, but it seems yet again the home secretary is trying to pick fights instead of providing serious solutions to the pressures on policing,” she said.
The Epoch Times has contacted the College of Policing for comment.
PA Media contributed to this report.
