The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has indicated that she will reverse previous guidance aiming to limit the recording of “non-crime hate incidents” by police. In response, the Free Speech Union has threatened to bring legal proceedings against the government if Ms Cooper follows through.
According to a statement from a Home Office source, reported in the Telegraph, “the Home Office has committed to reverse the decision of the previous government to downgrade the monitoring of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate,” thus enabling police to “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.”
The source added, “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.”
A non-crime hate incident (NCHI) is defined as an act or alleged act “perceived … to be motivated – wholly or partly – by hostility or prejudice towards persons with a particular characteristic.” By relying solely on the perception of hostility or prejudice – without any need for supporting evidence – NCHIs create a chilling effect by effectively allowing the most easily offended members of society to police the speech of everyone else, including students and academics, especially on sensitive topics such as race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
In 2023, new guidance was issued under then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman, stating that NCHIs should only be recorded when “clearly motivated by intentional hostility” and when there was a “real risk of escalation causing significant harm or a criminal offence.” The guidance encouraged police officers to use their “common sense” and “judgment” to record NCHIs only when “proportionate” and “necessary” to do so, while ignoring trivial complaints, such as one man who was accused of “racial hatred” for whistling the Bob the Builder theme tune at his neighbour.
We urge Yvette Cooper to think very carefully about the consequences of removing these crucial safeguards. Various surveys, including one by CAF in February of this year and another by the University and College Union (UCU) in 2021, indicate that there is already a climate of fear and oppression in British universities. Lawrence Goldman, a history professor at Oxford University, recently stated that today’s undergraduates are “frightened” of expressing unorthodox opinions on slavery and empire, while Oxford professor of moral theology Nigel Biggar, controversial for his opinions on empire, said that a student was reluctant to meet him anywhere they might be seen by other students, for fear of damaging his career prospects.
Although NCHIs are not designated as crimes, they are recorded by police and can be revealed in enhanced DBS checks, which are required for many jobs, including in nurseries, schools, hospitals, and care homes. This means even entirely trivial, malicious, and irrational complaints can lead to serious consequences. If students and academics in the UK are already afraid to speak their minds, how much more afraid will they be if doing so could lead to a visit from the police and an NCHI that could ruin their careers?
Yvette Cooper’s decision seems to be part of a pattern of the new government in suppressing free speech in the name of policing “hate.” For example, Ms Cooper has also recently signalled an intention to treat misogyny – a form of hatred – as extremism, while a government source, responding to criticism of the government’s decision to suspend the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, derided the act as “the Tories’ hate speech charter,” a cartoonish and partisan caricature of an act whose only aim was to support enforcement of the existing law on academic freedom.
Inciting racial and religious hatred is already illegal in the UK, and this law should be enforced. However, since what counts as “hate” towards a certain group is highly subjective, attempting to police hatred beyond clear acts of incitement creates a serious risk to academic freedom. For example, in 2021, in arguing for the banning of Exeter Students for Life, Exeter University students characterised the society as guilty of “hate speech” due to its opposition to abortion. In 2023, in arguing for the disinvitation of gender-critical philosophy professor Kathleen Stock from the Oxford Union, the Oxford University LGBTQ Society accused Stock of bringing a “campaign of hate” to the university and supporting “hate groups such as the LGB Alliance and Lesbian Project.”
The notion that it is the job of the government – or any other institution – to police the expression of “hate,” except in clear cases of incitement, sets a dangerous precedent for the suppression of academic freedom. We strongly urge Yvette Cooper to reconsider her stated intentions on NCHIs and act to preserve free speech on UK campuses.