Free Speech Campaigner Brendan O'Neill has declared that it is "essential" for non-crime hate incidents to be scrapped following calls from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch.The Conservative Party has proposed scrapping the recording of non-crime hate incidents by police in England and Wales, except in limited circumstances.FULL STORY HERE.
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00:00Could you just explain why, if indeed you do think it's a good thing, what the Tories are doing now then?
00:06It's not only a good thing, it's an essential thing.
00:08We've got to get rid of these non-crime hate incidents.
00:12The only thing that worries me about what Kemi Badenoch is proposing is that she says they can still be recorded in certain circumstances.
00:19I don't think they should be recorded at all, ever.
00:22Call me old-fashioned, but I don't think the police should be keeping logs of things that are not criminal offences, that are not crimes.
00:29If we're talking about speech that doesn't cross the threshold of criminal behaviour, it is none of the police's business.
00:36So, in a hypothetical scenario where I say something that some people deem to be incredibly offensive, which of course will never happen,
00:43and someone reports me to the police, and even if the police say that's not a crime, they just keep all of my details on their record.
00:50Are they indefinitely at the moment?
00:52Yeah, it's profoundly Orwellian.
00:54It goes against all the natural principles of justice, which is that people should be left alone unless they break the law.
01:01It goes against all those principles, but it's also profoundly anti-freedom of speech.
01:06People should be allowed to express themselves, even if they say offensive things.
01:10Even, in my view, if they say deeply offensive things, including racist things or misogynistic things.
01:16I am such a free speech fundamentalist, I think people should even be free to do that without having their collars felt by the cops.
01:23But, you know, if you look at the things that get swept up in non-crime hate incidents, as you say, it includes ridiculous things like children at school.
01:30One 11-year-old was recorded as a non-crime hate incident because he referred to someone as shorty.
01:36He calls someone a leprechaun because they're small.
01:38But then also it goes right up to Amber Rudd, the former Home Secretary.
01:42One of her speeches about immigration was recorded as a non-crime hate incident because someone found it offensive.
01:48The police are logging elected politicians' speeches as hate crime, hate offences in their books.
01:54That is really, really Stalinist.
01:56Has the whole point of this been to essentially scare the bejesus out of predominantly, I would suggest, maybe, like middle-class people in their own homes?
02:08To think like, you know, you hear about these cases, these nightmare scenarios, and you think, oh, gosh, I have got some views about that migrant hotel at the end of the road or about the fact that my son went to school and came home and was told he'd been born into the wrong body.
02:21But if I voice that, then I might get a knock on the door from the Stasi.
02:25Was that the whole point of this, do you think?
02:27That's definitely one of the key effects.
02:30I think non-crime hate incidents play two roles.
02:33Firstly, they punish people for expressing themselves, which is always a bad thing to do.
02:38But yes, as you say, they also have a chilling effect across society.
02:42They send a warning to everyone else.
02:44Don't even think this stuff.
02:45Never mind saying it because you might end up on a book somewhere in a police station.
02:49And it could mean that you don't get the job you want to get or you will have a criminal record in the future.
02:54So it hangs as a kind of sword over the heads of everyone in this country as a warning them not to say the things you're not supposed to say.
03:02It is profoundly chilling.
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