Leaked dossier reveals Home Office plans to revive non-crime hate incidents
Ministers support increased use of NCHIs, despite row sparked by Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson
CHARLES HYMAS
Police should record more non-crime hate incidents, a leaked Home Office report has recommended, despite a row sparked by Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson.
The counter-extremism review recommends that Labour reverses the previous government’s move to limit the recording of non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) over concerns about their impact on free speech.
On Monday night, ministers backed the increased use of NCHIs for incidents of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, but they rejected proposals in the review for a wider definition of extremism. Instead, they said police and other authorities should continue to focus on Islamism and Right-wing extremism.
In an assessment that will lead to a backlash from Tory and Reform politicians, the report also says that “claims of ‘two-tier’ policing” are a “Right-wing extremist narrative” and that grooming gangs are an “alleged” problem “frequently exploit[ed]” by the far-Right.
The row over NCHIs and free speech flared last year after Pearson was investigated by police for the crime of allegedly stirring up racial hatred in a tweet about two-tier policing. The case was subsequently dropped.
Pearson initially believed she was being investigated for an NCHI and the incident resulted in a public debate about their use.
In June 2023, Suella Braverman, the Conservative home secretary at the time, ordered police to stop recording NCHIs, which do not meet the criminal threshold but are logged by police regardless, just because someone was offended.
The new report says the Home Office should “reverse the previous government’s code of practice”.
The review – called a “rapid sprint” – was ordered by Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, in August last year as part of work to develop a new counter-extremism strategy and was leaked to Policy Exchange, the think tank.
NCHIs were introduced after the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence to monitor situations that could escalate into more serious harm or show heightened community tensions. However, they have increasingly been used to record trivial incidents.
More than 13,000 incidents were logged by police forces in the past year, including against schoolchildren, vicars and doctors.
Although having an NCHI recorded against a person does not involve any sanction and is not a criminal record, it may show up on an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check, potentially affecting employment prospects.
Ms Cooper has proposed expanding the recording of NCHIs in relation to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia because she believes they can warn of rising abuse against Jewish and Muslim communities.
The report suggests that any changes would “encompass all five protected characteristics”, which includes hate based on race, disability, sexual orientation or gender reassignment. Home Office sources said a wider expansion of NCHIs was not planned.
In its section on the extreme Right, the Home Office report says “claims of ‘two-tier policing’, where two groups are allegedly treated differently after similar behaviour” are an example of a “Right-wing extremist narrative” which is “leaking into mainstream debates”.
It also warns: “Right-wing extremists frequently exploit cases of alleged group-based sexual abuse to promote anti-Muslim sentiment as well as anti-government and anti-‘political correctness’ narratives.”
The Prime Minister faced accusations during the summer riots, including from Elon Musk, that police were treating far-Right protesters more harshly than minority groups.
However, Home Office sources rejected the “two-tier” claims, saying: “The police carry out their duties without fear nor favour, and we support them in their vital work to keep the public safe.”
Policy Exchange pointed out that “NCHIs are intensely controversial, criticised as a waste of police time, an avenue for malicious complaints and chilling to free speech”.
Paul Stott and Andrew Gilligan, authors of the Policy Exchange commentary, said the critique of two-tier policing risked “tarring significant swathes of the public as far-Right”.
The report sets out 31 recommendations and says the approach to extremism should no longer be based on “ideologies of concern” but instead focus on “behaviours” that cause harm including Islamism, the extreme Right, extreme misogyny, environmental extremism, fascination with violence and conspiracy theories.
It echoes Sir Keir Starmer’s warning last week, following the sentencing of the Southport murderer, that Britain needed to redefine terrorism because of a new threat from attackers radicalised by extreme violence without any fixed ideology.
Dan Jarvis, the security minister, said that ministers had rejected the reports on the wider range of extremism and expanding NCHIs beyond Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. “As we have said repeatedly, Islamist extremism followed by far-Right extremism are the biggest threats we face.
“The Home Secretary set out last week our plans to carry out an end-to-end review of Prevent thresholds on Islamist extremism because we are concerned that referrals are too low.
“Ideology, particularly Islamist extremism followed by far-Right extremism, continues to be at the heart of our approach to countering extremism and counter-terror. But as the horrific Southport attack shows, alongside that we also need more action on those drawn towards mixed ideologies and violence-obsessed young people.”
Threat to free speech
Mr Stott and Mr Gilligan warned the new approach was also in danger of de-prioritising Islamism, which was responsible for 94 per cent of all terrorist deaths in Britain since 1999 and comprised 80 per cent of police counter-terror work.
“This new approach risks swamping already stretched counter-extremism interveners and counter-terror police with tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of new cases, making it more likely that dangerous people will be missed,” they said.
“Some of the definitions of extremism also threaten free speech, defining aspects of normal and legitimate political debate as extremist.”
Among its recommendations, the report also said ministers should consider a new offence of making “harmful communications” likely to cause “psychological harm”.
The Telegraph: continue reading
*****
LEAKED Doc You Need to Know About!
WATCH:
Featured image: elcomercio.com
*****
Slowly, stealthily, Starmer doubles down on two-tier justice
BRUCE NEWSOME
THE government has just endorsed the continued recording of ‘non-crime hate incidents’. No, the mainstream media didn’t report it. No, the government didn’t issue any formal policy or advice. Instead, it wrote a response to a petition to ‘abolish non-crime hate incidents’. And it hid its endorsement within a lot of two-faced obfuscation. Indeed, the response unwittingly signals a doubling-down on two-tier justice.
One of the government’s arguments is that NCHIs are established and normalised, so don’t change them, you radical! Early on, the government’s response reminds us that NCHIs go back a quarter of a century, since 1999, following a recommendation by the Macpherson inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence.
That recommendation was actually for the recording of ‘racist incidents’. This is not controversial as a matter of intelligence, given rules on compartmentalisation, anonymisation and eventual deletion, except as relevant to the investigation of crime.
The current government’s response disarmingly spins NCHIs as intelligence. I quote: ‘NCHIs are recorded by the police to collect information on incidents which may be motivated by hate and which could escalate into more serious harm, but which do not by themselves constitute a criminal offence. For many years, the police have monitored data relating to these incidents, where necessary and proportionate to do so, in order to monitor tensions and protect individuals and communities from serious crimes.’
Intelligence-gathering sounds justified, right? Except that the inquiry of 1999 did not justify the recording of intelligence. NCHIs are over-compensatory penance for the authorities’ failure to gather the facts on the Lawrence murder in 1993.
The inquiry of 1999 was an illiberal over-reaction. It described as ‘institutionally racist’ the whole of Britain, not just the Metropolitan Police officers who covered for the murderers.
The inquiry recommended that non-crimes should be investigated with as much effort as crimes, which inevitably reduces the effort available for investigating crime, and for protecting freedom of expression. From then on, Britain descended into casual repression, casual crime, weak law enforcement and two-tier justice – by protected versus unprotected demographics.
By the 1990s, the semantic frame ‘racism’ was already in use too broadly, to capture any ‘hate’ – not just literal hate but any politically incorrect differentiation (eg religious preference is often described as racist, at least if you’re Christian). Inevitably the police started recording ‘incidents’ broadly, such that a person could rebut a neighbour’s complaints about noise by accusing the neighbour of racism.
NCHIs are not just illiberal. They contribute to the tribalism that destroys British manners and cohesion: two-thirds of homeowners report problems with neighbours.
The current government endorses a broad interpretation of racism. Its latest response reminds us that in 2006 the national government ‘expanded [NCHIs] to include race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and transgender identity’. Thank you, Tony Blair . . . again.
The recording of NCHIs is not by national government, it is by police forces, so sensible constabularies could (back then) choose not to waste resources on this illiberal practice. But this was the decade when progressivism conquered liberalism and made Britain institutionally woke, such that no police officer could rise to the top without spending most of their/zer/ver time in conference about the hideousness of whiteness and masculinity.
Notice that I wrote that police forces ‘could’ choose not to record NCHIs back then. By 2014, they ‘must’. The decider was not the electorate, not an elected minister, not even an elected minister’s civil servant. No, the decider was the College of Policing, which issued guidelines with the following paragraph:
‘Where any person, including police personnel, reports a hate incident which would not be the primary responsibility of another agency, it must be recorded regardless of whether or not they are the victim, and irrespective of whether there is any evidence to identify the hate element.’
That was in 2014. Thank you, fake conservative David Cameron.
For all the College’s caveats about ‘professionalism’ when handling NCHIs, and about avoiding ‘thought-policing’, the College mandated the recording of any report of hate – however slanderous, however private, however non-criminal.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council endorsed the College of Policing in 2014. When don’t they endorse each other? They’re equally woke. And unaccountable. They are two quangos amongst the thousands that run this country by over-represented minority interests. Their ‘independent’ and ‘professional’ ethos is championed by ministers who don’t want electoral accountability for unpopular policies, and who don’t want the effort of holding anybody else accountable, as long as everything is moving in the same undemocratic, illiberal, woke direction.
So which organisations are endorsed by the current government to review non-crime hate incidents? Well, let me quote: ‘The National Police Chiefs’ Council, supported by the College of Policing, are reviewing the use and effectiveness of non-crime hate incidents. The Government will await the outcome of this review.’
Oh, wait, did you think that non-crime hate incidents had been reviewed already? Well, true, in 2021 the Court of Appeal ruled that the College of Policing’s guidance interferes with freedom of expression. Except the College of Policing isn’t accountable, remember!
The College of Policing took until 2022 to amend its guidance of 2014, in which it concedes that not all reports of hate should be recorded, without specifying any thresholds for ‘trivial’ hate or ‘free speech’. Thus, police forces go on recording NCHIs . . .
Yes, the Home Office could have issued guidance overriding the College of Policing. Yes, the government could have introduced legislation banning the recording of NCHIs. However, Boris Johnson – the Premier at the time – was too distracted by his woke, live-in baby-momma, and by police investigations of his abuse of Covid lockdown rules, to leverage his popular mandate from 2019 into any reform.
Perhaps the only conservative thing Rishi Sunak’s administration achieved was to implement the Home Secretary’s right to ‘issue a code of practice about the processing by a relevant person of personal data relating to a hate incident’, which she did in March 2023, effective June. Thank you, Suella Braverman (no credit to Sunak).
Section 3 of this guidance (still in effect) expects police to practise proportionality, common sense and minimum intrusion when deciding whether to record a report of hate as a NCHI. Section 4 reminds police to uphold freedom of expression. Section 5 reminds police to protect private data and to notify the subject of a NCHI in which the subject is identified.
All well and good, except that the guidance does not add much to what the College of Policing had already conceded in 2022, and does not specify any penalties for non-compliance, except under existing legislation for protecting private data. So police forces go on recording NCHIs . . .
The current government’s latest response endorses the status quo:
‘It is already clear in police guidance and in the code of practice produced by the previous government that trivial, irrational and/or malicious complaints should not be recorded . . . The Home Secretary has been clear that a consistent and commonsense approach must be taken with non-crime hate incidents.’
None of these words (trivial, irrational, malicious, consistent, commonsense) is defined or operationalised. Thus, nobody can be held accountable.
The current government talks out of both sides of its face. For the benefit of progressives, it endorses the current system. For the benefit of true liberals, it promises reform.
‘The Home Office has agreed that the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), supported by the College of Policing, will now conduct a review on the use and effectiveness of NCHIs. The review will cover when the police should record information that has not yet reached the criminal threshold, but which is still deemed necessary to monitor community tensions and keep the public safe. It will also take into account the fundamental right of freedom of expression and recent court rulings in this area.’
But the same quangos already reviewed the same issues, from 2021 to 2022. The current government asks of them nothing beyond what the Johnson administration had sought.
Some time late this year, these two quangos will issue new guidance, with a flash of publicity, amidst claims to have reformed this and that – which will reduce to changes of words, but no changes of expectations.
So police forces will go on recording NCHIs, neglecting crimes (remember, half of Britain’s police forces solve no burglaries) and cracking down on politically incorrect speech and demographics.
Clearly, the current government is mindful of the perception that police forces are tough on speech, soft on crime. It attempts to spin its ‘reform’ of NCHIs as tough on crime. I quote:
‘The Government has also been clear that its top priority for policing is delivering on the safer streets mission to rebuild neighbourhood policing, restoring public confidence, and making progress on the ambition to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls.’
What reads superficially as a commitment to policing is actually a set of signals to progressives that the government will continue with two-tier justice. Spot the signals?
For ‘neighbourhood policing’ read ‘depolicing’, i.e. stay out of neighbourhoods where the police can be accused of hate by self-segregated minorities. For instance, ignore vandalism, rape, internecine violence, and theft in and around hotels housing illegal immigrants, but crack down on protesters against open borders – and call them fascists.
For ‘restoring public confidence,’ read ‘pander to self-segregated minorities’. For instance, when three girls are knifed to death in Southport by Axel Rudakubana, cover up the perpetrator’s Islamism, anti-white racism and unpunished crimes, characterise the facts as ‘right-wing disinformation’, release photos of the perpetrator as a schoolboy but not after his arrest, and sentence the perpetrator after you have already imprisoned those who had Tweeted the facts.
For ‘making progress on the ambition to halve knife crime’ read ‘blame Amazon for selling a knife to Axel Rudakubana’. For ‘making progress on the ambition to halve violence against women and girls’ read ‘persecute white men in family courts for unsubstantiated accusations by bitter ex-partners who don’t want to share the parenting, but turn a blind eye to organised abuse of girls and wives by Muslim men’.
Keir Starmer’s administration is doubling down not just on non-crime hate incidents, but also two-tier justice by race, religion, gender – and politics.
This article (Slowly, stealthily, Starmer doubles down on two-tier justice) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Bruce Newsome
••••
The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)
••••
Comment Policy: As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. This also applies to trolling, the use of more than one alias, or just intentional mischief. Enforcement of this policy is at the discretion of this websites administrators. Repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without prior warning.
••••
Disclaimer: TLB websites contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, health, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.
••••
Disclaimer: The information and opinions shared are for informational purposes only including, but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material are not intended as medical advice or instruction. Nothing mentioned is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Liberty Beacon Project
Leave a Reply