Draft Code of Practice on the Recording and Retention of Personal Data in relation to Non-Crime Hate Incidents

Holly Lynch Excerpts

Monday 24th April 2023 General Committees

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Robert, and I thank the Minister for her opening contribution. I think that she, like me, has been impacted by the scheduling of the Public Order Bill, which has meant last-minute changes to the Front-Bench line-up on this important Delegated Legislation Committee.

As the Minister outlined, the new code of practice aims to establish a proportionate and common-sense approach to the recording of non-crime hate incidents. Following the ruling by the Court of Appeal in the Miller case, and the new guidance produced by the College of Policing, we agree that there is a need to strike the right balance between protecting freedom of expression and responding to incidents of hate. There is an obvious difference between hate crimes that target people on the basis of their characteristics and unpleasant behaviour that does not cross the criminal threshold. The College of Policing has already published guidance on how police forces should deal with the latter, and that guidance is incorporated in the code of practice.

We will not oppose the code, and we urge the Government to work closely with the college to deliver on it. However, there is a real need to lower the temperature around conversations on this issue, as inflammatory rhetoric helps nobody. We are concerned about some of the language used in the Government’s framing of this issue. The Home Secretary has described non-crime hate incidents as “Orwellian and wrongheaded”, and talked of “politically correct distractions”. The idea that the police are focused on anything other than preventing crime, catching criminals and keeping people safe is grossly unfair to the officers whom we all work with, day in, day out.

The Policing Minister has said that the

“focus must remain on catching dangerous criminals”,

while the Home Secretary noted that

“The new code will ensure the police are prioritising their efforts…focusing on tackling serious crimes”.

If the Government’s motivation is truly to free up police time, so that the police can focus on tackling crime, may I suggest that we thoroughly consider the primary role that policing is having to play in providing mental health support, locating missing people, or providing social care? I could go on.

I am interested to see the differing cost analyses produced by the Home Office, which expects the cost of implementation to be around £9,000, but it concedes that it could be up to £400,000. That higher estimate is based on the assumption that there is a slightly longer code of conduct being read by more officers at chief inspector level. I suggest to the Minister that the general public may prefer a greater proportion of senior officers to have read and acquainted themselves with the new code of practice. That seems a reasonable request, given the sensitivities around the topic. I suspect that the costs are likely to be on the higher side, given how important it is that we get this right.

I have looked at the examples from page 14 onwards. A great deal of emphasis is placed on taking a common-sense approach, as the Minister said, but the phrase lacks clarity. What is common sense to me might not be common sense to the Minister, and what is common sense to her might not be to individual officers. If there is a degree of mitigation in someone’s rationale for their conduct, that may result in an incident not being recorded. What happens if someone becomes a repeat offender on that basis? How do we monitor that, and ensure that no one abuses that ambiguity? We agree that striking a balance between protecting freedom of speech and responding to hate incidents is right and proper, and the documentation certainly sets out a much clearer rationale than the Home Secretary did, but the code of practice will come unstuck if clarity is not provided to the officers who have to work with it at operational level.

We will continue to support frontline officers and the College of Policing on getting this right, but I ask the Government to be thoughtful and respectful in further discussions on this important matter.